Design Thinking

http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_urges_designers_to_think_big.html

"Tim Brown urges designers to think big"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo

Kseniya Simonova - Sand Animation (Ukraine's Got Talent)

Jonathan Harris collects stories

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jonathan_harris_collects_stories.html

Balloons at Bhutan

wishes

one line stories

partial glimpse into someone else's life

find similarities of people

bridge gaps

self-expression

Julie Evans watercolor

ideas and categories

how to make journal less personal, more accessible:

-take "me" "I" "my" out of journal entries

-theme of leaving

-list of "i feel" lines (we feel fine site)

-beginnings and endings

-first page journal entries from famous people

-explore human inclination toward story-telling

places:

-Anguilla

-France (Paris, Fontainbleau, Alsace)

-Thailand

-Euro trip

-Greenwich

-Norwalk

-Darien

-Westport

-Easton

dates:

1995/6 Anguilla

1997 France

2002 France

2004 Anguilla, Westport

2006/7 UConn

2008 Thailand

2009 Europe

Jerry N. Uelsmann

Jerry N. Uelsmann

Art is Whatever

Milton Glaser 1996

The Pursuit of Happiness : Back to the Land

Maira Kalman

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/back-to-the-land/?ref=dining

DIY

handwritten article about local, organic food goodness

Janine Antoni

"Moor"
2001
Dimensions variable
Installation views, "Free Port," at Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthalle, Sweden

"I asked my friends to give me materials to put into the rope. A lot of people gave me materials from friends who had passed away. Giving them to me to put into the rope is like giving them another life, another form. I wonder whether the viewer can uncover these stories through their experience of the object, whether these stories are somehow held in the material." - Janine Antoni

Tibetan Prayer Flags

Traditionally, prayer flags come in sets of five, one in each of five colors. The five colors represent the elements.

Traditionally, prayer flags are used to promote peace, compassion, strength, and wisdom. The flags do not carry prayers to 'gods,' a common misconception; rather, the Tibetans believe the prayers and mantras will be blown by the wind to spread the good will and compassion into all pervading space. Therefore, prayer flags are thought to bring benefit to all.

Manifesto 2000

http://www.art-omma.org/NEW/past_issues/theory/08_First%20Things%20First%20Manifesto%202000.htm

Manifesto 2000

"We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication - a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning."

sketch books

"Sketch Book: Conceptual Drawings from the World's Most Influential Designers"

Timothy O'Donnell

love seeing the visuals of thought-processes, love rough sketches (often more than finished products)

Montpelier

street poetry, found down an alleyway

Collage Wall Art

Burhan Dogancay, found him in the book "Urban Walls: A Generation of Collage in Europe and America", love the doors and windows section, idea of collage great, personal, interactive, very human form

... could be really interesting to use windows and collage onto glass frames while using light coming through

Shirin Neshat

"Speechless" 1996

Islamic Fevolution, new identity in Iran from "Persians" to "Islamic fundamentalists"

love the text and image combination

Marlene Dumas

"Measuring Your Own Grave"

Found Dumas in a book, "No.1: First Works by 362 Artists", and her work "Don't Talk to Strangers," from 1977, torn lines, fragments stacked along the outside edge of the paper, tape, yellowed paper, light stains... really enjoyed the physical texture of the text.

"...It was about art and life at the same time. I realized that for me art was like making love letters to strangers, whatever form it takes."

Nedko Solakov

drawings and installations with text, handwritten notes on different survaces in public space, surprising and entertaining, "Toilettes " 2006, "A Passport-Controlled Story" 2008

Influences flags

I loved our "Influences" project last Spring. I loved collecting and sharing personal details that are me. I loved the images and text on vellum, I loved physically sewing the flags together and hanging them in different areas and using light. I would love to come back to a project like this.

Art 21: Memory

Art 21: Memory

http://www.pbs.org/art21/series/seasonthree/memory.html

Susan Rothenberg

“I’m trying for, let’s take truth. Some kind of truth about some kind of thing.”

Josiah McElheny

“The experience of art is a kind of fusion of your experience of yourself and the object.”

“The definition of being a modern person is to examine yourself, to reflect on yourself and to be a self-knowledgeable person.”

"understanding home"

" How do we define the word home? Is it a building? A feeling? The people close to you? The decoration? Home can be both a physical and a psychological place filled with the complexities of family, identity, culture, and religion. Although not always the same vision, idea, or ideal, we all carry ideas of home with us that are informed by our sense of self and sense of community. "

from ART 21 "understanding home"

Home is an expression of our inner sense of identity portrayed outwardly.

Textportrait

Ralph Ueltzhoeffer

His current works range from installation (web-art-project "Textportrait") to other medias like Photography and personal computers. It deals with the notion of value and architecture of information, biographical texts (Wikipedia) and photos in symbiosis for a textportrait. Black & white, and colour photography, concentrating on human aspects.

"missing" short film

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fps2Fg75M0k

Louise Bourgeoise

Louise Bourgeois. Active since the early 1940s, Bourgeois has consistently plumbed the her own biography for subject matter and inspiration. Working with delicate stone sculptures in public spaces and plaster casts of hands, Bourgeois explores memory, emotion, and strength through works that reach viewers on a visceral level. "A work of art doesn't have to be explained," she says. "If you do not have any feeling about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed." Bourgeois' work challenges viewers to make connections between their own lives and the lives staged in the artist's installations, drawings, and public sculptures.

DNA

"Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s technologically sophisticated works use natural forms such as clouds, icebergs, and DNA as metaphors for understanding social issues such as immigration, gun violence, and human cloning. The artist’s strategy of representing nature through information leads to an investigation of the underlying forces that shape the planet as well as points of human interaction and interference with the environment." Art21

awesome things

http://1000awesomethings.com/

reminding us of some positive moments that we all value. what we have in common as humans.

psychology of human interaction

I wrote this excerpt in a journal and found it recently, from Sennett's "The Impact of Industrial Capitalism on Public Life"

"The belief that secrecy is necessary when people are fully interacting gives the key to a second of the barometers of psychic distress in the society: the desire to withdraw from feeling in order not to show one's feelings involuntarily to others.

But precisely this fearful withdrawal from expression puts more pressure on others to get closer to you to know what you feel, what you want, what you know.

Flight and the seed of compulsive intimacy are absolutely joined: the sheer expression of an emotion, any emotion, becomes ever more important as so much work becomes necessary to penetrate another's defenses to the point where he is willing to interact."

I went for a walk in the woods today, in the snow, and I loved finding some cream colored dried leaves still hanging on some branches. I was thinking about this and then remembered the sculptor, Petah Coyne, who spoke at UConn in the fall and how she hung dried fish from trees. I like that unusual combination.

handwriting

I love handwriting. It's so interesting seeing how your own has changed over time.