Scenes from the Weekend: Wineaux

Wineaux adventure at William Seylem and Copain.

Witty Eats: Spring Rolls

Scenes from the Weekend: Lagunitas Beer Circus.

Music, trapeze artists, aerialists, burlesque acts, clowns, snake charmers, sword swallowers, and general mayhem?!  Sign me up.

Fortune.

On an evening when I was feeling particularly reflective about my future, this fortune dropped into my lap at the dinner table...



...How serendipitous. And true.

Deconstructed.

I love this colorful, deconstructed - almost pixilated - cake by House of Origin!



Found via Once Wed

Paint the Town.... Rainbows in Retrospect.

This colorful moment, photographed by Henry Groskinsky, features the work of artist Gene Davis as he painted the street leading up to the Philadelphia Museum of Art back in 1972.

I love it in contrast to Hayuk and Haas&Hahn's work featured this week.

Paint the Town.... Modern Rainbows.

Dutch artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn — who work under the name Haas&Hahn— want to paint New York neon... at least part of it. In an exhibition opening at Storefront this weekend, they're proposing an "intervention" into Lower Manhattan's low-income housing.

They've already completed paintings in a Brazilian favela — a project that combines art and activism. In collaboration with young people from the area, they've been decorating the slums of Rio and Sao Paulo with giant rainbow-colored murals.

(Found via Apartment Therapy)

This & That.

Currently indulging in some geometric fun...

Print by Puffed Peonies, shoes by Toms.

Lookin on the Bright Side.

Looking on the bright side this week as I fly to the Midwest.

Lovin the work of Maya Hayuk.

Reflections

Norwegian photographer Odin Hole Standal woke up early one morning, went outside and decided to make giant soap bubbles...Hmm... Well, here are his beautiful results.

Perfectly playful for a Friday.

The Anti-Bottle.

Vapur has created "The Anti-Bottle." This BPA-free bottle collapses completely and rolls up easily when empty. Fill it, drink it and you don't have to lug a bottle around with you once it's empty. Have we seen similar products? Maybe, but the clip is innovative!

From the Source.

(From Fast Company, Infographic of the Day: Where Does Your Water Come From?)

"We take it for granted that water comes from the tap, but we don't appreciate that it often has to travel hundreds, even thousands of miles from its source to get where it's ultimately consumed. David Wicks, a masters student at UCL, set about to fill that void, with Drawing Water, a project that's equal parts data viz and art project.

'Each line in a print corresponds to a daily rainfall measurement. The length of the line and its initial placement are determined by the amount of rainfall measured and where it fell. The final placement and color of each line are determined by the influence of urban water consumers. The more water a city uses, the stronger its pull on the rainfall. As rainfall is pulled farther from where it fell, it changes color from blue to black.'

Thus, what you get isn't quite a literal exploration of water flows, but rather a metaphorical one that shows the often vast disconnect between where our resources lie and where they're ultimately consumed. "

The result is quite powerful.

I think we have ourselves a theme for the week: Water.

Diving into the Week.

I dove into the week with a 7am call this morning. No signs of slowing down any time soon, but I'm looking forward to riding this one out into the weekend.

Found a pleasant calm in viewing these photographs on my way to work, by photographer Sarah Lee, from Kona, Hawaii. She is currently a student at Chapman University. You can find more of her work at Vivant Vie.

Behold.

BHLDN, Anthropologie's gorgeous wedding boutique launched their decor collection today. These fabulous garlands, poms and fans make me want to throw my sister's bridal shower all over again! Or at least put together a fabulously festive party some time very soon.

On to the Next.

It's been a very light week of reading for me, and I'm loving every page. I promise to pass on any "wisdom" from my latest choice...

How hysterical is Tina Fey's cover by the way? I love it. My favorite advanced review:  "I hope that's not really the cover. That's really going to hurt sales." (Fey's father)

Grand Challenges Exploration.

I have long been intrigued by the Gates Foundation's Global Challenges Explorations, and have been known to spend extended periods of time perusing the applications. Well, 2011's winners have been announced!  Check out the press release:

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced 88 new winners of the Global Challenges Exploration will receive $100,000 each to support innovative research that has the potential to dramatically improve lives in some of the world’s poorest countries. The program will enable researchers worldwide to test unorthodox ideas that address persistent health and development challenges.

“One bold idea is all it takes to catalyze new approaches to global health and development,” said Dr. Tachi Yamada, president of Global Health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “Despite the progress in global health and development, we vitally need creative ideas to discover and deliver life-saving vaccines, eradicate the next disease or slow the spread of preventable diseases."

GCE asked researchers to tackle problems such as speeding progress toward assuring polio eradication; leveraging cell phones for global health solutions to improve access to life-saving vaccines; using new technologies to improve maternal and newborn health; finding ways to eliminate all reservoirs of HIV from a patient; and, creating next generation sanitation technologies to help reduce the burden of diarrheal disease.

“GCE winners are expanding the pipeline of ideas to address serious global health and development challenges where creative thinking is most urgently needed. This effort is critical if we are to spur on new discoveries that ultimately could save millions more lives,” said Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Vivian Maier.

Vivian Maier was an unbelieavably talented street photographer in Chicago in the 1950s and '60s. Her work went largely undiscovered until recently when the entire collection of her photography - over 100,000 mostly medium format negatives, thousands of prints, and countless undeveloped rolls of film - sold at an auction two years after her death. The keeper of the majority of her treasured portfolio, which he acquired for $400, is only one-tenth of the way done completing the task of scanning and archiving her work. Today, the release of every fresh image on the Web causes a sensation among the growing legion of her admirers.

It's easy to see why. Her photographs are intimate, and mysteriously beckoning as they draw you into the lives of every day Americans. I am completely enthralled by them. I find her bold approach quite empowering.

What is known about Ms. Maier is that she was born in New York in 1926, lived in France (her mother was French) and returned to New York in 1951. Five years later, she moved to Chicago, where she worked for about 40 years as a nanny, principally for families in the North Shore suburbs. On her days off, she wandered the streets of New York and Chicago, most often with a Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera. Apparently, she did not share her pictures with others, and many of them she never saw herself as she left behind hundreds of undeveloped rolls.