Seen in the NY Times: An illustrator, Christoph Niemann, recreated snippets of New York City with Lego. Very humorous and clever.



His regular portfolio is on http://www.christophniemann.com/; the gentleman has created a number of illustrations for the New Yorker.

For some reason, sculpture is usually not as interesting to me as much as 2D art forms (must be all the bronze leaping salmon you just can't escape in the Pacific Northwest...).
So it is rare that sculpture really catches my eye; but the amazing work from this Korean artist blew me away:


(image from Union Gallery)


(Image from artnet)

You can see more pictures here, and the artist statement here.

Seen downtown Seattle. Someone knows how to talk to the ladies.

Last night I made crêpes. Yup, yesterday might have been Groundhog Day in the US, but it was Chandeleur in France, aka Candlemas. Shame on me, it had slipped my mind until I read Anne's post (in French), just in the nick of time. Bad French girl, bad.

Cultural interlude:
Like most French holidays, Chandeleur stems from an obscure religious origin and turned along the way into an occasion to eat something with butter in it.

"Chandeleur" comes from the Latin Festa Candelarum, meaning Feast of candles. Meaning that at some point, blessed candles charged with religious symbolism (Christ, light of the world etc) used to be involved.

The origin of crêpes and their association with the holiday is unclear; round and golden like the sun that starts coming back in February everywhere but in Seattle? Given out to pilgrims by a gourmet 5th century pope? Using flour to guarantee a bountiful wheat harvest?

Anyway, the tradition of making crêpes still holds today; when I was in Kindergarten we'd make them at school. Some people (like my great-aunt) still flip their crêpes with a gold coin in their hand, to ensure prosperity in the coming year. Looks like it's been working fine for my great-aunt, maybe I should start doing it.

To make crêpes, you will need:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3 eggs
• 2 cups milk, or 1 cup milk + 1 cup water
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla sugar (optional)
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil or melted butter
• 2 tbsp rum or Grand Marnier (you can skip it but it tastes much better if you don't)

• proportions work out to be about 3 spoons of flour per egg
• 1 spoon of flour = 1 crêpe

1. Put the eggs, sugars and flour in a mixing bowl. Whisk them together if you need the exercise, but use a blender if you want to avoid lumps
2. Whisk the milk/water in progressively
3. Stir in the alcohol and the melted butter
4. Lightly grease a crêpe pan with an oiled paper towel. You can use a regular pan, but you'll be greatly increasing your odds of making fugly crêpes, especially if it's not non-stick.
5. Heat the pan on medium-high (it needs to be hotter than for pancakes; crêpes cook fast)
6. When your pan is hot, thinly coat the bottom with a ladle of batter
7. When the edges look cooked and start lifting from the pan, slide a spatula under the crêpe and turn it over. You can also flip it, but this only works if there are no witnesses.
8. Cook for 10-15 seconds
9. Serve warm with an assortment of toppings: preserves, powdered sugar, chestnut cream, Nutella...
   

This weekend I stopped by the Kimberly Baker store, where she was having a big sale. I snagged this necklace, which I'd had my eye on for quite some time. Forgive the crappy photo, which doesn't do it justice:



More tentacled goodness, by Audrey Kawasaki:


by Camille Rose Garcia:


A fun cushion from Binth:

Reginald almost looked like a regular little boy.
There was one small flaw, but the neighbors were far too polite to comment on it.

I envy people who keep a tidy desk when they work. At any given time, mine looks like some deranged muse threw up crayons all over it. Oh well.

Anyway, I'm back to being elbow-deep in muse puke; after a month's break, I've started plugging away at my next show. I've chosen to finally illustrate a short story that has been on my mind for a long, long time; I've never illustrated a story start to finish, so this is an interesting exercise.

I've read that story many times over the years, so I'm illustrating from memory rather than following the text. I started by trying to follow the text, but I found this method works better for me - helps me sift the key elements and focus on transcribing the atmosphere. But for all I know this is how illustrators work... so much for my big self-discovery!

This is another of the series I made for a show themed after the 7 deadly sins.
This one was sloth; there's definitely some unhealthy pallor going on here...

Belated happy new year to IF' ers... Here's my take on "contained" (or not, as the case may be)

The voices told me to do it. Seriously.

I had to laugh when I got this error message...
This Microsoft application gets launched when other Microsoft applications crash, in order to report crash data to the Borg I presume.
Well... the crash-reporting app crashed for me today. I thought that was a nice touch.

These 2 little guys look somewhat similar, but it doesn't mean that their tastes are...