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RISD Alumni Art Sale

This Saturday, 03 May 2008, is the Rhode Island School of Design’s Spring Alumni Art Sale (whew, say that 10 times). Since I live in Alaska I won’t be going, but am delighted to be able to look through some of the work that will be for sale by visiting their Flickr set. The great thing is that each item on Flickr links out the the artists’ web sites.

There are a couple pieces that definitely catch my eye:

Joel Greeb’s Illuminated Ballistic lamp. [more info on his site]
Mike Libby’s clockwork beetle [visit the InsectLab gallery]

Lisa Stevens’ Ceramics

I follow Lisa (aka c-urchin) on Flickr for her tiny ceramic creations that take their inspiration from sea creatures, but from time to time she posts a photo of something that is truly stunning. This time it is this amazing vessel from day 141. The texture is gorgeous:

You can see more of her work at Flickr or see what is available on Etsy.

Wacom Cintiq 12WX

Yes, yes, yes!

Virtual Performance Art

JustVirtual has posted  a fantastic recap of the ZeroG Sky Dancer’s performance, produced and directed by DanCoyote Antonelli the other night. By all accounts this even was a huge success - even in the face of a buggy grid upgrade just hours before. Great images!

Beauty in a Petri Dish

These miniature gardens are absolutely fascinating. More interesting is that the main site seems to be for a decontamination service and that these miniature little ecosystems are their targets.

Just What IS iospace Doing?

This is a question I have been mulling in my head for a few weeks now - somewhat passively…and certainly not so much that I would call and interrogate them. Iospace are the clever geniuses behind the ever-growing Etsy.com, a site for independent crafties and artists to display and sell their wares to the rest of us.

The evil genius in Etsy.com isn’t only that they offer access to such a diverse community of talented creators - it is how they have managed to tackle issues of organization, UI, and search for many thousands of pieces of user-generated content. Search on this site is definitely about the journey more than the destination - with visualizations that not only let you discover items by tag, but by color, time, artist location, and artist/item metric. If fact, it is hard to STOP searching at times because the experience is so intriguing.

The shining star of this site is their Treasury, a “member-curated featured items” collection of temporal lists. The Etsy community shares among itself in the Treasury - but there is something even more amazing - you can actually see other Etsy members browsing the lists in real time. OMG - you can chat with others browsing the same list as you and leave comments as well. Most amazing, from a designers pov is that it is possible to actually observe how people are browsing the area.

There is more information and screenshots available on using Treasury on the Etsy Treasury Demo blog, but why go through all that - just check out the site. This is how browsing/shopping SHOULD be.

3D Eyecandy

Stunning 3D rendering solutions that make real life look - well, just dirty. View the ARTVPS gallery

Art Nouveau Aliens

I love this image by Carlos Schwabe posted at BibliOdyssey. It reenforces a sneaking suspicion - looking at H.R. Giger’s work - that there is something reminiscent of art nouveau in his organic sinew (Alien and Necronomicon). The gratuitously dark and captivating cold stare framed by dark braids that could easily be mistaken as segments of an alien digestive system is surprisingly haunting, and gives the woman’s face the same nonhuman quality.

Ironically, both artists are born from Swiss roots.

Postcards from an Astronaut

Scott Listfields astronaut paintings are amazing snapshots of the observer as an astronaut, caught in the act of observing. [Via forestandthetrees]