I don’t usu­ally plug give­aways on blogs, but there is a first for everything–

This month the tal­ented Cecilia, the Swedish artist behind Veja Cecilia, is hold­ing a give­away on her blog spon­sored by Letraset. Up for grabs is a set of Letraset Tria mark­ers and a few other good­ies from Cecilia’s own col­lec­tion of prints and products:

Leave a com­ment on her blog by Jan­u­ary 30^th for a chance to win!

This one reminds me a lit­tle of Swedish artist Alexan­dra Hed­berg’s recent Snow White draw­ings and explo­rations…

Today I would like to share the work of a Bay area artist whose work has caught my eye. Illus­tra­tor Caitlin Kuh­wald cur­rently teaches at the Cal­i­for­nia Col­lege of the Arts while also free­lanc­ing full time. Her list of clients spans a broad spec­trum, includ­ing names like Puma, Rolling Stone, Good House­keep­ing, Her­man Miller, Pen­guin Books and a whole host of others.

I love Black­birds and Praha; makes me wish I could hang them in my home tomorrow.

Tons more of Caitlin’s gor­geous illus­tra­tions are col­lected on her Web site. Her work is avail­able for pur­chase online in her Etsy bou­tique.

Images: Caitlin Kuh­wald

Today I’d like to share the play­ful art of Vermont-base artist Amber Alexan­der. Her per­son­i­fi­ca­tions of ani­mals are delight­ful and are a tempt­ing gift for a child or ani­mal lover. Since it is Beat­rix Potter’s birth­day today, it seemed fit­ting to share Amber’s work today. Her work is avail­able for pur­chase online in her Etsy bou­tique.

Images: Amber Alexan­der

Check­out the lat­est “street mar­ket” over at Pop­pytalk Hand­made. Run­ning through July 10, this month’s theme is “here comes the sun.”

If you haven’t checked out the site before, Pop­pytalk curates a monthly online show­case of inter­na­tional design tal­ent; beau­ti­ful hand­made items are avail­able in this fun and diverse arena. If you haven’t already taken a gan­der at all of this month’s good­ies here’s a peek at some of the things that caught my eye:

Stock­holm by Stephanie Levy.

What a fun col­lage! This piece reminds me only too well of my old apart­ment in Stockholm.

Pink Lemon­ade by Roll and Tum­ble Press

Whis­per Neck­lace by Mama’s Litt­tle Babies
I have been a fan of Mama’s Lit­tle Babies for ages! I tripped over her work on Etsy.com last win­ter and have been tempted time and again to treat myself to some of her delight­ful jewelry.

Cus­tom Mono­gram Sign by Signs by Diane

Ever the sucker for ran­dom let­ter­forms and typog­ra­phy, it’s no sur­prise that I’m drawn to Diane’s signs.

Sim­mer by Yel­lena

Yel­lena is another artist whose work I dis­cov­ered on Etsy some time ago and have delighted in her work ever since; I love the den­sity of her work.

Golden Plover print by Sarah Ahern

Recently, I vis­ited the SF Museum of Mod­ern Art to see the William Ken­tridge show, Five Themes before it closed. I dis­cov­ered his work at the Carnegie Inter­na­tional show in 1999 when his piece, Stere­o­scope caught my atten­tion; I’ve been a fan ever since. The show beau­ti­fully rep­re­sented the breadth of Mr. Kentridge’s work. I could’ve spent a week­end just in that exhibit alone:

Upon fur­ther explo­ration, this piece by Mario Merz caught my eye too:

The Lens of Rot­ter­dam


What was so great about this piece wasn’t just its scale, but its ele­gant sim­plic­ity— glass plates clamped to a min­i­mal steel frame, shel­ter­ing or focus­ing over rough hewn stones.


After a few weeks of cre­ative stag­na­tion, explor­ing the museum was just the spark I needed to shift my brain back into focus. After a wan­der among the exhibits, even the tex­tures of the walls excited me:



The effect in the last two pho­tos above was achieved by paint­ing the pat­tern with vary­ing lev­els of gloss and matte fin­ish. A cool effect to remem­ber once I’ve found a home to purchse…

These pho­tos are long over­due, but this year’s Cal­i­for­nia Black­smith Asso­ci­a­tion Spring Con­fer­ence in Petaluma was a heck of time! The high­light this year was a visit from a trio of Ital­ian smiths — Clau­dio Bot­tero and the Stenico broth­ers, Jad­ran and Mar­tino. Dur­ing the two fea­ture days of the con­fer­ence, Clau­dio pro­duced a sculp­ture enti­tled “Casanova” work­ing with the Stenico broth­ers as his strik­ers.



Above: Claudio’s sketch… it seemed to serve more as a ref­er­ence for the ever grow­ing audi­ence, as none of the smiths appeared to refer to it dur­ing their forg­ing ses­sions



The fin­ished sculp­ture was auc­tioned off dur­ing Sat­ur­day night’s ban­quet. Just beau­ti­ful. More pho­tos from the con­fer­ence taken by the CBA librar­ian, Whit­ney Pot­ter, are avail­able here.

Set against the back­ground of the Petaluma Fair­grounds, there were plenty of tex­tural details to dis­cover as well. Here’s one of the more play­ful pieces of type I dis­cov­ered dur­ing the week­end:

The movie chron­i­cling the 1000 jour­nals project is finally about to be released at the AFI Film Fes­ti­val in L.A. next month. The project has even been nom­i­nated for a People’s Design Award! Cool deal.

I was in a book­shop today and tripped over the new book about the 1000 jour­nals project. With an almost mag­netic draw, it caught my atten­tion and found its way home with me. I was tick­led to be reminded of the project — years ago I had the good for­tune to trip over one of the jour­nals (and the site) and added my own piece to the puz­zle. I was liv­ing in North­ern Europe at the time, and sent it off to Berlin when the time came.

Sev­eral weeks later, I was con­tacted to par­tic­i­pate in the doc­u­men­tary about the project (appar­ently my story about jour­nal #311 and its extended sojourn in my stu­dio and my friend’s 18^th cen­tury attic was inter­est­ing) but ulti­mately my life­long shy­ness won out, and I declined. I sup­pose I’m a lit­tle curi­ous what it would’ve been like to be asso­ci­ated as one of the faces behind this project, but not enough to regret my deci­sion to main­tain rel­a­tive anonymity and per­sonal privacy.

Here’s where I endorse the book — buy it — since you’ll have bet­ter luck find­ing the book in your local lefty book­shop, than one of the elu­sive 1000 journals.…

And if a visual syn­op­sis of a thou­sand journals-worth of col­lec­tive art still leaves you unsat­is­fied, try sign­ing up for the next chap­ter of the project — 1001 jour­nals

Looks like Future Design Days is going nomadic… what are the chances of meet­ings out­side of Swe­den, I won­der.. Italy and Asia seem like likely pos­si­bil­i­ties, but we’ll just see i guess..

Have been spend­ing a lot of time lately with Nick Bantock’s work — which has trig­gered two things in me — wan­der­lust and a desire to spend exor­bi­tant amounts of time mak­ing art instead of my day job…