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Quote of the Week:

All solitary dreamers know that they hear differently when they close their eyes.
-Gaston Bachelard

Notes from Notchcode

4.25.2008

Happy Thought for the Weekend: Getting there is (at least) half the fun


I came across this photo of my dad and his older brother Bob from when they were kids, living in the dusty suburbs of 1950s Albuquerque (that's my dad in the back). It reminded me that the point of anything worth doing isn't the end of the process, but the process itself. I see plenty of photographs taken after the race is over, and the winners look happy. But I know from experience (racing and otherwise) that when you are in the act of Doing, and you are fully invested in it, you have the best, easiest opportunity to be happy.

This is very true in art, too. I could quote from a bunch of different sources that talk about the process being the real art, and the end "thing" being a mere artifact, or shadow, of the art itself, but I'll just digress briefly enough to ask you to read through Edward Weston's notebooks, and you'll get it soon enough.

This applies to the creative and business processes as well as the bigger picture. If I am creating a marketing strategy, or a branding strategy, or working on a web design project, and I really let myself go into the process—I do my best work. And if my client does the same thing, we have no choice but to not only create the best possible outcome for them, but have fun at the same time. I am fortunate to have clients who work this way, and hope all of you out there have success in enjoying the journey as much as I do.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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posted at 10:13 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

4.14.2008

Site Launch: CarlSanderSocolow.com photography

I completed a gallery site for Guggenheim Fellow Carl Sander Socolow this morning, and I encourage you to check out his work, entitled Scenes from Civic Life.

His latest project involves documenting the town of Mata Ortiz, in northern Mexico. He writes,
This work is a photographic study of the ongoing transformation of a number of heretofore isolated northern Mexican villagers into a community of world-class ceramic artists. This transformation is having a profound historic impact on their lives, the life of their village and on the social, economic and cultural life of the surrounding region. I began this project three-and-a-half years ago with the ambition of depicting the harmonies and paradoxes shaping these artists and their village as both are inexorably compelled, by virtue of an event in the history of art, to confront the modern economic and cultural world and find and take their place within it.


In a town of 3,000 people, more than 400 potters are now working in what has become recognized as a form of high art, he continues. This has an enormous impact on the economic and social life of Mata Ortiz, and Carl's documentation of it it touching for its humanity, artfulness, and compassion. These are real people in his images, not just stereotypes or one-dimensional characters. They are potters, fathers, mothers, daughters, cowboys, baseball enthusiasts, and more.

His other work from the US and europe are also worth viewing. His scenes of a debutante ball and of Venice are especially compelling.

Some notes on the site: we experimented with several navigation methods, including a sliding scroll of thumbnail images on the right side of the window, but eventually settled on an arrangement of squared-off elements of each photo, set in a grid, with links to the full image from each photo element. A Java Script runs the enlargement, which also includes title and date information. This format is hierarchically simple, and will make it easy for Carl to add more images whenever he wants by simply adding a thumbnail image to the grid, and linking it to a full-size image with the included script.

above: Courtship with Dog, Mata Ortiz, Mexico, 2004, © 2004 Carl Sander Socolow. All Rights Reserved.

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posted at 10:55 AM Leave your comments here: 1 comments

4.07.2008

...and if I code all four by then, I get a cookie!

I am web interface boy this week, with three web site projects all hitting the user interface design phase at the same time. What kind of project manager let that happen? Oh, right; that would be me. In any case, it's all good: doing a lot of the same sort of work can improve the quality of work done on all of the projects I'm working on...you get in a groove, and just keep refining and making things better. I told myself when I rolled out of bed this morning that if I got all three interfaces done by Wednesday I'd treat myself to an afternoon by myself at the art museum, or maybe the Museum of Contemporary Art.

I also have another site which had the final bits of content land in-house last week, and am hoping to get that completed and live. It's a great little site, and I can't wait to share it with you guys. Stay tuned.

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posted at 7:21 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

3.04.2008

Help out a great photographer and get some great art--all at the same time

My good friend Andrew Bale just got a commission to create work for a show at the Espace Ecureuil in Toulouse, France this summer. It's a pretty cool gig: they pay for a fair amount of his travel and his stay while in France. What they don't cover is expenses related to hauling hundreds of rolls of film around the countryside, printing the final images, and so on. Andy is raising money to fund his trip in a novel way: for a limited time, if you send him $185, he'll send you five images from his Europe portfolio, plus another photograph from his upcoming project in France.

Now, even if Andrew weren't my friend, I'd sing the praises of his work. Beautifully-crafted images, sought out in the wilderness, industrial backyards of Pennsylvania, and streets of America, Ireland, Paris and Italy. He and I both print using the lush platinum/palladium contact printing process, and he has also become an expert in digitally-printed archival ink pigment prints too. The images from this Five plus One portfolio consist of the latter.

Usually Andy's images sell for between $125 and $450 each. With this offer, you are getting six images for the cost of one. That's a pretty cool deal, and a great way to jumpstart your collection. Head on over to the portfolio page to see the images, and read more about the project and the artwork. Then buy a set and become a partner in Andrew's latest project.

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posted at 3:22 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

2.15.2008

Like Jenny Holzer, only about Barack Obama


See what Barack has done for you lately.
Nice use of that old standby typeface, Helvetica (which seems to be seeing a resurgence thanks to the epynomous documentaty film and other, less savory efforts of mass-produced graphic design).

barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com via kotte.

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posted at 11:19 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments

2.08.2008

Door as Power Plant: Looks like a famous work of art to me!

Found this neat idea for a revolving door at Fluxxlab (via Gizmodo) that generates power from the people pushing it this morning. Nice design concept, and the graphics to show off the concept and process are lovely. But it does look a bit like the structure in one of my favorite pieces by Marcel Duchamp, Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even. Have a look:




and here is a wonderful deconstruction of Duchamp's schema for his work, by Andrew Stafford:



(here's a detail of the bottom panel of the original Duchamp work too, which you must go see if you are anywhere near the Philadelphia Museum of Art:)

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posted at 7:11 AM Leave your comments here: 0 comments


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