A Sunday with Lewis & Clarke.

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Gamer Soaps by DIGITALSOAPS "My soap is the first to communicate with subcultures of gamers and geeks. I haven't seen anything like it and I haven't seen gamers this excited about soap." - DigitalSoaps.

Anderson Horta, a product designer from Brazil, designed these digital inspired oven mitts which mimic the hand icon familiar to computer users.

This stationery set from the spanish design studio Brigada Creative brings a digital element to notepaper and envelopes.

Palm-size Deletus eraser, by Art Lebedev, is shaped like the well-known key on a computer keyboard. Forget erasing...it's time to delete!

There's no question with what you do with these, sit. The stackable injection molded Command Sit stool comes in generic computer beige, and black. Available through Duende.

This watch is only available in Japan. Disappointed yes, but we can still marvel at the design.

Pixelated Jewelry by Maaike Evers and Mike Simonian "An exploration of tangible vs. virtual in relation to real and perceived value. Using Google Image Search, we browsed through some of the most expensive and often famous jewelry in the world, the low-res images we found were stolen, doctored, then transferred to leather, creating a tangible new incarnation. With the expense and intricacy of the jewels stripped away, their essence and visual intensity are extracted."

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The Pine Cone Gentleman.

The Pine Cone Gentleman, lots of fun things going on over there.

A Few from Erin Murray's opening.

Check out Erin's show by clicking here.

Erin Murray: Architecture Parlante 

Show Statement

The term architecture parlante ("speaking architecture") refers to the concept of buildings that explain their own function or identity. This can be anything from a statehouse with a patriotic inscription to an oddball commercial enterprise like the famous Brown Derby restaurant, shaped as its namesake. Here, common communication trumps the conceits of Modernism and its Miesian dissection of space, and symbolism is heartily embraced.

While not all of the structures in my work are as overtly parlante as say, a banana stand shaped like a banana, they are "speaking" in the sense that they can convey much about themselves, whether intentionally or not.  In a way they are perfectly Postmodern without the benefit of being architect designed: unashamedly embellished and not without a sense of humor. It is this sense of architectural absurdity that I am exploring with the work in this show. 

Learning From Harbison Avenue (2011) depicts a stretch of road in Northeast Philly near where I grew up. The houses are small and as simple as shoeboxes but cheerfully trimmed with awnings, fences and shutters of various design.  To me they are endearingly absurd, my favorite type of building. The title references Robert Venturi's book Learning From Las Vegas in which he extols the virtues of commercial strip architecture from an academic's point of view.  Not for the first time here I've invoked Venturi's work in titling my own in order to add intellectual "weight" to structures that are normally seen as inconsequential. Indeed, the show title serves much the same function.  

Three paintings, Liquor Barn, La Villa, and Ming Kui Restaurant (2010) take commercially embellished buildings out of their context and place them where they ostensibly want to be, and no one's happier for it.

BBillboard and Yokefellow (2010) share this sense of absurdity in a more subtle, lyrical way. Both dwarfed by structures above, they have the patina of buildings designed by time. One is more interesting for the graffiti on its backside then anything on its front, while the other presents us with the modern church, where one need only add a cross and a gothic arch to your wrought iron to invoke a sense of the sacred.

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Apple Jacks Studio.

 Dennis Fisher was on hand.

 Leigh.

 Nick Pedersen (fellow Gentleman) with Amy.

Amanda Spitzfaden.

Last night Leigh, Nick, and myself piled in the car and headed on over to Apple Jacks Studio to see the new show by our good friend Amanda Spitzfaden, "My Heart is Drowning in The Atlantic". Amanda opened her studio doors in the spring of o10, mostly showing Philadelphia based artists, this show was all her own and what an amazing fun show it was. It was such a great mixture of bright and playful paintings that warms the heart and soul, and on that cold and damp night it was such a delight. Want to return to the Pine Cone?