Friday Foodie: Food Gawker

Yum, yum and yum!  Food Gawker has become my go-to resource for inventive dishes!   It's basically a user-submitted photo gallery that allows food bloggers to share pics/recipes from their culinary adventures - bringing hundreds of ideas to one place.  You can easily sort by latest posts, popularity, favorites or randomize it. 

http://foodgawker.com/

Here are a few finds to help launch you into Spring...

Asparagus & Red Pepper Israeli Couscous Salad with Orange-Pineapple Vinaigrette

Almond - honey cake with oranges

Raspberry Mojito which combines fresh raspberries, juicy lime and mint

These Make Me Happy...

Pencil tip micro sculptures by Dalton Ghetti.

See more here.

Go For It

Say It with Passage Aggressive Cards

By designer Jason Naylor.  See more here.

Paper Art Love

A paper art exhibition previously on display at New York's Museum of Art and Design.  The focus was paper, and the way contemporary artists have used paper itself as a medium -- by cutting, tearing, burning, or shredding. 

So damn cool.

Andreas Kocks's Paperwork #701G (in the Beginning):

Mia Pearlman's Eddy:

Between the Lines, by Ariana Boussard-Reifel: A book with every single word cut out:

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SNAP DISCOVERY: Cardon Copy

I don't remember when or how I came across this phenomenal website and its genius creator, but I think it might just contain my favorite artwork of the year...

http://www.cardoncopy.com

The mission is pretty simple -- they hijack horribly fashioned flyers and posters from around town and replace them with smartly designed alternatives.  And the resulting "before and afters" are really too much fun!

See more!

Start The Way

The Simple Tao
The Way is to benefit others and not to injure.
The Way is to act but not compete.
It does not show greatness and is therefore truly great.


Tao
"The Way", "The Path".  It is often represented by water because water always seeks the path of least resistance, yet is strong enough to demolish even stone when no other recourse is available. Everything below flows from this.

Be still like a mountain and flow like a great river.

Here are 10 guides to the Way. To live them is to follow the Simple Tao, where it is up to us to tell the story, each in our own small way.

1. Make your goal effortless action
   avoid unnecessary action or action that is not spontaneous.
   
2. Treasure simplicity
   eliminate whatever is unnecessary and artificial and appreciate the simple and the apparently ordinary.
   
3. Cultivate stillness
   only stillness will clear muddy waters and enable you to see the truth.
   
4. Be patient
   can you remain unmoving until the right action arises?
   
5. Be gentle
   love peace and restraint and avoid all unnecessary violence. "do not regard weapons as lovely things. for to think them lovely means to delight in them, and to delight in them means to delight in the slaughter of men."
   
6. See beauty
   in the mundane and the normal. Apreciate the beauty around you and in yourself.
   
7. Be true
   dedicate your life only to that which you find beautiful or fascinating, and thus be true to yourself.
   
8. Live in the moment
   feel the hand of time sweeping past second by second.
   
9. Be happy
   to conduct one's life according to the Tao, is to conduct one's life without regrets.
   
10. Be compassionate and honor life
    only those who are compassionate and treasure life in all its forms can show true bravery and acquire true wisdom.

{source}

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Body Camouflage

Can you spot the human?

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My Perfect Album

I can't stop listening to Van Morrison's "Common One".  Start to finish, it's incredible.  Every element blends together seamlessly.  From his poignant lyrics to the amazing horns, it may be the most perfect album I've ever heard. Folky, spiritual, moving, quality musicianship.  And excellent listening to get you in the mood for Spring. 

 Not to be missed:  "When Heart is Open" and "Satisfied"

And when heart is open
You will change just like a flower slowly openin’
When there’s no comin’
And there’s no goin’
And when heart is open
You will meet your lover
You will tarry

Born George Ivan Morrison, 1945, in Northern Ireland, his father bought him his first acoustic guitar when he was eleven. But, as member of a working-class community, it was expected that he would get a regular full-time job, so after several short apprenticeship positions, he settled into a job as a window cleaner. At age 17 he started touring and his professional career began in the late 1950s when he played a variety of instruments including guitar, harmonica, keyboards and saxophone for various Irish showbands, covering the popular hits of the day.

In 1980, Morrison and a group of musicians traveled to Super Bear, a studio in the French Alps, to record (on the site of a former abbey) what is considered to be the most controversial album in his discography.

Spectacular! Paint Sound Sculptures...

First of all, it's my dream to work at dentsu -- these guys just seem so smart and fun -- heck, I's run coffee for them all day if that's what it required.

So, I've seen this type of photography/project before, but something about their special touch here has moved me.  Maybe it's their quiet reverence for color and sound, or how diligently delicate they are with the materials {approaching it like scientists}, or how committed they are to creating something so visually beautiful with their tools.  Whatever it is, they hit the mark.

See the full video of how they made this images -- it's super cool!  Click here.

Collaborating with photographer Linden Gledhill, they've created a series of "paint sculptures" using sound vibrations.  It's part of a campaign for Canon (yes, its a commercial project - but its so well done that I couldn't resist).  The team begins by wrapping a membrane around a small speaker.  Then, ink drops are placed on this membrane and react with the sound vibrations, making the paint "dance".

See the full video of how they made this images -- it's super cool!  Click here.

The team used high-speed video cameras and still cameras to capture this, including circling around the sculptures to see the paint move from all angles.

10 Rules for Being Human

Love, love, love this.  People -- stop being so hard on yourself.  We're all just along for the ride.

1.	You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's yours to keep for the entire period.
2.	You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, "life."
3.	There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately "work."
4.	Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.
5.	Learning lessons does not end. There's no part of life that doesn't contain its lessons. If you're alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.
6.	"There" is no better a place than "here." When your "there" has become a "here", you will simply obtain another "there" that will again look better than "here."
7.	Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.
8.	What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.
9.	Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.
10.	You will forget all this.

{source}

Street Art Awesomeness

I love people watching.  But, I especially love watching people do double-takes!

Check out this amazing people art in public spaces from Mark Jenkins... my favorite type of people are those who dare to not take themselves seriously...

See more here.

Above our World

Even if we're not aware of it, our world is highly organized and comprised of lots of patterns, everywhere.  And these patterns {especially those imposed on the earth by it's human inhabitants} can be both positively and negatively, striking.

Photographer Alex MacLean has amassed a beautiful set of images that showcases the extraordinary patterns of humans.  Alex was first exposed to aerial photography a few years after he attended Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.  It's when he received his pilot license that he began astudy of order and chaos, from above.

I'm particularly amazed by the evident color palates... both monochromatic and vibrant.

Alex is also the author of "Over: The American Landscape At The Tipping Point".

You are Jackson Pollock

I came across this amazing site via Stumble Upon.  And when I say "came across" I mean that my mouse did the discovering.  At first I thought that the page was broken or not loading, but the second that I inched over the browser screen I was absolutely delighted!

Have a go at it!  www.jacksonpollock.org