happykatie :: katie rocks out the interwebs

Houston art scene showing the love at Dr. Sketchy!

Houston is a really great city.  We've got amazing food, fun random things to do, fantastic career opportunities and passionate, amazing people (*ahem*: Mo-Mo-Monica, Tasty Tiff and DJ Jaymac). 

But sometimes there just feels like there's something missing and that's where Houston Dr. Sketchy comes in.  A divine combo of life drawing class, performance art, killer beats and well-mixed beverages.

I started the group at the beginning of the year in Houston with the amazing Molly Crabapple's permission in NYC (where the 1st of over 43 Dr. Sketchy international groups started it all).  This March marked our third monthly event and it was the best yet - we packed Avant Garden's 2nd floor to the gills with outstanding artists and sunshiney, smiley folks.

It's a little kitschy, a little cheeky and a lot of fun.  We have a big Houston Dr. Sketchy Art Show in the works for this year and are planning on bringing some actual drawing classes into the mix as well.  Join us sometime if you can!!  We'd love to ogle your drawings and ply you with special Dr. Sketchy cheer. 

Thanks to my Art Goddesses who make every event something look forward to and my Sketchy boys JayMac and Adamito who keep things on track bigtime.  Mad props to Groovehouse, our official photog who always makes us look skinny, and Ed Schipul who lets me use his great shots (like the one above) and is just an all-around great friend.

A paltry Halloween post about paper dresses

Since it's Halloween and I don't really celebrate Halloween (except for making hand-cut funky skulls out of origami paper and forgetting to hang them up or showing up to costume parties not in a costume), I thought I'd throw out something Halloween-colored at the very least.

Like this orange dress.  Orange, with black shading.  Halloween colors.  See?  Right?  Yes?  Anyone?

So anyway, I'm addicted to this fabulous 'Daily Dress' blog - a lovely painter named Liz throws up a different dress that she's painted every day.  And you get to 1) buy it or 2) wish your wardrobe actually had a cute dress like this that fit you and made you feel as girlie-great as these paintings do.

Happy Halloween.

Words you find on the things you buy

Chocolove
Originally uploaded by cknlomein

Packaging matters to me.  A lot. 

Unique touches and good design sway me greatly in my purchasing choices - I will be far more likely to spend a little more cash if a product is thoughtfully constructed.  Yes, I'm a sucker like that.

Here are 2 swell examples of unexpected packaging that made me sublimely happy this week:

~  A silk black strappy tank top from Talla (a birthday present from my mom :) ) had a nice size-card attached to it by a white silk cord that told me this:

'May you have enough happiness
to make you sweet, enough trials
to make you strong, enough sorrow
to keep you human and enough hope
to make you happy.'

~  A dark, dark Chocolove bar flavored with hot chilies and sweet cherries was housed in a wrapper that brought us the voice of Oscar Wilde, quoting his poem In the Gold Room:  a Harmony - full excerpt after the jump:

Her ivory hands on the ivory keys
Strayed in a fitful fantasy.
Like the silver gleam when the poplar trees
Rustle their pale leaves listlessly,
Or the drifting foam of a restless sea
When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze...

I like it when my purchases speak to me, thank me, befriend me and joke with me.  That's why I'm also a huge MOO cards fan, Threadless lover and Jones Soda junkie.  Those brands love me; they tell me so regularly and that makes me want to give them part of my paycheck :)  There's a reason they call them Lovemarks!

Crowdsourced art goes mobile -- the TxtMeL8r adventure begins!

1. Take pic don't think, originally uploaded by txtmel8r.

Today we received our first assignment for TxtMeL8r - a camera phone project that taps into our collective mobile devices and creativity.  There will be an actual physical gallery show at the end of the project, but in the meantime you can keep up with the assignment entries on Flickr.

TxtMeL8r is an exhibition co-curated by Houston Center for Photography and Aurora Picture Show, Txt Me L8r explores the potential for distributed creativity through the use of cell phone technology. Combining crowdsourcing with networked communication, Txt Me L8r invites artists and the general public alike to adapt new technologies for spontaneous, geographically-dispersed collaboration.

Let me see your face - the new portrait masters

I greatly enjoyed this article on 'The New Portrait' from the American Photo magazine:

It's always been much easier for me to understand why photographers want to take pictures of people than why people want to have their pictures taken. For most of us, even the famous, it can be profoundly discomfiting to forfeit our power of self-deception, to put ourselves into the hands of a portraitist who has his or her own agenda. Richard Avedon once recalled that Henry Kissinger, a man used to authority as Richard Nixon's secretary of state, pleaded with him to "be kind to me" when he sat for a portrait. A master of realpolitik, Kissinger recognized an imbalance of power when he saw it.

I hate having my photo taken, but yearn for the courage to shoot more photos of people.  Old buildings, rust, graffiti and food I can handle no problem - but there is an element of fearlessness in photographers who can boldly look a subject in the eye to find (and photograph) their true face.  The above double portrait image is by photographer Mark Laita.

A look at the lovely Women in Art

Beauty morphing into beauty morphing into beauty.  I love this video.  Thanks to Tia Paloma!

Readymechs = fun for your printer

Cool thing of the day:
Readymechs are super-cool free 3-d toy templates that you can print out and build for a fun cubicle play experience.

Death by...

I love these Drop Dead Gorgeous photos by Daniela Edburg.  Such a beautiful way to die (particularly the Nutella and gummy bear way).

Soul warming in the Abbey of St. Gall

The ancient Abbey of St. Gall library has sprouted a special natural beauty thanks to Swiss artists Gerda Steiner and Jorg Lenzlinger.

This Seleenwarmer project just enchants me.

From darkness to light - the beauty in perspective shifts

Bullet Lights is a beautiful proposed project in Beirut (found via BldgBlog):

This proposal that I called ‘bullet lights’ is reversing the meaning and experience of the ‘bullet hole wallpaper’ at diverse locations in the city. Introducing unexpected poetic moments of beauty. Beauty, ambivalently mixed with the physical testimonies of violence. The project doesn’t want to make a point it just invites people to look at things differently. Seeing things from more than one perspective is the starting point for empathy.

How do we as an international community enlighten ourselves (pun intended) and take the bullet holes in our global policies and military actions to produce something beautiful and peaceful?  Sometimes life mimicking art is and would be a very good thing.