Dear Deer or Querido Venado!

There is a great Guadalajara (Mexico) independent and self suficient community of art, music fashion and workshops that encourage all forms of creative thinking between contemporary artists and designers. You can kind great artists, mainly mexicans here!

MUJI- a future store

Founded in 1980, MUJI is a everyday life design store known for embrassing attributes such as conservation for natural resources, low prices, simplicity, anonymity and an orientation toward nature. MUJI is present in Europe, Asia and North America with up to 7.500 items for daily usage categorized under: food, apparel, furniture, eletronics, kitchen, cosmetics, stationary, household goods, for example.

Matisyahu + Dub Echoes Documentary

               
Last weekend, I had the pleasure to listen live to Matisyahu at Circo Voador in Lapa (Rio de Janeiro - Brazil). I don´t know why but I arrived four hours before the show and had to wait. I decided to have garlic pizza with a catupiry cheese filled boarder and to watch a documentary about dub called "Dub Echoes" produced by Bruno Natal. It was amazing how the fans were calmly seated down listening to a two hour documentary before the show. Matisyahu definitly attracts a distinguished audience.

“Dub Echoes is a documentary that traces the origins of the Jamaican dub music and it’s influence on the development of hip hop and electronic music.The film shows how the Jamaican invention called dub ended up influencing much of the music we hear today, from electronic music to hip-hop, transforming the studio in a musical instrument and giving way to all of sonic experiments.”

“Dub Echoes” was produced by a Brazilian crew in Kingston (Jamaica), London (UK), NY, Washington, LA (US), Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo (Brazil). It was appointed as the best dub documentary ever. It is definitly worth watching.

Some of the greatest dub music references given in the documentary are:

2MANYDJS, ABA SHANTI-I, ADAM FREELAND, AUDIO BULLYS, BASEMENT JAXX, BEAT JUNKIES, BILL LASWELL, BLACK ALIEN, BULLWACKIE, BUNNY LEE, CONGO NATTY, DAVID KATZ, DENNIS BOVELL, DJ SPOOKY, DON LETTS, DR. DAS, DREADZONE, DUB PISTOLS, G-CORP, GLYN BUSH, GUSSIE CLARKE, HOWIE B, KING JAMMY, KODE 9, LEE “SCRATCH” PERRY, LTJ BUKEM, MAD PROFESSOR, MARCELO YUKA, MARIO CALDATO JR., MUTABARUKA, NAÇÃO ZUMBI, PETER KRUDER, ROOTS MANUVA, SLY & ROBBIE, STEVE BARROW, SWITCH, THIEVERY CORPORATION, U-ROY, VICTOR “TICKLAH” AXELROD & ZION TRAIN.

Watch "Dub Echoes" trailer here and also watch Bruno Natal´s portunol (portuguese + spanish) interview for the website El Parlante Amarillo here!

Havaianas Soul Collection by Fashion Culumnist Daniela Lanna

              
Havaianas, one of the most important Brazilian footwear brand worldly known for its flip flops will soon take a new step by releasing its new tenis and sandals collection named “Havaianas Soul Collection”. The new designs should preserve the same conception of irreverence, happiness and freedom of the flip flops.

The “Havaianas Soul Collection” was presented at the most recently edition of BREAD AND BUTTER, biggest streetwear fair, that took place in Berlim last January.


The idea is to create an alternative offer to some markets that, because of the weather conditions, are not used to consume flip flops, the best seller of Havaianas brand. The “Havaianas Soul Collection” line of tenis shoes and sandals will be launched firstly in European market and at the flagship store in São Paulo. The prices will vary between 28 and 55 euros.

As you can see below, each sample comes with a miniature souvenir of the flip flop that made Havaianas brand known all over the world. Enjoy it!

* This post was written by our Fashion Columnist Daniela Lanna.

Yoko Furusho - Ilustration

I love Japanese artists. They are always so tender and subtle. Here is Yoko, an "Tokyo" illustrator based in NY.

Yoko also has shoes with her designs:

Seth Godin

The marketing guru, Seth Godin, posted in his blog (04-04-2010) a little insight about artists. Here you go:

"The best thing to say to an artist of any kind might be, "someday, people will think what you did is really important." If it's popular with everyone right away, it might not be art, it might just be good marketing. But if it earns attention and respect over time, if it wins over the skeptical, then you've really created something."

Another post that I find interesting is about your chances to succeed and where should be our efforts and hopes. I personally believe that happiness should be in the path itself, not in achieving the goal. The goal should be a mere detail.
 
"One in a million

The chances of a high school student eventually becoming first violin for the Boston Philharmonic: one in a million. The chances of a high school student eventually playing basketball in the NBA? About the same.
In fact, the chances of someone growing up and getting a job precisely like yours, whatever it is, are similarly slim. (Head of development at an ad agency, director of admissions for a great college... you get the idea). Every good gig is a long shot, but in the end, a lot of talented people get good gigs. The odds of being happy and productive and well compensated aren't one in a million at all, because there are many good gigs down the road. The odds are only slim if you pick precisely one job.

Here's the lesson: the ardent or insane pursuit of a particular goal is a good idea if the steps you take along the way also prep you for other outcomes, each almost as good (or better). If pushing through the Dip and bending the market to your will and shipping on time and doing important and scary work are all things you need to develop along the way, then it doesn't really matter so much if you don't make the goal you set out to reach.

On the other hand, if you live a life of privation and spend serious time and money on a dead end path with only one outcome, you've described a path likely to leave you broken and bitter. Does spending your teenage years (and your twenties) in a room practicing the violin teach you anything about being a violin teacher or a concert promoter or some other job associated with music? If your happiness depends on your draft pick or a single audition, that's giving way too much power to someone else."

Book: Psychology of Intelligence Analysis

Here is a great reading tip: Psychology of Intelligence Analysis by Richards J. Heuer from Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from the United States. The book is divided into 3 parts: our mental machinery, tools for thinking and cognitive biases.
And what the heck does this have to do with art? Art is an expression and you can only express something you understand in some level. Learn how to read yourself and others and understand the minds are necessary for artists, if not for anyone.
Download it here and enjoy!

Rodolpho Parigi - Brazilian Painter

The Group 2000&8 was appointed by managize Veja as the promissing artists in the city of Sao Paulo (Brazil) what concerns painting, sculpture and collage. Ana Elisa Egreja, Bruno Dunley, Marcos Brias, Marina Rheingentz, Regina Parra, Renata de Bonis, Rodolpho Parigi and Rodrigo Bivar are those eight artists.

One painter that particularly called my attention was Rodolpho Parigi. He decided to become a painter with 25 years old during a sabbatic trip to Spain where he cried for 7 hours straight in front of a Rubens painting. Back to Brazil, he got a scholarship at FAAP, a prestigous university in Sao Paulo and, from that moment on, he has dedicated each minute to painting. In 2009, he was selected for Cité of Arts, an artistic residency in Paris.

Rodolpho is now 31 years old, he lives at Aclimacao neighborhood with his family, his mom is a needlewoman, his paintings range from 5.000 to 20.000 reais, he is loaded of painting requests and life is good!

Diego Stocco

In a rainy day, the Italian sound designer and composer Diego Stocco was moving some sandbags out of his backyard when he noticed the interesting sound that they made. That's when it all started: music from sand. Diego "creates eclectic musical experiences with custom built instruments and experimental recording techniques".

You can watch online how he does that in his own website or at Vimeo!

Think London

Think London's Business Intelligence Dashboard is a data website that provides graphic information for you to analyse business opportunities in London. One of the sectors is the Creative Industry with topics like creative talent, film & broadcasting, computer games, architecture & design and advertising. In the cinema & broadcasting sector you can gather information such as:

• $37 bin was spent in screen industries (TV, film and commercials & corporate video);
• 71,500 people work in TV, film and commercials in London;
• London has an average of 14,350 shooting days per year;
• 73% of all post-production activity in UK is based in London;
• UK is the largest TV market in the world with a $10.4 billions, USA is the first with $66.6 billions and Japan with $17.7 billions (*2008).

You have to subscribe to the website in order to access these information. They are all organized in dashboards.

Jane Aldridge by Columnist Daniela Lanna

                       Her name is Jane Aldridge. Her passion, shoes!

Since 2007, when she was only 15 years old, Jane Aldridge started her blog Sea of Shoes where she shares her passion for shoes and fashion. It feels like she is inviting us to discover all the amazing clothes, shoes and accessories she keeps in her fancy wardrobe. Her fashion productions manage to be modest and glamorous at the same time. If her blog was a book, it sure would be a best-seller. But more than that, for being a blog it can inspire us with refreshing news and daily updates of her unique style. It is needless to say that her blog turned out to be a hit in the fashion world. Her work is so amazing that she signed an exclusive line of shoes for Urban Outfitters!!!

                             

Jane Aldridge is definitely adored and admired by fashion lovers and, due to her universal taste that transcends age and time, she is appointed by Vogue, New York Time and others medias as the “It girl” of the moment. If we can learn a tip from Jane is, as she says, “always wear knockout shoes”! I encourage you to visit Jane’s blog and I bet you will fall in love with this charming young girl!!! Have fun and let me know if you liked it!!!

To know more about Jane read her interview to Look Book!


* This post was written by our Fashion Columnist Daniela Lanna.

Tips for becoming an artist

Here are some tips to become a great artist:

1. Get to know yourself;
2. Be honest with yourself;
3. Become a sensitive observer;
4. Identify your artistic weaknesses and strengths;
5. Study with masters;
6. Be always hungry for information;
7. Read great literature everyday and build a reference library;
8. Explore different mediums;
9. Watch TV and spend time on the internet wisely and selectively (less is more);
10. Exercise your body and spend time in nature every week;
11. Develop an original style and find your own language;
12. Ask for help and critiques from people you admire;
13. Learn to accept failure as a positive thing (No is an enriching path to Yes);
14. Develop your career plan;
15. Set deadlines and goals for your projects;
16. Make a deal with your spouse or partner or family to give you 5 years to focus 100% on your art. (read “The Agony And The Ecstasy” by Irving Stone);
17. Work at least 4 hours daily;
18. Have a stunning online gallery of your work in your language and in English;
19. Attend a major art event every week, speak with at least 10 people, and give each one of them your business card with your website address;
20. Create your own art event (workshop, lecture, happy hour, art walk, exhibition, performance, etc);
21. Answer every request for information, every email, every response to your mailouts, every phonecall to you;
22. Have a stunning online gallery of your work;
23. Learn the value of inspired persistence;
24. Learn the specifics about your segment. Also, you should have at least a basic knowledge of finance, management, and marketing. (reference: "The World’s Wealthy Artists Are Business People"  by Daniel Tardent);
25. Get over your fears. They do nothing, ignore them by trying;
26. Practise, practise, practise;
27. Laugh;
28. Don't masturbate after sex. Enjoy when you make art and allow people to have pleasure with your art afterwards. Don't go praising your own art and elevating it. Let it to others. Be a vouyer;
29. Have a "BIC IN THE ASS" posture. Imagine a pen BIC entering your asshole, instinctively, all parts of your body will get erected and connected. That`s a "ready for anything" or a work posture for actors;
30. Commit;
31. Never surrender!

Do you have anything else to add to this list? Send me your tip and I will add to it!

* This post was based on the "18 tips to be the great artist of your dreams" by Daniel at The Art Marketing Secrets.

We feel fine - Jonathan Harris

            
Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar designed "We feel fine" to explore and explain the human feelings from a large number of weblogs. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds, the system records the sentence up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed (e.g. sad, happy, depressed, etc.). A really interesting thing is that further information sucha as age, gender, weather, and geographical location of the author can also be extracted.

We Feel Fine is a live almanaque of human feelings structured in six formal movements titled: Madness, Murmurs, Montage, Mobs, Metrics, and Mounds.

                                 Metrics:

                                 Murmurs:

Try it here!

Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray & Love

One of my finnest resources to scape the crazy talks of my co-workers is to listen to online videos. For that matter, I love TED! TED is an online conference site that bring together people from three worlds: technology, entertainment and design. One speech that I liked a lot was Elizabeth´s. The author of Eat, Pray and Love talks about the artist X geniuses concept and shares a different way to think about creative genius.

I particularly like the passage that begins at the 10th minute and 12th second. She quotes one fine 90-year-old poet, Ruth Stone, about criativity and inspiration.

Check the movie trailler for Eat, Pray and Love with Julia Roberts!

Joshua Allen Harris and his Air Bear

Amazing urban art on the streets of New York has provoked a joyous reaction for the passing foot traffic. Joshua Allen Harris creates inflatable animals by tying plastic shopping bags to the subway grates. When a train passes, they come to life. Its just lovely to walk among plastic dogs, bears and huge monsters. Check it out here! 

              

Michael Kaiser

I am crazy about finding new art references from all over the world in the internet, but I find it really challenging to find art management study references. Here in Brazil we dont have many art business courses or books. So I crave anything. If you know any link, e-book, web-site you think is good, please, e-mail me!

Here is a really insightful lecture by Michael Kaiser hosted by MIT Sloan. Michael Kaiser is the president of The Kennedy Center in Washington DC (USA). Known as the "the turnaround king" for his work at such arts institutions as the Kansas City Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre and the Royal Opera House, Kaiser has earned international renown for his expertise in arts management.

I loved his last book "The Art of the Turnaround: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Arts Organizations" as it "....presents a ten-step . . . program to save or revive struggling arts organizations. The author's program is practical, and he follows it with a series of case studies in which he works his magic over and over again. He offers interesting anecdotes, and the portrayal of the logistics of traveling shows deserves particular mention . . ." -- Choice. You will find yourself writting down notes and ideas to use in your own company!

His main tips for an art organization turnaround are:

1. Someone must lead;
2. The leader must have a plan (and the organization a clear mission);
3. You cannot save your way to health ("you cannot save an art organization by saving money");
4. Focus on today and tomorrow, not yesterday;
5. Extend your programming planning calendar;
6. Marketing is more than brochures and ads;
7. There must be only one spokesman and the message must be positive;
8. Fund-raising must focus on the larger donor, but don't aim too high;
9. The board must allow itslef to be restructured;
10. The organization must have the discipline to follow each of these rules.

The truth is that turnarounds are not a miracle, but the determined implementation of a coordinated planning and the "lack of sleep".

Enjoy and let me know your opinion!

                                        

Gaping Void

Recently, I´ve came across a great cartoonist, Hugh MacLeod. He has the ability to take the most complex subjects: Emotions, Business Challenges, Angst, Love, and reduce these feelings into a few words and some scribbles.

You can check his gallery online or purchase his work. Also, you can receive a daily cartoon in your inbox if you subscribe to his site!

Antoinette-Fleur

Antoinette-Fleur is a great French sensation newadays what concerns fashion + art. She has a wonderful hand for subtle and delightful body lines. She also does portraits of some famous boys for Gala Megazine: Robert Pattinson, Tom Burton and Johnny Deep.

Innovative Film And Art Animations From The Past 10 Years

From the big film screen to the small computer screen, the past ten years have seen a boom in animation- both in the film world and the fine art world, (not to mention the DIY craft world). While we know the list could go on, check out the slideshow below for a compilation of few of our favorite, innovative animations from the past 10 years. What are some of your favorite animations?

Don Hertzfeldt is the creator of many short animated films, including Rejected, nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2000. You may recognize some lines from these shorts, as they've gained a cult following over the years. Short, quirky, and hilarious, these shorts definitely paved the way for the many youtube and pop culture animations.

The Triplets of Belleville (2003), directed by Sylvain Chomet, is one of our favorite animations of the decade. This nearly silent film manages to paint a touching and unique story without the use of much dialogue; the story is told through pantomime and song. Talk about innovation. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards — Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song for "Belleville Rendez-vous". It was also screened out of competition (hors concours) at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.

South African artist Robin Rhode works predominantly with everyday materials: charcoal, chalk and paint, creating performances in which he interacts with the objects he creates. Imagine a chalk drawing of a basket ball court that he then animates, photographing his own body in action on this two dimensional court. Rhode combines traditional visuals, performance, video and photography. One part street artist, one part animator, Rhode is definitely an innovator.

Stop motion-animated short film, Madame Tutli Putli, (2007) took Montreal filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski 5 years to make. And the hard work shows. Portrait artist Jason Walker created the technique of adding composited human eyes to the stop motion puppets, allowing the emotions in this short film to come to life. To make their short, the filmmakers traveled along Lake Superior, Canada, living on the train for two weeks collecting stories for inspiration. In 2007 Madame Tutli Putli was nominated in for an Academy Award for best stop motion-animated short film.

It's not often that documentary styles are combined with animation for feature length film; Israeli film director, Ari Folman's takes this challenge with his notableWaltz with Bashir (2008). For this film, Folman filmed standard interviews, and mixed them with his own surreal visions and dreams of his experiences in the Lebanon War as a 19 year old soldier. The result is a deep exploration of the aftermath of war.

With her recent work at Art Basel Miami and the Venice Biennial, Swedish video artist, Nathalie Djurberg, shows that her stop motion claymations are not as innocent as they seem, but rather, studies in human behavior, exploring nightmares, fears, and desires, uncensored. Her short films are fantastical and dark; her use of claymation adds irony to her graphic and erotic films.