Mister Freedom‘s friends hall of fame has a polaroid of Cotton Duck and I from our trip to his studio in 2007.
Jeanne-Claude, one half of the famed duo, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, passed away today at the age of 74. Notable works include The Umbrellas, from Japan to the United States, in 1984:
Various draping installation pieces such as the Reichstag in Germany and Surrounding Islands off the coast of Miami:
And then there was the Running Fence, made entirely of fabric, that ran through Sonoma and Marin counties, in California, directly into the coast:
There’s also a great video documenting the controversy that surrounded their efforts to build a fabric fence across various farmlands and properties in the Sonoma and Marin county.
Their most recent work might have had the largest audience to date. It was The Gates, a temporal art installation of over 7,000 gates spanning 23 miles of Central Park.
The Gates was an experience I was fortunate enough to experience while attending New York University in 2005. I remember the hoopla from the surrounding project, the initial unveilings of saffron fabric (in dedication to Jeanne-Claude’s saffron colored hair) from each gate in the park, and the late night sledding through the gates during the first snowfall of the winter. A 21 year endeavor, conceived in 1979, the $21 million project was said to have brought in $254 million in additional revenue from tourists who came from around the world to witness the temporal art installation.
Update: Upcoming installations include Over The River, a 5.9 mile stretch of fabric that is meant to be viewed from below while the movement of the material is affected by the weather, light, and vegetation, and The Mastaba, a massive structure made of 710,000 shiny oil barrels similar to the color of The Gates.
(images via google images and christojeanneclaude.net)
“Well, I have worked with a lot of designers in my day and I am of the opinion that if you are confident in your abilities to meet my expectations then being paid at the end would be fine with you. Ultimately you are paid for the end result, right? I shouldn’t have to pay you for ‘making the effort’.”
Via @mlproject.
Here’s a funny comic detailing 15 things worth knowing about coffee. The last tidbits about adenosine is new to me, and frankly something I probably should know about before hopping up on caffeine.
Timmy does it again. By one of the slimmest margins in the history of the award, Tim Lincecum nabs his second consecutive Cy Young Award.
Activitist Feng Zhenghu has been living out of Narita International Airport in Japan after being refused reentry to his homeland in China. The article says it’s been 17 days. If my one night stint at Newark was any indication, this man is a trooper for going for as long as he has in an airport.
When Self Edge first opened in 2007, I remember getting three items: Flat Head 3001′s, a Flat Head houndstooth shirt, and a Flat Head black chambray. In 2008, Self Edge had a display featuring my senior thesis at NYU; the display had mannequins wearing some of my clothes, including the black chambray shirt. After staying on display for a year, the clothing became completely sun bleached from the front, and here are the results.
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One of the more interesting parts that came from this sun bleaching is the collar, pockets, and snaps; opening them reveals a stark contrast from the original color of the chambray.
Dual-tone arcuates