the Art of Dying

Think about death much?

Think about your own, like maybe
what your coffin might look like?

Most people are a little squeamish about such
things, but in Poland there are people doing
something about it!

"Lindner is one of the leading coffin producer
in Europe. The Lindner Calendar has been very popular for many years.
Is it controversial? It certainly is.
Do ordinary coffins match to naked girls?
No, but Lindner coffins definitely do –
quality, beautiful ornaments, modern design."

The Calendar 2013 can be ordered on this website.
The whole income from the calendar's sale is given
to the charity.
The coffin producer is the patron of art
of the „Ptaszarnia” project made by
the Community Center in Wągrowiec.

The calendar can be ordered by filling the form.




!

MK Brown... genius of funny

a long time ago, there was a very funny magazine called the National Lampoon. don't confuse it
with what has been done under that brand for
the last twenty-odd years - this was a very funny
bunch of people.


one of the things that made it so funny
was the comics. NatLamp, as we used to
call it, was the deep end of comic art.

Picking up on the underground heritage
of Mr. Natural, the Furry Freak Brothers
and others, NatLamp was where some
of most hardcore, original men and women
hit it every month...

via

in with Shary Flenniken, Gahan Wilson, rodriguez
and other stars, in June of 1972 in the issue
with the big Nixon nose appeared
a new name- MK Brown.

even in a context of extreme orginality,
MK Brown was not and is not like the others.

MK Brown didn't do the cheap laughs
or the easy joke. There was no ca-ca
or poo-poo on display.
Sometimes i wouldn't even laugh when
i first read them. i'd just go "hmmmm....",
but i'd find myself returning to them,
sometimes to laugh, sometimes just for
the quality of the language and singular beauty
of her illustrations.

and then there's this one... which is still
one of my favourite comics of all time.

here's a couple more...

if she was a waffle, i'd spring for the maple syrup.
if she was for breakfast, i'd get up on time.
if i'd never heard of her, i'd check her out pronto!



you can find a whole bunch of her work here
- highly recommended!


and more here!








*

the Fabulous 50s

for anybody who lived through them,
the 50s were not particularly fabulous.

but in retrospect, there does seem to be
a consensus that they looked fabulous.

it also seems to me that, looking back
from this brave new post-feminist millennium,
that they eroticized absolutely everything
around them...

lamps are sexy?
little banjos are kind of hot?

In-Sink-erators are a turn-on?

Barbasol? Gautier??

i have been to exactly one martini party in my life,
where i learned that martinis were actually the acid of the 50s...

so the Dali-esque surreality of the these next two
makes its' own sense of that time and that place...

i guess the 50s were "differently fabulous".





you can find awesome amounts
of this kind of fabulous
at this amazing site!



.










*

10 Things I Really Need

i waste acres of lifetime bumbling down all kinds of off ramps along the information highway of late, and finding myself in an odd place vis-a-vis my citizenship in our consumer society.

i come across things that i want but can't buy.
it's not my cash flow, which is the traditional obstacle between my desires and i, it's Time itself.

i want a case of ATOMIC EXTRA SELECTED,
and i want to light them all at once.

i want the real 7 UP.

i want toothpaste that makes me
want to brush my teeth like 10 times a day!

no more holy socks?
yes!
the wicked cool design is a great bonus.

a self-slicing pig?
oh hell yes.

and yes - a few cartons of Caskets, please.

which i will share with other smokers,
because i can show off my excellent new holder.

i want to go out tonight in my Be-Bop glasses.

but if we're talking true deep and abiding need,
a Normalizer is probably the thing.

but go ahead- look me in the eye
and tell me an Exploding Hand Grenade
is not a buck-o-fun...

and just to turn it up to 11,
i want to wear my Be-bop glasses and my unholy socks and my smokes and have a night out at the Magic Bar.








*

*

When the Going Gets Weird...

it can sometimes look like this...

if you like this like i do,
you will love it here!





*

Russian Beauty

a million years ago, when i was a graphic designer, i fell in love with the work of the Constructivist designers who worked in Russia when the revolution was young.

Lissitsky. Rodchenko. Popova.

These were my trilogy- the ones i studied til my eyes bled. there were certainly others, but the work of these three changed my way of seeing
the word. the image. colour. composition.

these three just seemed to shit gold. working
in an impoverished and largely illiterate country, they created a visual language that has influenced designers ever since.

they seemed to do everything- photography, typography, books, theatre sets, costumes, department store ads and of course, posters.

here are a few...

http://russianconstructivists.blogspot.ca/p/el-lissitzky.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/feb/10/rodchenko-popova-tate