Design Puzzles
(From Dynamist Blog) The puzzlement that occurs when you run into objects and processes that seem, in obvious ways, to be badly designed is an especially clear example of the paradox of entrepreneurial opportunity.”

Patient as Job? You Must Be Kidding!
Finally. I hate it when people say “as patient as Job.” Oh? You think Job was patient? Why don’t you try actually reading that sometime? This writer read it and realized that he “apparently developed a gross misconception about what it was.”

McDonald’s to serve changing tastes in coffee
“Leonor Gavina-Valls’s father began selling dark roast coffee to Vietnamese and Armenian immigrants in the late 1960s, seeing a niche market for strong coffee when weaker brands ruled the United States.”

Chipping In
“Snack maker Kettle Foods has devised increasingly creative ways to listen to its passionate fans–and then act on their opinions. The evolution of that strategy provides a road map for companies interested in tapping into the buzz about customer centricity without coming off as phony.”

Spotting the Next Hoodie
In today’s WSJ Style section, a great piece about trend spotters with the Worth Global Style Network and Doneger Group, with photos and video online (subscription req).

Bare-Knuckle Enforcement for Wal-Mart’s Rules
A fascinating look into Wal-Mart’s rapid-response team. One highlight out of many: “Investigators documented dozens of improper purchases that included fiber supplements and doughnuts..” That’s therapist fodder right there. And this board member’s diet needs some major work. Trying to compensate for a diet of doughnuts and beer with fiber supplements? I bet he has scurvy.

Oh, and maybe the article also mentions Roehm and Womack, who should take it on the road as guest stars in Smucker’s Stars on Ice. Hey, look at that: Champions on Ice at the United Center in May. Hmm. But I digress.

Keeping graverobbers out:

A departure from my usual fixation on red doors:

And a stained glass window, to keep the squirrels out:

“More and more [Edward Weston] wanted nothing–no tone, no tactility of surface, not even the impress of himself–between him and the sharp forms and textures of reality. But reality for him was not the ordinary peeling of a picture from an object. He came to realize that what moved him most was form–the unseen forms hidden in the commonplace, forms of force, growth, tension, erosion. He found them in smoke stacks, in rocks and faces, in shells and vegetables; he saw them in a cloud, a hill, a naked body, a wave, a tree. “How little subject matter counts!” he wrote. A nude back like a pear, a cypress root like a livid flame, feathers in the wing of a dead pelican seen as barbs of light in a dark sky, a stone like lace–he discovered them with amazement.”

Nancy Newhall, “Controversy and the Creative Concepts.” Aperture no.2, 1953

A Rail System (and Patience) Are Stretched Thin in Chicago
“In the meantime, though, riders are bracing for more than two and a half years of track closings that could reduce the capacity of already packed trains by as much as 40 percent at peak travel times.”

Tall buildings and cold drinks
“Monday through Friday, CAF offers two downtown excursions, one at lunchtime and one at happy hour, specifically for people who live and work in the area.” (Why doesn’t this article have a link to the CAF, especially in the little sidebar? How f***ing hard is that?)

Have camera, will travel
In Chicago, work by many artists who have gone ‘Far From Home’

“Photographers photograph what they see, and they see what interests them — and ignore what doesn’t. Penn’s Peru is all about people, Siskind’s all about walls. There’s nary an Ande to be seen. Those choices reflect the thrust of each man’s work: Penn the superlative portraitist, Siskind the master abstractionist of structural exteriors.”

The Surrealist comeback in design
“What’s wrong with grabbing a lobster’s tentacles when you pick up the telephone?”

Why Do We Sleep?
“Stickgold is one of the foremost sleep researchers in the country and has long argued that sleep’s crucial function is to boost memory and learning. His theory is that during sleep, the brain evaluates recently learned information and decides what to do with it.”

Why Nerds are Unpopular
“The mediocrity of American public schools has worse consequences than just making kids unhappy for six years. It breeds a rebelliousness that actively drives kids away from the things they’re supposed to be learning.”

Brain theatre
Continuing our occasional series on illustrators, Joanna Carey marvels at the skill and inventiveness of Alexis Deacon.

“A mysterious clockwork girl drifts in and out of view, there are men with bird faces, snippets of story, and snatches of conversation - “How could you understand? You’re just a crocodile.” There’s a rat with a briefcase and a half-finished, slightly sinister cartoon strip that shows the girl with bobbed hair on her way down to the cellar to fetch an egg”

And finally, via Pop Candy, Silver Spoons is coming to DVD in June. Maybe one day I’ll be able to simultaneously put to use three things I know that are completely useless to me: the Silver Spoons theme song (and every other 80s theme song I know), the tango (and every other ballroom dance I know) and, say, the details surrounding Catesby’s conspiracy. To name three out of many. My hope is to use those things in the same hour in one day, perhaps at a wedding.

Tethered on Michigan:

I’ve forgotten everything I used to know about tying knots…

The University Club in a fog scrim:

:

“I’m not terribly taken with the idea of being categorized as an Alabama artist or a Southern artist. I’m an artist. My subject matter tends to come out of what I know best, and that I feel most strongly about, which is a regional thing.”
–William Christenberry

William Christenberry resembles both Jimmy Carter and Mr. Rogers, as befits the reedy, mild-mannered artist who loves vernacular Southern architecture. He spoke at the Art Institute on March 15 to a large crowd in Fullerton Hall and showed slides of his photographs, paintings, found-object groupings, sculptures and tableaux. His appearance corresponded with the current photographic exhibit, When Color Was New, through April 29.

The man with the linebacker physique and Mike Tyson voice who introduced Christenberry said that the artist received his BFA and MFA from the University of Alabama in the 1950s. Christenberry was trained as a painter, and photography served as a tool for his favored medium. In 1944, Christenberry began taking color photos of vernacular Southern architecture and graveyards with a bakelite Brownie camera. Walker Evans was the first person to encourage him to take the Brownie snapshots seriously.

In 1977, Christenberry’s friends (Friedlander, Eggleston, Evans) encouraged him to get a better camera. One of them said he would really like to see what Christenberry could do with a large-format camera, a 4-by-5 or preferably an 8-by-10, and so the summer of 1977 was the beginning of Christenberry’s activity with the new camera, though he kept using the Brownie. Quite a few of his pictures are Brownie snapshots — tiny, gem-like squares that document the weight of time on the old South. During the brief Q&A, a man in the audience asked him if you could change the aperture on the Brownie. An amused Christenberry replied, “No, you just hold it steady.”*

Since the early 1960s, Christenberry has returned every year to Alabama to take pictures of the same subjects — the Green Warehouse, The Klub, Sprott Church, The Bar-B-Q Inn, the red brick building. You can hear him tell the stories around these series, and the story of the one-armed man that he told during the talk, on that NPR link.

The photo series that most dramatically shows the passing of time is High Kudzu–near Akron, Alabama. The photographs progress from a small house with vines going up a front post, to the house covered in kudzu to such a proliferation of kudzu that no trace of the house remained (which I find particularly disturbing after having read The Ruins). Christenberry said that kudzu was brought into the U.S. to prevent soil erosion and to feed livestock, and it grows a foot and a half in 24 hours.

My favorite Christenberry photo is Corn Sign with Storm Cloud, near Greensboro, Alabama, 1977 (maybe because I husked a lot of corn as a child). Christenberry said he went back to Tuscaloosa in the 1970s and was driving around with his father when he noticed a big corn sign. A thunderstorm was coming, but he wanted a picture of “that corn sign,” which was 8 1/2 feet high. The sign “hangs prominently” (how can it not?) in his studio in Washington, D.C.

Christenberry also showed a selection of balsawood sculptures that he modeled after a number of his photographic subjects, including Night Spot and Coyley’s Service Station. The latter gained more fame with the Absolut ad, Absolut Christenberry. After talking with Absolut, the artist had glued a scaled-down copy of an Absolut bottle and glued it on the front door of the model. The brand-savvy company was ecstatic with this detail. Coyley, the owner of the service station, called Christenberry some time later and said “I understand you did a model of my father’s country store.” He wanted his own model of it. Christenberry told him that they were pretty expensive, but Coyley insisted on a price. The reluctant Christenberry finally said that the models went for $25,000-$35,000. Coyley wished him a good day and Christenberry didn’t hear from him again.

Passing Time: The Art of William Christenberry, an exhibit that Christenberry curated himself, is at the Smithsonian American Art Museum through July 8, 2007. He has a new Aperture book, William Christenberry. The Art Institute is having an exhibit overview on April 13 at noon.

As a Dave Brubeck fan, Christenberry will probably go see the new Clint Eastwood-produced Dave Brubeck documentary.

*”Some [Brownie cameras], however, came with a feature that allowed a smaller lens opening to be used, on days with brighter sunshine and so forth. This was engaged by yet another lever located at the top center of the camera’s front panel which could be pulled up or pushed down for smaller or larger aperture, respectively.”

Rubber baron
A look into David Lynch’s artistic paths and a review of “The Air is On Fire,” a retrospective of his paintings, drawings, sculptures, film shorts and installations at the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris.

The author of “The End of Physics” reviews two books on string theory
“As for string theory, it’s likely to unravel only when its practitioners begin to get bored with their lack of progress. Like the old Soviet Union, it will have to collapse from within. The publication of these two books is a hopeful sign that theoretical physics may have entered its Gorbachev ­era.”

Speaking of Baudrillard and the hyperreal, here is another panicked search for authenticity (link below). Baudrillard might have said that the Irish pub simulations are an effort to recapture something that never was in the first place, that there is no underlying real and hyperreality has replaced reality. According to the article, all of the genuine pub signs have been stripped and Ireland might start importing Irish pub bits from China. I think that as long as there is, say, a first- or second-generation Irish bartender, then even an IPCo pub has a saving grace. But the pub could just as easily hire an actor to play that role, and most Americans who don’t have an Irish family wouldn’t care or know the difference. This reminds me of the Irish actress (with a heavy accent) who was told she was “too Irish” to be in an Irish Spring commercial. It also reminds me of those odd American diner simulations you see in places such as Rome and Euro Disney.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY — Irish pub giving you deja vu?
“That is the problem with the so-called Irish pub. You have all these bits of culture hanging free in this context where they make no sense at all.” But those bits hang together fine, at least for an American audience: A just-released pocket guide to “America’s Top Irish Pubs” by Zagat includes some IPCo pubs, like Fado Irish Pub in Chicago - ranked No. 7 in the nation by the survey.

Trump Tower’s 5 coolest features
“A floor above, ironworker Jay Misso uses a motorized winch to pull the panels up and set them in place while listening to instructions from the workers below via a two-way radio. Once a panel is in place, ironworker Joshua Nieves secures it with a hydraulic bolt gun.”

The Trump article reminded me of an NPR story about photographs of ironworkers:

Garcetti Photos Capture Disney Hall, Ironworkers
“These people [ironworkers] are fiercely independent, they are strong, they are smart, they work incredibly hard. Every one of them, if they are fortunate enough to retire as an iron worker, will walk away with injuries probably more severe than any professional football player.”

The Talking Cure
“In my imagination, doctors formed a telepathically connected global fraternity that could smell fear—like a superrich, omnipotent swarm of bees—and that lived exclusively to shame anyone who dared resist its awesome power.”

Creature comforts
McHugh Construction’s corporate offices blur the lines between home and workplace

The Fairmont Hotel reflected in the funhouse mirror of Two Prudential Plaza:

A hand-painted tile on a brick building across from Loyola Law School:

And just down the street from Loyola Law School:

Pensive smoking lady:

According to recent studies, Important Bald Man is hardly ever at work. The obvious comparison is when Andy Gibb started to miss tapings of Solid Gold and Pirates of Penzance (not that I’m implying anything untoward about Important Bald Man, mind you).

Possible reasons for his continuing absence:

• Fugue state and/or amnesia
• Slipped his mind
• He is in his office, but completely camouflaged, like the peacock flounder

If you overhear someone talking passionately about the following matters, it may be Important Bald Man:

• Patti LaBelle’s night sweats
• That old merger battle between Bendix Corp. and Martin Marietta Corp. back in 1982
• The cold, heartless way that MGM treated Judy Garland

If you see someone doing any of these things, it may be Important Bald Man:

• Playing the fujara
• Walking in the nightly procession of the Esala Perahera in honor of the Sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha. In Chicago. By himself. Note any burning of coconuts.
• Indulging his inborn gift for mailroomery

Important Bald Man likes the following foods and beverages. You may be able to lure him back to his office with any one of them, but certainly all three:

• Fig pancakes
• A nice continental ham
• Fresca

So, if you happen to see someone in your mailroom who is playing the fujara and drinking from a can of Fresca, and if this person is bald, and looks like he may be important, please ask him why he is hardly ever in his office anymore. If he asks for your credentials, just tell him that you’re Constantine von Hoffman.

Out of Season: Photographs of the Chicago Summer

On display at the City Gallery until May 6, 2007, this exhibit features photographers from the past and the present. The historic work is from the 1950s, and the other two Chicago photographers are presenting more recent images of the Chicago summer.

Through May 6. M-Sat, 10 am - 6:30 pm; Sunday, 10 am - 5 pm
City Gallery, 806 N. Michigan

Marionette Macbeth

(Liked Being John Malkovich?) Italy’s world-renowned marionette company, founded in 1835, Compagnia Carlo Colla e Figli, presents an abridged version of Shakespeare’s tragic tale with a full cast of three-foot-tall marionettes—designed and manipulated by master Italian craftsmen.

March 13 - March 25, 2007
Chicago Shakespeare’s Courtyard Theater
$35.00 - $45.00 full price admission.

Artist Talk: William Christenberry at the Art Institute

Presented in conjunction with the “When Color Was New” photography exhibit, on view until April 29.

“William Christenberry is internationally recognized for his role in conceptualizing color photography as an art form with his evocative yet spare portrayals of signs, storefronts, and churches in his home county of Hale, Alabama.”

Thursday, March 15, 6-7 pm, free with admission
Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute

MCA: People Who Shape our World: Vik Muniz

“Vik Muniz was born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1961, and has lived and worked in New York City since the mid-1980s. He began his career as a sculptor, eventually turning primarily to photography.”

Tuesday, March 20, 6:30 pm, free admission
Museum of Contemporary Art

Vik Muniz, from David Byrne’s Journal: “Vik had a mini-retrospective there as well — and though I’m pretty familiar with his stuff, it was good to see some pieces again or see others not simply through the images of them reproduced in books. Shrunken to book size, some of the disjunctions between seeing the illusion of an image and at the same time realizing that image is made of wire, pasta or toys gets lost. But then, aren’t all reproduced images made of some smaller things — ink dots, photo chemical grain, pixels? His new book has a lot of his writing in it, which is a nice surprise. He’s a wonderful and generous writer who uses entertaining and amusing anecdotes as metaphors for serious ideas.”

Lecture: The Hardy House

Mark Hertzberg gives a lunchtime talk on Racine’s Wright-designed Hardy House. Free and open to the public.

March 21, 12—1:15pm
The John Buck Company Lecture Hall Gallery, 224 South Michigan Ave.

Jonathan Coulton with Paul and Storm

“Isn’t it enough to know that I ruined a pony making a gift for you?“

Friday, May 18, 8:00 pm
Schuba’s Tavern and Bar

33rd annual Wright Plus benefit housewalk

(from Apartment Therapy Chicago)

Saturday, May 19, all day