The Adventure School » Artventure

This week’s post is going to be a very short post. It’s the World Cup, and the Englishman and I have been getting up at ungodly hours to catch the footie at a local pub. As disappointed as we have been with England’s performance, the scandal, play-acting and bratty tantrums have been sufficiently entertaining to keep our attention.

On a more artistic note, I found this incredible video titled “Refait”, a remake of the football World Cup match between France and Germany (Seville, Spain, 1982). Shot by Pied La Biche in Villeurbanne (France), every aspect of the last fifteen minutes of the match has been carefully reconstructed : players, positions, gestures, intensity and European melodrama.

Using split screens and deftly placed B roll, the pitch and the urban environment is forged into one; the sounds of the city are muted by original commentaries and audience reactions.

I am sure that may of you have read about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. If you haven’t, adventurers, this is a pretty big deal.

Unlike my father, whose resume includes Chief Rep. of BP, pig farmer and Water Conservation expert (not necessarily in that order), I am usually unable to make something sound better than it actually is. Neither is Tony Hayward, CEO of BP.

All those photos of frail pelicans mired down in sticky films of oil are making me sad. The two bags of recycling I just sorted will be annihilated by the damage done by this oil spill; I am mad. I am sad, and I am mad. It is a weird state of mind.

However, there are those who are more proactive than me, and are finding increasingly creative ways to express themselves. Like The Heads of State, who have designed a two hundred two colour serigraphs measuring 18″ × 24″, signed and numbered. 50% of the proceeds go to Oceana, the largest organization solely focused on protecting the world’s oceans. Simple and profound, this poster symbolises a terrifying dependence on such a fickle finite resource.

For those of you who are a little more animated (you’ll get the pun in a second) about the issue, MARS! is fitting short animation from Joe Bichard and Jack Cunningham. A clever commentary on how we are pillaging the earth; a fantastic example of how basic geometric shapes are the simplest way to illustrate a message. Maybe BP can take a lesson from these guys, and produce an ‘We’re Sorry sequel’, of what happens to MARS! after all the oil is gone.

The two are often separated in a pseudo attempt to rank one discipline above the other; in my eyes – they are two sides of the aesthetic coin.

So this week’s post, my dear adventurers, is about the lesser trumped side. It is Designventure.

Kathleen Hills is a graduate from the Royal College of Art who has some pretty adventurous design. Her work combines the glory of mid 20th century breakfast tables all over England and the cutting edge glamour of modern design. Imagine delicate blue toile imprinted on futuristic cubed bowls. Imagine a cluster of ceramic teacups swinging daintily from the lights. Hills has imagined it all; her website shows a showstopping line of tableware, kitchenware and lighting.

Now imagine someone picked up all the Scandinavian designers in the world, and put them in a room with all the Japanese designers in the world. Throw in some cookies, some hugs, and a 2B pencil.

Mjölk,owned by Juli Daoust and John Baker, is what you would get, Adventurers. The store is based in Toronto, and sells a gamut of clean, deliciously functional product art, brought to you by some quirky geniuses.

If you drooled over these products as much as I did, their blog, Kitka, is also worth reading.

Karin Jurick works fast. The photographic quality of her work comes from a masterful command of texture and light; she distills a moment onto the canvas by efficiently abstracting shapes and simplifying the composition. Jurick mostly paints scenes of everyday life, but I am captivated by her depictions of scenes in a museum or art gallery. In capturing her subjects in these settings, she modestly comments on the scopic pleasure we gain from voyeurism. Check out her Painting a Day series here.

Alexa Meade takes the concept of ‘seeing is believing’ to the next step. As a mixed media artist, Meade challenges our perception of depth and reality by mimicking the brushwork found on an oil painting using acrylic on walls, objects and people. She realigns the viewer’s line of sight by compressing and skewing a 3D plane into one articulated in 2D. As a young artist of only 23, Meade is already represented by the Irvine Gallery in DC. Definitely someone to watch.

Marina Abramović is one of my long standing idols. As a matriarch of performance art, MoMa is holding a retrospective of her work, which includes a much publicised installation where she sits across from a rotation of strangers. The exhibit, “The Artist is Present” has solicited a series of interesting participants, including a weeping make up artist who has visited at least 15 times, Alan Rickman, Ulay, and her doppelganger. To learn more, there’s a Tumblr dedicated to cataloguing the tears and a Flickr photostream for the stares. Worth it, adventurers. I went through every single photo.

I have been hiding under the covers in pyjamas all weekend waiting for my acceptance/rejection letter from Oxford. I am a hot mess.

In other words, my dear adventurers, I had no adventures this weekend. Instead, I lived vicariously through Unacceptable, the robot, who would do anything to be accepted.

Unacceptable has few morals. He would stoop into the chasms of depravity to seek mere scraps of acceptance. To expedite delivery of a letter, Unacceptable would have no qualms in bribing the postman with baubles and sin.

Unacceptable would call Oxford three times in a row to trick the administrator into telling him the results. To avoid detection, he would use different accents each time.

And eventually, Unacceptable would become so desperate that he’d wile away the rest of the time by drawing pictures of stupid robots in disguise.

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For those of you who can’t relate to Unacceptable, check out this student animation Second Wind by Ian Worrel. I’ve watched it about 50 times. Whilst waiting for that letter.

I hope you had as glorious a weekend as I did. I spent the better part of the morning sunbathing in my garden. The other half, unfortunately, was spent engaging in awkward encounters with the racoon, Algernon, who lives at the bottom of my garden.

After hustling my partner to spend time outdoors (He is English and wilts under direct sunlight), we finally decided on an adventure around Greenlake. This adventure, my dear readers, came in the form of the Green Lake Mini Golf Course.

One of the upsides of being in a relationship with a Statistics PhD is that you rarely have to calculate the tip and tax at the end of the meal. One of the downsides, however, is that they, in their John Nash ways, think of everything in numbers. Engaging in sports of any form thus requires imagination.

In other words, adventurers, you must cheat. For those of you who don’t think in angles and probabilities – here is an illustrated guide to cheating your way to success.

Usually, I am able to use my quaint accent to misdirect people. It often gets me out of bar fights. However, in the case of my partner, this is not possible. I thus resort to making up words. If you continually repeat these words as if they mean something, your opponent will spend their energy on attempting to assimilate to the lingo, as opposed to playing well. Note, moreover, that it is important to also include real words to throw them off.

It is always important that you are well equipped for the golf course. This often means thousands of dollars spent on suitable shoes, clubs and balls. This money spent, however, does not necessitate victory. To win, you must know how to use your equipment.

Thus, instead of using the traditional white golf ball, I like to camouflage my golf balls to blend in with the natural surroundings in case I need additional ‘support’ in maintaining a good handicap.

The dress code often enforced on golf courses are usually established to maintain a certain atmosphere. However, you can often use attire to your advantage, by dressing in unusual outfits. By sporting, say, an umbrella and a disguise, you can both confuse your opponent, and subvert his ability to look at you in the eye. An alternative is also going naked. (Last resort).

In proper golf you need a proper caddy. In miniature golf, you need a suitably miniature caddy. The squirrel is nature’s miniature caddy. Compact, fast, and distractingly cute, these little runners are all you need to hide/find golf balls.*

*To train a squirrel, one must be willing to sacrifice a jar of peanut butter, a lot of balls, and time. Thus is the cost of winning.

Condition C – Suspicious orange substances – only to be used in the long game.

You may have gathered by now that I am quite an avid adventurer. My most recent adventure, however, left quite a bitter taste in my mouth. Bitter enough for me to produce an illustrated explanation of how profound an effect it had on me.

Gao Gao was beginning to get very tired of spending all of her money on food: once or twice she attempted to improvise with an all oat diet, it had not beneficial results or induced no pleasure - ” and what is the use of an all oat diet,” thought Gao Gao, “without butter or cheese?”.

I can’t actually channel Carroll further than that intro. I think it’s either copyright infringement or just terrible writing. Think of this as LC 2.0.

It all started with the GPS. The little blue dot zoomed mindlessly around over apparently invisible roads until I came to the realisation that we had been driving for over an hour. For a distance of approximately three miles. I call this: “The Rabbit Hole Phenomenon”.

CHAPTER 2: Advice from a Caterpillar

I was more prepared for the end of the rabbit hole than for my journey through it. Cori had kindly lent me her Gold Star Business card. To my pleasant surprise, she had also thoughtfully dressed in costume, so that anyone either female or blurry could use it. Infiltration was easy; glasses are always my in my adventure kit.

I don’t know what was more alarming: the twin packs of TVs or the pink coffins covered in Harley Davidson motifs. The bleak flickering of fluorescent lights, coupled with the blurred lines created by shoppers around induced quite the hallucinogenic experience. Lewis Carroll is probably turning in his grave at the comparison.

There was definitely a moment, moreover, when I felt seduced by the army of rouge adorned workers, bombarding me with samplers and kind directions. Accepting their help was one thing; trying a Pesto Chicken Burrito Pizza bite, however, was another.

Immediately I felt regret. I found myself slipping away from reality as I became dwarfed by hundreds of aisles of… products. 6 packs of Peanut Butter. 200 Toilet Rolls for the price of 8. 24 tubs of Sour cream. Death.

Escape seemed futile. Weirdly, I could hear the chatter of the check out clerks echoing in my ears, it seemed, to little fruition. Ironically, when we did get it out, it took all of 8 minutes to get home. I wish it were all a dream.

Here are some photos of other situations in which I’ve felt a wobbly around the knees. Just in case you couldn’t relate to my Costco Tale of Woe.

I fly a lot. Like a lot a lot. It’s a consequence of having immediate family situated on adjacent, but separate continents.

Thus, I have given a lot of thought to the Science of Flying. Especially whilst on the flight.

The beauty of flying so often is always the mileage status. A friend of mine bought ten flights to Minnesota, just so that he could reach the status so advanced, it allows him to travel invisibly. I however, quiver in anticipation for the times I do get upgraded into First Class.

Then comes the fearsome battle over the central armrest. More oft than not, I find myself desperately calculating the success of a preemptive occupation of the armrest vs. a preventative occupation.

All of these scenarios have occurred at one point in my life. I am glad, however, that it was the baby on my head, and not the Sumo wrestler called Kevin.

On second thought, the combination of copious bite-size pretzels and tequila will probably increase desire for the third bar.

Welcome to the first edition of Artventure: your weekly blog for everything Art and Adventure.

Whilst working at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, I am always assured to be surrounded by two things. The first is fellow Asians. The second is art.

Currently, the SAAM has a fantastic exhibition titled Fleeting Beauty. As an astounding collection of Ukiyo-e, or Japanese woodblock prints, this exhibition embodies the most iconic images of the ‘floating world’ between the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

Ukiyo-e prints became popular in the cosmopolitan era of the Edo period because of their affordable and relatable nature. The subject matter was often of urban life, particularly depicting scenes of prominent social figures. As a social commentary, woodblock prints often hinted at the ephemerality of the Japanese entertainment world using a masterful balance of delicate ink lines with evocatively rich blocks of colour. Whether the subject be geishas captured demonstrating the art of the fan, or Kabuki actors gracing the stage in drag (as denoted by a purple cap), Ukiyo-e often illustrated a lifestyle divorced from the mundane realism of ordinary life.

As a medium, a master copy was first inked by legendary artists such as Hiroshige or Utamaro, and then passed down a line of production where assistants would skillfully craft woodblocks from the original to mass produce prints. The economic and social accessibility of this medium cemented Ukiyo-e as the standard in Japanese aesthetics up until the Meiji period in the 20^th century.

A cartoonist, Bialik has produced a series of Ukiyo-e inspired prints titled ‘Samurai Wars’ that depicts the cast of Star Wars through the guise of Japanese folk monsters. As a modern day re-interpretation of the Ukiyo-e aesthetic, Bialik has cleverly situated contemporary popular figures with a commentary on what we today designate as culturally relevant.

Find more of the eight part Samurai Wars series here, or more information on the Fleeting Beauty Exhibition here.

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