Extreme Craft

Lucas (With the Lid Off)

Lucas Murgida at 667 Shotwell from Chris Sollars on Vimeo.

Lucas Murgida gets it.  He was trained as a commercial cabinet maker, so he finds ways to milk the world of cabinet making for art.   He created a rolling cabinet just big enough for him to hide inside, then left the cabinet out on the street until somebody picked it up.  A person can hitch some interesting rides that way.

In addition to working as a yoga instructor (he lists his yoga classes alongside his artwork on his website), Murgida works as a locksmith.  Locks are funny things...we use them every day, and mostly take them for granted.  Murgida probes into the meanings and associations we have with locks.  To him, locks are about security and thwarted curiosity.  He dreams up lock-based performance art including lock-picking classes in a storefront and beachfront key finding services.

He's showing his art at 667 Shotwell in San Francisco starting May 1st.

LINK thanks Mark!

DRILLBOARD

I'm normally not much of a fan of guerilla advertising by big corporations.  I'll make an exception for Makita Drills this one time.  Saatchi and Saatchi advertising created this gigantic billboard in South Africa that constructs a gigantic Makita drill out of 20,081 drilled holes.  Take that, lazy taggers!  What could Shepard Fairey do with a drill?  Tres manly.

LINK via Croqzine

Not Your Grandmother's China (But Closer Than You'd Think)

Is Louise Graham the world's greatest living ceramic philosopher?  The problem with ceramic geeks is that we often have problems reconciling our own conspicuous consumption with our deep desire to eat our buckwheat groats out of a 16th century wood fired Korean peasant bowl.  I own plenty of amazing ceramic vessels that I use every day, but they're alternated with Fiestaware, pink Spode transferware and whatever else catches my fancy.  My fridge is full of Tupperware and nasty little plastic containers.

Like most other ceramic collectors, I'm a hypocrite who extols the virtues of the handmade while spending most of my time in the chilly, utilitarian arms of factory-produced plastic.  Louise Graham feels my pain.  Her work is a bridge between your Grandmother's fancy china and something I like to call REALITY.  Louise just graduated from the University of the Arts in London last year, but she's already churning out beautiful objects that mediate between the supermarket and your best white-party-gloves impulses.

 
Take her butter/cheese dish handle for instance.  You know the butter is coming out of the fancy butter dish the moment company leave.  Why not acknowledge the fact by using Louise Graham's butter dish handle?  Just attach it to the container your butter came in, and you've got a beautifully designed object that cuts through the hypocrisy without any extra dishes to wash.  Her milk carton spout honors the cow who provided your milk while not pretending that you just squeezed it out yourself. 

Her website seems to be coming soon...but in the meantime, you can purchase the milk spout, the butter dish handle and the Velcro egg cup from Pedlars' web store in the UK. 

Object Lessons

When it comes down to it, most fans of handmade things can also appreciate great design.  Even if mass-produced objects don't function in the same way that something handmade does, a well-crafted gadget or piece of furniture retains that spark of human inventiveness and care for the end user.  I'm crazy excited for Gary Hustwit's new documentary, Objectified.  I was a slavish fanboy for his "Helvetica" documentary, and the trailer for the new film has me just as excited. 

I love walking through thrift stores and flea markets and thinking about the human being who designed each of the cast-off objects.  Was the object designed with hopefulness and care, or was it tossed off by an underpaid, undercaring designer shackled to a corporate job?  Some of my favorite objects are misfires...things that a true believer took a few steps too far.  Even though this film appears to explore the world of more "refined" taste, I can't wait.

LINK

A Plate Fit For a King

I'm honored to be a part of Greenwich House's annual "Made in Clay" exhibition.  You can purchase some of my first-ever functional paintball plates from the main show, and I put one of my Elvis collector plates into their online auction.  The show benefits Greenwich House's amazing operation, which helps bring ceramics to poor, clay-deprived New Yorkers.  This Elvis plate was a part of my 2005 show at Spalding Nix Fine Art, and is embellished with china paint and gold luster.  This limited edition plate is now one-of-a-kind. 

LINK

Get Your Tauntaun On!

Oh dear lord.  How did I miss this?  This snuggly baby sleeping bag in the shape of a tauntaun with inner intestine-printed lining was merely an April Fool's day joke on ThinkGeek.com.  Don't you know that this would be a license to print money (and a licensing nightmare)?????  I think I'm heading over to Etsy right now to see what people would charge via their "alchemy" site to make one of these in MY size.  It's probably the only way you could trick me into going camping.

LINK thanks Jamee!

Skip to my Loo

When I put Matt Nolen's bathroom up on Twitter and Facebook, I got a reply back from Baroness Carrie von Reichardt of the Treatment Rooms, her amazing hypermosaic'd residence.  I hadn't heard about the bathroom, though, and it certainly measures up to the rest of the house.  Carrie has laboriously turned the entire bathroom into a "history of decals".  This gives "bathroom reading" a whole new meaning.



Here's a great video that I hadn't seen yet telling more about the Treatment Rooms.  The video is perfect for my piece about The bathroom at the Treatment Rooms, because it's an episode of "Art Poop".



Thanks Carrie!

Be. Excited. Be. Be. Excited.

Somehow, I missed all of the action surrounding Matt Jones' (aka Flickr user Moleitau) "Get Excited and Make Things" riff on the British "Keep Calm and Carry On".  In true Maker style, Jones posted his creation on Flickr and is allowing people to remix and print the poster under a Creative Commons license.  The folks at Jen Bekman's 20x200 promptly rolled out a benefit edition of posters to benefit Creative Commons.  As of this writing, the small sizes are sold out, but there are plenty of medium and large prints available.  I just invested in one for chez Extreme Craft.

LINK via 43folders

Extreme Relief

Tonight was the debut of the Travel Channel's "Extreme Bathrooms", and I'm happy to announce that friend of Extreme Craft Matt Nolen was featured in the program.  OF COURSE he was featured in the program!  He spent FIVE MONTHS working in Kohler's factory in Sheboygan, painting the tiles for the restroom.  Matt's bathroom has both historical and artistic dimensions (in addition to the obvious utility). 

The documentary doesn't do a great job of illuminating Matt's concept, which is a comprehensive history of architecture (Matt is a lapsed architect, if I remember correctly).  The user of the bathroom can trace the architecture from ancient Egypt through modern times.  Each "station" in the bathroom embodies a different epoch, and the user actually gets to put themselves in the role of everyone from Pharoah to C.E.O.  I had the good fortune of visiting the restroom (which is in the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, WI) last summer, and I spent the whole day drinking water so I could spend quality time at each station.  Too much information? 

I had the Tivo all fired up and ready to go tonight, and I just transferred Matt's bit of the program to YouTube.  Start planning your trip to Wisconsin today.....and drink lots of liquids!

LINK

A Shot at Avoiding Sobriety

BoingBoing gadgets had a link to some "hoity-toity" fancy girly-man faux-shotgun shell shot glasses today.  We at Extreme Craft come from the heartland...the REAL America, and know a real shotgun shell shot glass when we see them.  We wouldn't drink our "cement mixers" (is that a dorky enough drink?) out of anything but these authentic acrylic and "brass look" glasses.  Amurkah!

LINK