With all the celestial spectacles taking place lately, I’ve been paying a lot more attention to astronomy and the sky. While I missed the lunar eclipse (I was asleep) and wasn’t able to see the transit of Venus (it was so tiny!), the annular solar eclipse was impossible to miss in the Bay Area a couple of weeks ago. The light got very strangely dim and grey, and the sun slipped behind part of the moon. It’s easy for the universe to seem very theoretical until we have these little reminders about our place in it all.
These maps, made by the US Geological Survey, are images of the surface of the moon made as part of a larger project that also involved mapping Mercury and Mars. The patchwork of colors that makes up each map is so graphically striking. The top images are of the north and south sides of the moon, and the near side of the moon is below. Do you recognize its familiar dark spots? At the very bottom are three images of the dark side of the moon that we never get to see. So fascinating, right?
{All images via the US Geological Survey}
Hooray for Friday! We’ve had a busy week: team meetings, the book party for Mom, Inc., productive brainstorming sessions, and project prototyping. It’s a thrill to walk into shops and see Issue No. 7 on the stands. Not only is it one of my favorite covers so far—can I have a giant plush tree man in my house, please?—but also my favorite theme. When I spotted these paper illustrations by Fideli Sundqvist, they seemed too wonderfully whimsical to keep to myself.
I’ve seen lots of 3-D paper work, but certain elements of Sundqvist’s creations really stood out from the rest for me. The topographical layers of paper, the unusual cloud and wave shapes, and the depth of expression she creates in the face of her characters with just a couple of curved cuts for eyes and mouth. It’s utterly delightful. My goal this weekend is to be a bit like that elephant: I want to call up a friend and head out on an adventure! If all goes well, I will report back next week. Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!
{All images by Fideli Sundqvist, via Upon A Fold}
In regards to the topic of spring vacation destinations, the question in my mind is clear: desert or beach? I love the mountains, really I do, and cities have an undeniably wonderful energy. But when the days get noticeably longer, and winter is decidedly out the door, I just want to pretend it’s the middle of July already and flee to somewhere that reminds me of summer, and that’s really just these two landscapes—the hot, dry desert; and the refreshing, misty ocean.
I don’t want to imply that one is better than the other, or that they are the only desirable vacation destinations, but let’s face it: they both have that magical combination of wind, sand, and a vast, open flatness that allows you to see for miles, and imagine yourself in another world … it’s kind of unbeatable. For this spring roundup, I decided not too choose—instead I celebrate them both. However, I love a healthy debate, so if you have a preference, please do chime in. Happy spring, everyone!
{Images above, clockwise from left: “Boulders” (2012) by Claire Sherman; a chain of blue shells from Spell and the Gypsy Collective; flax rug by Christien Meindertsma at Merchant No. 4; a zebra beach towel by MAslin & Co. from Need Supply; the Manzanita bench and blocked planter from Anthropologie; The beautiful California coast from Jennifer Duardo & Jen Siska’s road trip in Issue No. 7; amazing huge planters in the LA home of Eileen Peters and Mark Wiesmay on The Selby; marble and hammered brass earrings by The Vamoose}
Okay, spring is really beginning to pick up speed in the Bay Area, and we’ve been having some fun. Issue No. 7 hit the newsstands, Anh-Minh and Meg attended the Kinfolk Magazine brunch held in San Francisco this past weekend, and Alexis welcomed the team into her home to shoot her first food article for the magazine! Through it all, it feels like spring is expanding everywhere around us, and I thought this Exploded Flowers series by Qi Wei perfectly encapsulated that feeling of spring’s energy.
Inspired by Todd McLellan’s Dissassembly series, in which machines and electronics are meticulously deconstructed and splayed out, Qi Wei turned her tinkerer’s eye to the world of flowers. Equally as complex as machines, these flora create their own unique dances outward under Wei’s guiding hand. Her compositions are orderly and simple, but with elegant subtleties that convey movement, and make this explosion stage seem almost natural for a flower. They give me a vision of how magical it would be if instead of wilting quietly, flowers died with a celebratory, synchronized burst—it would be a moment we anticipate, and gather together to observe with delight each year, like a fireworks display.
by kate on April 20, 2012
Beautiful, impossibly intricate patterns and textures are all around us. Look around the room you’re sitting in, and you can probably find some complex natural designs—the wood grain on your table, a ripple in your glass of water, the lines on the palm of your hand. Other natural patterns become visible to us only with the help of technology and data.
These wind maps are part of a personal art project created by Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg of HINT.FM. They take real-time wind data collected from the National Digital Forecast Database and animate them to reveal the wind’s utterly gorgeous fluid pathways over the United States. The still images are lovely, but you should watch the moving maps on the site for the full effect. It turns out that we land-dwellers are immersed in a tumultuous, swirling, invisible ocean—we can’t see it, but we feel the current.
The patterns in many of these images recall the supernatural sky in Starry Night, making me imagine that Van Gogh was a synesthete with the ability to “see” the wind. Sadly, I lack this heightened visual sense, and with the exception of appreciating a cool breeze on a hot day, I often take the wind for granted. These moving maps are a wonderful reminder of the powerful energies that surround us always, moving in their own complex rhythms, just as we humans do. Have a great weekend, everyone!
{All images captured from Wind Map by HINT.FM}
