LA-based artist Robert Fontenot learned last January that LACMA was deaccessioning about 100 costume and textile collection items. To save these objects from obscurity, Fontenot purchased more than 50 pieces from the collection at three separate auctions. His mission? To re-identify and find new (and, it turns out, wildly creative) ways to use and appreciate the objects.
They include everything from a Turkish embroidered textile reconstructed into a wastebasket, trousers turned into the mainsail of a model ship, and (our favorite) a paisley skirt transformed into a handmade banner with appliquéd letters promoting LACMA’s current exhibit Your Bright Future.
So far, Fontenot has documented the transition of 21 pieces from his collection and is photographing and describing each one on his blog. We can’t wait to see what he does next.
Coudal.com: The Chicago-based design firm’s “ongoing experiment in web publishing, design and commerce.” Be careful, it’s way too easy to become a Coudal addict.
Design Observer: Writings on design and culture.
The Book Cover Archive: For the appreciation and categorization of excellence in book cover design.
Design*Sponge: A daily website dedicated to home and product design run by Brooklyn-based writer, Grace Bonney.
Typographica: A daily journal of typography featuring news, observations, and open commentary on fonts and typographic design.
Even though her last day at Marquand Editions isn’t over until 5 p.m. we’re already missing Amy Rabas, our brilliant print shop manager, based in Tieton, WA.
The big city beckons, and Amy received a great opportunity that she couldn’t refuse. She’ll be attending Columbia College Chicago this fall to pursue an MFA in Interdisciplinary Book and Paper Arts, a program closely connected to the Center for Book and Paper Arts.
For continuing updates on her new work, be sure to check out amyrabas.com.
Best of luck, Amy!
If you’ve never visited Coudal’s Museum of Museums, you don’t know what you’re missing. With so much recent press about different initiatives that museums are taking to secure a place with the younger set in these tough financial times, it’s refreshing to find Coudal’s well-curated, browsable, and at times quirky list (the Science Tattoo Emporium, anyone?).
It rotates quarterly to highlight galleries, shows, and traveling exhibitions, and features a strong permanent collection with heavy hitters like MoMA and the Smithsonian. With all that information at the mere click of a mouse, it’s bound to bring more web-savvy art lovers to the actual institutions.
It seems like practically every Seattle neighborhood is hosting an Art Walk this summer. This is a glorious time of year to get off your couch and explore the city’s thriving art scene. Here’s a just a sampling:
Continue reading: “First Thursdays, Second Tuesdays, First Fridays, Oh My!”
The Blanton Museum of Art in Austin is showcasing the work of Latin American artist Francisco Matto. It’s the first comprehensive exhibition of Matto’s work in the U.S., highlighting his place in the rise of modernist abstract art in Latin America.
Continue reading: “Francisco Matto: The Modern and the Mythic”
Jeremy took a nice shot of the view from the window at his desk, facing Benaroya Hall. A couple of blocks down sits Pike Place Market on the tip of Elliott Bay.
Photo by Jeremy Linden
In 1909, Seattle hosted the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a world’s fair that helped to establish the city as a new cultural and industrial hub. The fair had a wide range of exhibits, featuring a hearty nod to the Pacific Northwest’s connection to the Alaskan gold rush with an Eskimo village and a scale model of a coal mine. Other notable exhibits included a reenactment of a Civil War naval battle and the largest log cabin ever built.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the A-Y-P, Seattle is hosting many different centennial events throughout the year; one special treat is the Museum of History & Industry’s exhibit of the photographs of Frank H. Nowell, the official photographer of the A-Y-P. Nowell captured on film the construction of the fair, the various exhibits, and the events and celebrations held on the University of Washington’s campus throughout the summer of 1909.
Marquand recently produced Picturing the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, a catalog of Nowell’s photographs of the fair, distributed by the University of Washington Press. Nowell’s images are also collected in an comprehensive database viewable through the University of Washington’s Digital Libraries, where you can browse through the other images that we sadly didn’t have space to include in the book, like this oddly charming bear made out of raisins. Luckily the slightly redundant giant lemon made out of lemons made the cut.
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Typography as a discipline is generally concerned with very small things. That’s not always true of course — sometimes letters can be big or even monumental. But most of the type we encounter daily is pretty small. In Marquand Books’ particular niche of the typographic world — book typography, and even more specifically art book typography — we’re especially concerned with another kind of small thing: numbers that are smaller than 1 but bigger than 0, expressed as portions of a whole. I.e. fractions.
Continue reading: “It’s the Little Things”
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Marquand Books designs and produces fine illustrated books for art museums, galleries, trade publishers, artists, collectors, and architects.
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