Mad Man

Growing up, Mad magazine played a major role in my brain's development. An avid reader, letter writer, and paperback orderer, I can remember times with my mom at the grocery store checkout excitedly putting the newest issue on the conveyor belt and hoping it didn't slip into the crack at the end before the lady could grab it (this is how my dad told me Abraham Lincoln died, except on an escalator), and then making sure it was protected un-crimpedly between boxes of Freakies and Count Chocula, only to be taken out, read aloud, laughed at and folded-in when we got to the car. 

A seminal point in my Mad development came in 5th grade during our class' paper drive, when I found a bundle of old Mads that someone had dropped off to be recycled- older ones, which I'd never seen before! This was also probably also the first time I asked myself, "Why would anyone get rid of this?", a question which would reward/haunt me to this day.

In this bundle, which I asked our teacher if it was okay to not recycle (and somehow I think she said yes but that I should write an IOU to President Carter, or something) there was the single greatest article I'd ever read, written and illustrated by the great Al Jaffee, entitled, "If Kids Designed Their Own Xmas Toys". Seeing it was like a revelation-  one could draw something, and then make it- exactly the same. It was like a ten year-old's mind-blowing "introduction to design".  While in this epiphanal state I packed up all the issues in my French horn case and couldn't wait to get home -even though this meant carrying my French horn out in the open, which made it easy prey for a couple of older girls who liked to grab it, blow into the mouthpiece and then threaten to pee into the bell. 

So, our book is filled with sketches as well as photos, and whenever I drew a project (most projects being based on "why would anyone get rid of this"...), while not using the exact same concept (or at least documenting it that way), the Mad article and Al Jaffee's genius were always somewhere in my mind. So thank you, Al Jaffee. 

Related: Al Jaffee from Graphic NYC, and The New York Times. 

C'etait un Rendezvous

Rendez-vous (Claude Lelouch 1976)

Early one August morning in 1976 the French director Claude Lelouch mounted a camera to the front of his Ferrari and filmed his breakneck drive through the streets of Paris, from Porte Dauphine to Sacre Coeur. After "C'etait un Rendezvous" was shown publicly Lelouch was arrested and the car confiscated.

Not long after it was released our local library had a copy, and my brother and I used to get our dad to rent it constantly, every chance we got. Back then renting movies was a little more complicated, as the movie was an actual big can of film, and my dad would have to lug out the movie projector and thread the film, while we'd set up the giant silver screen on its rickety aluminum tripod. But when the lights went out and the movie started rolling, nothing beat sitting on the carpet staring up at the screen with a permanent smile for 9 minutes, the smell of dusty electricity, the smooth clacking of the projector, and the loud Ferrari engine blaring through the steel speakers.
Happy Bastille Day!

Off to the Island.

Unfinished idea

One of my favorite objects, from an estate sale, deep in the abandoned basement workshop. To me, everything about this is perfect. The design, the scale/math, the craftsmanship, the mistakes, the patina, and the magic marker "unfinished drill index box". It opens perfectly in half on hinges that stay open at any degree. There's a chunk of pine which looks as if it was poured into the box it's so seamless. The patina and little dings and abrasions make you wonder how many years this was going to be left unfinished-- or did whoever made it realize that it actually was finished, since really in the time it took to write "unfinished drill index box" they could have just drilled the holes.

Taking some inspiration from it, I think it would make a really great chair (/loveseat/sofa), the basis of which is the closed box. Enlarged,  it would have the feeling of a brutalist Tony Smith sculpture, and opened, like a Tony Smith sculpture opened up by Josef Albers into a canopy chair. Not to be presumptuous, but I think if Donald Judd had been in this basement he would have had the same idea. 

conceivable in-situ view:

This would have been the perfect jumping-off point for this project, and conceivably what it could look like at the landing. Unfortunately it was too unaerodynamic too put on top of the car for the drive back from Florida a couple of months ago. The price was right though (free).