Fashioning Felt: Cooper-Hewitt

My mom puts "the Martha" to shame. She's a cultural maven, phenomenal chef, supreme baker, and has a green thumb. Best part, she's a southern transplant so she's modest and charming, and a natural hostess to boot. Top that, Martha. Mom is also Martha's biggest fan, and this morning she emailed me about the Fashioning Felt exhibit, featured on MARTHA, at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in NY. The collection is crazy diverse, wacky, and stunning. The site hosts a series of photos that show women in Turkmenistan creating a felt rug. The workmanship is exquisite.
Pinkergreen has a "minor" obsession with yarn and all things felted, as you can see from Lara's post on felted rocks and Melissa's post about FilzFelt, the Boston-based felt distributors. I've selected a few of my favorites from the collection, but I'm hoping to get to NY before the show ends in September. Maybe for my birthday? hint, hint?
Above from upper left (clockwise)
Urchin Poofs: Designed by Christien Meindertsma
Structures and Surfaces (felt 1): Designed and made by Ursula Suter
Prince chair: Designed by Louise Campbell
Felt Rocks: Designed by Stephanie Forsythe

Women in Print.

One of the best things about our new space—other than all the other best things—is that we are surrounded by influential and inspiring artists, architects and designers. I found a postcard for Women In Print this morning while perusing our community bulletin board and as it turns out our neighbor, Esther Garcia-Eder is one of the featured artists. Esther's disposition is as soothing and peaceful as some of her landscapes, and I hope to make it over to Bunker Hill Community College before the show ends in a few weeks to see some of the other Boston artists. The show features prints created using a variety of techniques from 29 Beantown women and I could use a little springtime inspiration!

Never have we ever…

Been involved in such a truly, unique design competition. Project Never was started this year by Hart Boillot, a marketing and communications agency in Waltham, MA, and recognizes the best concepts, ideas and designs that never reached production. Pinkergreen's, Kelley Wade, was selected as a judge for their trial run of the competition, and we think the contest couldn't have been a more successful kick-off. Entries poured in from all over the world and were filtered by the keen eyes of Justin Hastings and Matt Gustavsen, designers at HB, before the judges got the final say. Gustavsen stated, “We wanted to give designers a way to share their talents and ideas with others in the industry. It’s our way of recognizing work that would otherwise go unnoticed.” Amongst the final five were submissions from Missouri, New Zealand, Egypt, Brooklyn, and Poland.
After the votes were in, Project Never announced Chris Vogel from Kansas City, Missouri, as their first winner for his design for a candy store environment. Kelley said it was a tough call, the finalists were incredible and their ideas and execution was inspiring. About Vogel's design she said…“The design is complex enough in texture and color, but still simple enough in execution to appeal to the masses. I love the type treatment and illustrations Chris used to tie the different elements together. The concept is sugary, sophisticated and fun.”
Read Hart Boillot's press release here…

Card Holders

I'm still using the first leather business card holder I ever bought. It's starting to get a little sad looking, but I'm holding on for sentimental reasons. If you don't have a card case, I'd recommend hooking yourself up. They've come a long way from the old silver plated standard– which is still classy by the way...

There's a style to suit any taste. They help you not have to fish around in your pockets or bag during a meeting.

Business Card Holders 2.0:
Furoshiki Shiki Card Holder
Muji Plastic Card Case
Tiffany's White Patent Leather Card Case
Kenneth Cole snap card case
Gloss Business Card Holder

Store Front: The Disappearing Face of NY

James and Karla Murray's new Book– Store Front: The Disappearing Face of NY– captures the charm of an era gone by. (My mother calls it the flava.) NY Magazine reports that a third of the businesses that are featured in the book have closed since the Murrays began the project eight years ago. Granted, most of these could use a face lift… a fresh coat of paint at the very least. Sometimes it's those quirky details that make you stop and notice. I just wish more people would maintain their vintage signs. We've heard from a couple of businesses that the upkeep and electrical bills on those older signs is crazy money. Too bad, because they're just so cool.
These small businesses are what make a neighborhood feel like a neighborhood. A great example of the difference when chains take over is Kenmore Sq. here in Boston. I'm not going to deny it, Kenmore was a hole. But it was a hole with character. Great record stores, dive bars, great fro-yo. Big names moved in. Now, it feels like Disneyland. Where's the flava?

"I want to ride my bicycle…"

A good friend turned me on to these vintage cycling posters today. I haven't been able to find too much information about the designers, but Brett Horton, who started The Horton Collection collecting cycling posters and memorabilia, has an excellent collection and is a great resource for imagery. And you can buy reprints of the posters through Velosport.
If anyone knows more about the designers, please pass it along, until then, I'm just going to relish in these mid-century beauties and think about where I'd like to hang one in my home. There are hundreds in the Horton Collection to peruse, but I selected the first two for their sophisticated color palettes, the second two for their snappy typography and the last two for their savvy use of circles—which can be a hard shape to work with, but definitely unavoidable when the subject is cycling.

Dirk Fowler's gig posters

I like the limited palettes in Dirk Fowler's work. I first spotted some of his letterpressed posters on Gigposters a couple of years ago (Also in March coincidentally... my brain must work on a loop). Dirk operates under F2 design out of Lubbock Texas. I bet SXSW must keep them pretty busy!

Jason Freeny.

We can't remember where we came across this artist/illustrator, but since having discovered Jason Freeny's digital prints, we haven't been able to eat gummi bears. With a background in industrial design and gigs ranging from an MTV trophy design to pin-up illustrations for Heavy Metal magazine, Jason Freeny's portfolio reaches across a variety of tastes and culture.
His digital prints are just as intriguing.
The artist turns familiar, playful icons like gummi bears, balloon sculpture, and Lego people into medical illustrations complete with circulatory and digestive systems that could be lifted from the pages of Gray's Anatomy. You almost do a double take they're so convincing. Thanks, Jason, for keeping us on our toes.

The prints are around $60 each and are available through Jason's site.

Sign Letters

We're all into vintage sign letters here at Pinkergreen, but no one more than Kelley. (She still rues the day she passed on a five foot tall Garamond "P" at a yard sale.) On that note, Pinkergreen is working on a storefront in West Roxbury that has a great old sign, but needs restoring. We are trying to retain the original character of the lettering in our new design. Will let you know how we turn out!

In honor of the one that got away... Here are a couple of easy-to-find letters from Urban. Not as cool as a vintage score, but they should do the job 'til yard sale season kicks in:
Enamel Alphabet
Marquee Lights
Recycled Metal Letters

crazy crayons

Christian Faur's True Color series is an interesting use of materials. He makes his work with crayons. Well, not with crayons– of crayons.

In his artist's statement, he explains,"For this body of work I have assembled more than one hundred thousand hand cast crayons of varying colors and shades to produce a body of work that, to the best of my knowledge, is unlike anything done before in art. These individual 'pixels' of wax are precisely stacked into specific locations inside of wooden frames to produce a new art form that uniquely balances the qualities of both photography and sculpture."

via poppytalk