Mint

to an Urban Outfitters near you. (For a peek of the Urban Outfitter’s Fall fashion collection, check out this post).

Steph Walker is an artist and graphic designer who gets paid in food, money, and tee shirts to figure stuff out for you because that’s what she’s good at.

SW: Sticks & Stones & Ice Cream Cones (The Craft Book for Children) by Phyllis Fiarotta 1973

SW: Worst: Bulk soggy yellow pickles. Tolerable: Anything dill with enough garlic from the supermarket. Best: Fresh made pickles from a NY deli.

SW: It’s a pet peeve of mine when people listen to their music on the subway, but my favorite song right now is “A Cold Freezin’ Night” by The Books.

SW: It has changed my priorities and made me want to do more art based work on my own. I have less desire to work for a studio and more reasons to sit at home and work on crazy stuff.

SW: Art and design are separate things for me when it’s the difference between an art show and a design job, but design skills are used when I make art, and art skills are used when I do design work. Only each end product is for a different purpose. Since they’re coming from the same place (me) they’re going to be similar in approach. But, the client design work is more calculated, the art work is more free.

Don’t forget to check out more of Steph’s work on his website!
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Lindsay Preston is an artist and graphic designer from San Diego. In “Lindsay’s Quick Queries”, Lindsay brings you work by contemporary artists, and answers to the questions everyone has been wondering about them, like “pancakes or waffles?”

I’m trying to clear out the West + Plum shop, so that means… a summer sale! Everything is 20% off until Friday at midnight.

“Pacific Ocean, Noosa, Australia, April 1, 2008 (afternoon effect),” 2009, watercolor on paper
part of an ongoing series based on observations of various bodies of water at different times of day under changing light conditions

“Abecedary (Nabokov’s Theory of a Colored Alphabet applied to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle),” 2004, ink and watercolor on paper

“CIE 529/418 (candlelight),” 2007, sandblasted glass
This installation shifts the color of the exterior sunlight to the color of candlelight inside the gallery.

“102 Colors from My Dreams,” 2002, 102 drawings, ink on paper
Colors from a dream diary kept over the course of two years.

“Crevasse (Fox Glacier, April 8th, 2008, 2:10pm),” 2008, filters and tape
This piece re-creates the color of the light in a crevasse on Fox Glacier in New Zealand.

You can read an interview with artist Spencer Finch on NY Arts. Images, titles, and descriptions are from Finch’s website.

Another artist I “discovered” this weekend is Jonathan Callan, who makes beautiful sculptures from old books.

Although his work looked strangely familiar… Come on, Anthro. Get it together.

images: Brian Mac Domhnaill, artnet, evan read, google images (original source not found)

My Mom and I had the best dinner at a Thai restaurant in Pittsburgh called Silk Elephant. If you ever go to Pittsburgh, I whole-heartedly recommend that place. It was the most authentic Thai meal I’ve had since our big Thailand trip a few years ago, and even the mango and sticky rice we ordered for dessert was almost as good as the real thing. So for this week’s recipe, I knew I wanted to find something Thai. Ele from Kitchenist had the answer with her Pad Thai Noodle Salad. It’s loaded with vegetables and that irresistible combination of tamarind paste, lime juice, fish sauce, and sugar.

(I’m also looking forward to trying this Thai-inspired Mango Slaw with Cashews and Mint from Smitten Kitchen)!

I spent the last few days in Pittsburgh. One of the things I would love about living in a city is having access to such great art museums, with big-name exhibits coming all the time, and a killer permanent collection. Last week’s visit to Pittsburgh and last month’s visit to New York City make me wish I lived somewhere a little… bigger.

Not that I don’t love you to pieces, Durham.

These cut steel shovels are by artist Cal Lane. A snippet of Cal’s artist statement:

I like to work as a visual devil’s advocate, using contradiction as a vehicle for finding my way to an empathetic image, an image of opposition that creates a balance – as well as a clash – by comparing and contrasting ideas and materials.This manifested in a series of “Industrial Doilies”, pulling together industrial and domestic life as well as relationships of strong and delicate, masculine and feminine, practical and frivolity, ornament and function.