Japanese Psychedelia

I don't know about you, but lately, I'm all about the Japanese psychedelia. Maybe it's because I was reading A.S. Byatt's novel Babel Tower, set in the sixties, and followed that up with an anthology edited by Haruki Murakami. Two excellent blogs are feeding this habit: A Journey Around My Skull and pink tentacle.

Consider these details from the work of Japanese graphic designer Tandanori Yokoo:


Tadanori Yokoo, Marie in Furs, 1968, detail


Tadanori Yokoo 1965 silkscreen detail
(oh, printmaking, and a hand... how could I resist?)

Tadanori Yokoo 1965 silkscreen detail

{via A Journey Around My Skull }

Or these posters by underground graphic artist, Aquirax Uno.

Keiko’s at Marubutsu Department Store, 1967


Sailor 21 Gold Fountain Pen, 1968

{via pink tentacle}


Beauty and Beast, from Idea 315

{via Tara Sinn, where you can also find an interview with the artist and more risqué images.}

Here are some pages from a non-narrative manga from November 1967 "A Dream To Have In Heaven” (Tengoku De Miru Yume) by Maki Sasaki. {also via pink tentacle}




I am totally in love with this image:

Kiyoshi Awazu, poster for fashion tenant building, 1973

I would like that as a giant wall mural.

You should look at his website! Firstly, it is one of the best artist websites I have ever seen, and secondly, there is hardly a medium which remains unrepresented during his prolific career. I think you will be seeing more of him around here.

I leave you with:

Tsunehisa Kimura, 1968, commercial and industrial photography ("Give Us Back Man")

{again, via A Journey Around My Skull}

Back to School Micro-Trend: Lined Paper

What's a micro-trend, you say? It's a bold prediction of a fad based on two observations. If this were science, it would not pass the peer review; however, there are no editors in the blogosphere, so here goes nothing.

Check out these lovely, nostalgic and fun embroideries by Dash of Magic {via I Adore Style}:



Also, these AshiDashi Notebook and Pencil socks {via swissmiss}:



Some further searching found that the Desing Museum Shop carries tea towels designed to look like lined paper:


Also, more handmade goodies:

woven on a tapestry loom by carson elaine

This is an example of lined paper as, um, lined paper by Think Experimental, but I like it:

{via wrong distance}

You can also find lined paper substituted for napkins, toilette paper, place mats and sugar packs in this ad campaign (but they aren't actual products, though maybe they should be).

I could see it used as a theme for rugs, bedding and clothing.... Have you seen it?

And now for something completely different...

This appeals to the parts of my brain which appreciate the Wunderkammer, dark humour, the absurd and the surreal. This post is also for my mother, who grew up on the prairie, and hence is of the opinion that the only good gopher is a dead gopher, to the dismay of her city-bred children who had the temerity to think they are cute!

From CRAPPY TAXIDERMY:




These are from The Gopher Hole Museum in Torrington, Alberta, Canada. Below we have some good, old-fashioned composite creatures.




(via the Mincing Mockingbird blog)

While I am on the subject of dubious? unusual? creative museums, are you familiar with the Museum of Jurassic Technology? Their quixotic collection covers everything from Anathasius Kircher's magnetic oracle to 'GARDEN OF EDEN ON WHEELS
Selected Collections from Los Angeles Area Mobile Home and Trailer Parks' to Dogs of the Soviet Space Program - and more.

There are also a muriad of weird and wonderful, and oddly specific museums to be found, with the slightless search. These include but are not limited to the Washington Banana Museum, Icelandic Phallological Museum, The Museum of Bad Art and the Meguro Parasitological Museun. I could go on...

Do you have a favorite oddity or quixoitic museum?

Talking Origami

So to me, paper is one of the most marvellous products ever invented. I have written about the incredible art which has and is being made by cutting paper. Equally amazing is what can be done by merely folding paper. The Japanese art of origami has been with us for centuries. Here I wanted to talk about how it has influenced other spheres. How origami appears in or influences other fields of endeavour.

Consider fashion:

Hungarian designer Dora Mojzes




André Lima's Spring 2009 collection (inspired by origami)


Chanel’s Spring 2009 Haute Couture origami headpieces




John Galliano for Christian Dior Haute Couture Spring 2007 {via eyesing}

Design:

Hannah Allijn’s faceted curtain


Eric Mathew and Andrew Ooi's origami light fixtures {via Bring Me Up: Design}

Check out Origami Tessalations collection of origami lighting!

Even Urban Outfitter's had an Origami Pigeon Pillow:


Architecture:

The Origami by Kann Finch, designed for Meydan City in Dubai


This origami inspired house in Tokyo was designed by architect Yasuhiro Yamashita.


Ming Tang’s origami-inspired Folded Bamboo Houses are intended to be used as temporary shelters in the aftermath of an earthquake {via Inhabit}

Astrophysics (folding orbiting telescope design):

Robert J. Lang's origami-inspired 100 m diameter folding lens. His other combinations of his skill as an origami artist with his work as a physicist include how to fold airbags and a mesh wire heart support to be folded and implanted in congestive heart failure patients.

Origami appears of coures, in fine art, like some of the prints I have posted. Or these:

O is for Origami by DP Sullivan

Origami appears often in the work of Anna Rusakova (moleska on LJ):



This is by Nick Lu:



Takei's children's illustration

This is a moku hanga woodblock print I made called 'Little Boat Big Ocean'. It is about the things we cannot control. A barely-perceived fisher sits in a paper origami boat, beneath which looms a giant octopus:



Check out this inter-active sculptural piece involving paper folding. "Hull Loss invites participants to make paper airplanes and launch them through a series of mechanically animated scissors."

The Flytrap/Hull Loss from Nova Jiang on Vimeo.

Nova Jiang - Hull Loss, April, 2008

Talking Trees, with scarves

I have posted about cutting paper, and before I continue on with the wonders of folding paper, I would like to go off on a brief tangent to ask, "How cool is Jing Wei?" This young illustrator grew up in Northern California, though she was born in China. Currently she is based in "a treehouse in Brooklyn". Her style is has a touch of the surreal, magic, the cute and comics, but she has such delicacy of line and colour, in her chosen media: the woodblock print. Oh, and she has a things about scarves. Go look at her portfolio already! You can find more on her blog too.


Roperite - woodcut, ink, 12 x 12 (inches, I assume?)


Lobsters - woodcut, ink, 9 x 16.5


Groover vs. The Automatic Cat Feeder- woodcut, ink, 4 x 6


Talking Trees - woodcut, ink, 11.5 x 14

Bears and Origami

Clearly, these are two great things which go great together. Add some fabulous, contemporary printmakers, and you have:

Origami bear, by Emma Kidd (aka benconservato), a gocco print on aqua rice paper which I have now in my home.


a woodcut by Jing Wei, 10 x 13

A print I will have to pine for, from afar.

As a printmaker who makes relief prints, and has made a multicolour woodblock print, I am completely blown away by Jing Wei's portfolio. Stay tuned - more on her soon.

Atlas Obscura

Via Blue Tea comes this welcome news: "Josh Foer of the Athanasius Kircher Society and Dylan Thuras of Curious Expeditions have teamed up to launch the Atlas Obscura, an ambitious, user-driven catalog of curiosities, wonders, and oddities around the world."

Check it out! Because what this world needs is more wonder cabinets. You heard it here.