shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: Jim Flora

Morning Linkage (Jan 25)

Transportation

Spark­ly orange paint and a nitrous tank. I so want to hate this bike, but I can’t quite man­age it. It’s scruffy and over the top, but it’s utter­ly charm­ing in that torn-up eared tom-cat kind of way. But it’s a CB750, so what do you expect?

Hap­py words make a bike. Bicy­cle Typogram.  Bonus, pics of the press and the print­ing of the image.

Page down once, 1929 Nean­der. Per­fec­tion.

Art, Images, and Design

Late­ly a lot of things in my life have been appear­ing in twos. Odd linked images that tie across media. Here’s a mys­tery pho­to of a build­ing that appears to be float­ing in the air (prob­a­bly a load­ing shed for fer­til­iz­er trucks) and one of my favorite movies “Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle” tied up together.

The first time I heard of a pan­golin it was on the cov­er of a text book in school (Mary Dou­glas’s Implic­it Mean­ings.) The ani­mal fas­ci­nat­ed me. Still does. And I’m not the only one. A back­pack and an over the shoul­der bag inspired by the spiny anteater cre­at­ed by Cyclus and made of recy­cled inner tubes. Goth? Punk? I’m vot­ing new-animist.

Oh wow. You can still license Jim Flo­ra art for your album/CD. I may have to go back to plan­ning on being a rock­’n’roll star when I grow up.

Culture and Its Institutions

And trav­el­ing on from the oh wow jim flo­ra… to ARC, Artist’s Record­ing Col­lec­tive. A new busi­ness mod­el for pack­ag­ing, dis­trib­ut­ing, and pro­mot­ing music. One of sev­er­al ven­tures attempt­ing to make the new media and dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels serve the artist first.

Final Thought

Infor­ma­tion you need, a female demon who forces men to speak when they should­n’t. Uh huh.

Morning Linkage (Jan 5)

Transportation

If you’ve got 25 min­utes to kill and the desire for a new career in the excit­ing field of mil­i­tary avi­a­tion you might want to sit down with this video. Or maybe if you need at a look of the unfor­tu­nate his­to­ry of humor and pret­ty girls in train­ing films. 1943 Army Air Forces P‑47 Thun­der­bolt train­ing video. That real­ly is worth a watch for plane fiends. (Video 24:41)

For my Super­Mo­to lov­ing friends. The Black Pearl. But could you go out and get this one all dirty?

Pure, unadul­ter­at­ed yum. BSA Gold Star Day­tona Spe­cial. Because some­time restora­tion is way more effec­tive than customizing.

Science

Must be some­thing about the hol­i­day hang­over but I can’t wrap my mind around any sort of seri­ous sci­ence news. Instead you get shit like this… io9 writ­ers and com­menters rule the world (again.) Why we need to do real, exper­i­men­tal sci­ence. Involves giraffes and water and no computers.

More help­ful­ly, and more seri­ous­ly. An insight­ful decon­struc­tion of the sub­tle aids that Google maps use to make their maps the most read­able maps on the web. (Arguably.)

Art, Images, and Design

Jim Flo­ra did this Baba Yaga late in his life. Won­der­ful depic­tion of the wise old witch.

Tan­gen­tial­ly, I was watch­ing a doc­u­men­tary recent­ly and saw a pic­ture of the cov­er of Char­lie Park­er’s Char­lie Park­er with Strings. Not my fav Bird album but the art work is way cool. So I went look­ing… David Stone Mar­tin did tons of the cov­ers that I remem­ber from my child­hood. Includ­ing the one at the top of the post. (NSFW — artis­tic nudes)

Animation

Pop-up fairy tales in French. Not at all what you’re expecting.

Morning Linkage (Jun 23)

Sort of -

Link­age is on hia­tus while I deal with life, the uni­verse, and my back (again) But I haven’t for­got­ten you all entire­ly. Here are two nice, hap­py links for hump-day.

Anoth­er install­ment in the Smash­ing Mag­a­zine series on let­ter forms and cal­lig­ra­phy — this one fea­tur­ing Hebrew, Arme­nia, Mon­go­lian, and Inu­it among others.

I grew up with the work of Jim Flo­ra, from the jazz album cov­ers that were a part of my child­hood to this friend­ly lit­tle car­toon. Mex­i­can fire­works are the best!

Morning Linkage (May 7)

Transportation

The Fri­day freaky find. This was spot­ted on eBay and now it lives on pipeburn and per­haps in some­one’s garage. Is it a Nor­ton? A Tri­umph? An ungod­ly mashup? Twin engine goofy­ness.

You know that I love the work of Wrench Mon­kees. So do a lot of oth­er folks and now we’re start­ing to see some very nice builds in the same grit­ty style.

Black and white image of an SS750 engine with­out the side case. This pic is big enough for net­book wall paper. Just sayin’

Society and Culture

Aban­doned places. A Sovi­et mis­sile defense instal­la­tion, even allow­ing for the degra­da­tion of aban­don­ment this must have been a grim place to live and work.

Art, Images, and Design

uhu­ru design in Brook­lyn has brought out a line of fur­ni­ture fea­tur­ing wood tak­en from the Coney Island board­walk. The lounger design is a swoopy delight.

A cou­ple of days ago I men­tioned Lean­dro Caste­lao in a post about rhi­nos. Here’s a look at some more of his work. Robots for T‑shirts.Click around for more goodness.

A sweet Jim Flo­ra illo done for the cov­er of Com­put­er Design some time in the 60s or 70s. Ear­ly geek art!

Animation

A dark world and a bright umbrel­la. A well done senior year project from CalArts by philip vose.

week­end ahead, off you go.