Inside Process: Marlene White

Artist Marlene White lets us in on the process of making. Check out the video on Facebook, and while you're there -- become a Plazm fan cuz we have a new page. Artist website at marlenewhite.com.

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Reading Frenzy Benefit

Reading Frenzy, friend to Plazm for ages and all-around awesome resource for independent printed matter and art, is hosting a benefit show March 5th at Holocene.Read an interview with Chloe Eudaly, proprietress, first printed in Plazm #17.

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100 Years of Futurism

David Marx weighs in on that certain Italian movement's centennial over at Néojaponisme.

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Brain Food

The results are in for the folks who "give the best Twitter" for 2008 & the 1st quarter of 2009.

Premature, but you'll see...

Ainsley of Attack

Pagecrusher

Sustainableshit

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Look Around You

First of all, I'm about seven years behind the BBC on this one, but only a month behind Cartoon Network, so I figured it was worth a post for all of those out there, like me, without cable. Secondly, don't read the rest of this until you have watched the video and learned your lesson of the day.

This mind-numbing masterpiece is the brainchild of British writers/comics Robert Popper and Peter Serafinowicz. It was first aired on BBC in 2002. The first season has since been picked up by Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Be forewarned: There are only 8 ten-minute "modules" in the first (and arguably best) season which is sure to leave you wanting more. The good news: each episode of season one can be viewed in full and free of charge on youtube.

Also, all of the synth music for the show was composed by Serafinowicz and Popper and, with the exception of the theme song, is available for download here as well as online quizzes, wallpapers, and supplemental video clips of season 2. Enjoy.

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Denise Kupferschmidt

Her work is awesome. Nature totems, sculpture collage, dreamy narratives. See more here.

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Shotgun Seamstress

Shotgun Seamstress is an awesome zine made by Osa of the New Bloods. It is about and for queer punks of color, but any freak/outsider can relate and be excited to read a fresh, different zine. This is the reason why zines are great, to communicate and teach you new things from unheard voices (emo white kids whining or rich white boy making a portfolio piece, not so great). Shotgun Seamstress is creating a new history and reality by covering the usually overlooked (by whites) and important group of people--punks/freaks of color. Issue #3, out now, titled amazingly "Money is Fake" has topics like free travel, and interviews/collaborations with Mick Collins of the Dirtbombs, Brontez of Gravy Train!!!, and more.Buy Shotgun Seamstress now and support this awesome effort!

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Maira Kalman

The well-known illustrator, designer, and artist has a new blog up at the New York Times. An important reminder to remain hopeful, celebrate the small things, and that art can be both free and precious.

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Le Hut du Grass

Grass Hut interviewed over at VLU.

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Font-of-the-Day

A day-by-day calendar conceived of by Lars Harmsen and Raban Ruddigkeit at Slanted. You can buy a physical desktop calendar or download a desktop / iphone widget for free. They have opened up the floor for submissions to the 2010 edition. Check it here.

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Yes Pecan!

From the Ben and Jerry's Website:
"YES PECAN!" An Inspirational Blend! Amber Waves of Buttery Ice Cream With Roasted Non-Partisan Pecans.

If you decide to indulge in some “Yes Pecan” in Scoop Shops during the month of January, Ben & Jerry’s is donating the proceeds to the Common Cause Education Fund.

Common Cause is a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization founded as a vehicle for citizens to make their voices heard in the political process. They are committed to honest, open and accountable government, as well as encouraging citizen participation in democracy. Their Education Fund conducts research, education, and outreach activities. Check out http://www.commoncause.org to take action.

Wonder what the George Bush flavor would be called?

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Pending Lawsuit

Plazm VS. Peter, Egon, Ray, and Winston

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(Word) Cloud Maker

Input text into Wordle and it generates a word cloud, or visual representation of that texts emphasis, based on word frequency. See what you're saying?

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Colophon 2009: More Magazines Than You Can Shake a Stick at

Plazm will be part of the Colophon biennial symposium of independent magazines in Luxembourg, March 13-15. Go if you can. Regardless, the Colophon web site is a great resource for checking out magazines from around the world. I did an interview with these folks about the history of Plazm magazine. That can be found here.

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Carson Ellis at Nationale

Carson Ellis' work is up all month at the lovely Nationale. Go there and support local business!

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Senate Vote Prohibits Arts Recipients in Economic Stimulus Funding

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) offered a "compromise" amendment which passed the Senate as part of the economic stimulus package. The compromise prohibits arts funding. Now is the time to call your Senators and Representatives to let them know that art creates jobs and helps contribute to creative thinking across all communities. You can send an email via the Americans for the Arts action page.

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Worst. Song. Ever?

Sarah's and I carry on a weekly tradition of tuning into podcasts of This American Life. In act two of Episode 88 Alex Melamid and Vitaly Komar explained their contribution to the artistic world in relation to the weekly theme of the show Numbers.

This is how it works. They hire a polling firm to investigate what people want to see in paintings in different countries across the world. Then, using the poling data, they create paintings based on what the country's people statistically would like to see. On the flip-side of this, they also create paintings of what people would least likely appreciate. The resulting works can be found here. The painting shown above is America's favorite painting, the result of the data shown here.

But then they took it a step further. They teamed up with musical composer David Soldier. Using the same poling procedure, they produced one song based on what people most want to hear—and one song based on what they hate the most. Read about it here and listen to the song "fewer than 200 individuals of the world's total population would enjoy" here.

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Wesley Younie

Portland based painter and plant designer Wesley Younie creates enthralling narratives starring various flora and fauna from the wild and art history.There is a ton of nature art out there, and Younie's work really stands out with his interesting use of perspective and color, as well as the often humorous narratives he employs.Check out more of his work here.

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Kelly Reichardt on Fresh Air

The 'Wendy and Lucy' director talks about Portland, Michelle Williams, trains, homelessness, and her co-writer, Plazm editor Jon Raymond on NPR radio. Podcast/stream at npr.org.

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Martha Rich

I've been a huge fan of Martha Rich ever since I came across her work a couple of years ago. Her unique paintings and drawings culled from pop culture's past have a soul all their own, and her commercial work retains her individuality in a transcendent manner.How can you not respect someone who did a painting/drawing a day for a year, and then a painting a week? Now Martha sells her affordable drawings on Etsy. Check them out!

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Swimming Cities

The Swimming Cities of Serenissima is a fleet of three intricately hand crafted vessels that will navigate the Adriatic Sea from the Karst region of Slovenia to Venice, Italy in May of 2009.

The vessels are imagined as a hybrid between boats and bits of land broken off and headed out to sea. Watching them approach the shore is like seeing a floating city in the distance, as improbable as Venice itself. To the real life crew, the boats are a place of refuge – both a home and a way of moving through the world. To those who encounter the boats for the first time, they are a reminder that anything that can be imagined can be built.

The Swimming Cities are designed and organized by printmaker and installation artist SWOON. The boats' crew is made up of 30 collaborating artists from the United States.

For more information on this project, or for donating to the cause, visit here.

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Feeling Downright Neighborly

During the month of July, Plazm pulled up its roots once again and moved offices from the Ford Building on Division and SE 11th to the City Signs Building on SE 3rd street between Pine and Oak. Since then we have been joined by several other creative types occupying other rooms and floors of City Signs. Here's a few of our current neighbors.

Glass Candy - Ida No (vocals) and Johnny Jewel (producers) make music. Here's the pitchfork review for their latest album B/E/A/T/B/O/X released under the Italians Do It Better Record Label.

Ben Stagl - an artist, seasoned metals artisan and patineur, aspiring to make subliminal dreamscapes combining sculpture and new media. His mediums of choice include cast iron, coal, fabric, baloons, performance, video, and installation.

Pow Wow Printing - a collective printing studio specializing in vintage printing techniques. They cut lo-fi vinyl records, draw, paint, design, silkscreen, letterpress, make little plastic sculptures and allow a small child access to a snare drum.

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Post-Graffiti Collage

Poster Boy cuts and pastes ads in the NYC subways. Recently nabbed by the NYPD, Henry Matyjewicz claims to be just one of the individuals involved in the Poster Boy movement. You too can be a Poster Boy. Mix it up. Nice interview at Gothamist.

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Destination DIY

Julie Sabatier is a very cool and busy person. She creates the interesting podcast "Destination DIY", an exploration of all things (you guessed it) DIY in Portland. Past topics include zines, art, gardening, death, food, and many, many more. If you are in search of a new podcast to listen to in the car, at work, or while folding laundry check it out here. Julie also works as a producer at OPB, and has a few stories airing there soon, so keep your ears out.

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House Industries Girard Collection

House Industries just released a new collection of typefaces and designed objects inspired by the work of mid-century designer Alexander Girard.

As a textile designer for Herman Miller from 1952 to 1973, Alexander Girard collaborated with Charles and Ray Eames and George Nelson to form what is widely known as the "Camelot" of design. In the mid-century era of Modernist sterility, Girard's folk art sensibilities softened the hard edges of the prevailing style. His love for typography and use of illustrative lettering was evident in his personal work as well as high-profile pieces such as the renowned International Love Heart.

In creating its own interpretation of the Girard aesthetic, House Industries undertook an extensive research project, exploring four decades of the designer's work archived at Vitra in Germany and Herman Miller in Zeeland, Michigan. A pilgrimage to New Mexico unearthed more reference materials, including Girard's famous Unitarian Church mural in Albuquerque, his collections at the Folk Art Museum in Santa Fe, and more treasures at the home of the Girard family.

For the Alexander Girard fonts, House Industries designers took inspiration from a variety of source materials and the variety shows, as does their obvious love for Girard's work. Definitely worth a look!

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Lux RIP

Lux Interior passed away sometime on February 4, 2009. An amazing performer with a singular vision. Survived by his wife and band mate, Poison Ivy. Back in 1995 Lux and Poison Ivy allowed us to reproduce their McDonald's applications in Plazm #10. You can see both of them here. The influence of The Cramps on modern music history can't be underestimated. Stay sick.

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For The Birds

Larytta - Souvenir de Chine - Video directed by Körner Union

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My Art up at Stumptown Downtown in PDX

Come check out my art up all the month of February at Stumptown Downtown. I made almost 70 paintings in 20 months on a variety of different themes, such as: passing, prop 8, the moon, yoko, the tarot etc etc etc.

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Skate Uganda

Following up on the Afghanistan skate story, here are some folks—the Uganda Skateboard Union—championing the societal benefits of skateboarding. There's a video of the making of their skate park as well.

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Attn: E-Thugs

You all know it's true.

And what better a way to step up your e-cred than showing off your digitally diamond-encrusted anything? For all you internet gangsters out there with your USB flash-drives dangling from your gold chains, I recently stumbled upon an online photoshop tutorial on how to ice out anything you please. Go on. Pimp your ride. You know you want to.

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Neon Sign Graveyard

As I am more of a typography nerd than a gambler, these pictures of The Las Vegas Neon Sign Graveyard are almost enough to make me book a ticket to Sin City.

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Sarah Beetson

In August-September '08, I was lucky enough, along with my illustration partner Olivia Edith Fuente, to have a show with the Melbourne-based Sarah Beetson. Her work is amazing fresh and as delicious as 2-D as possible. Here is a link to more of her work.

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Moji Salvage

Check out Néojaponisme's collection of "fanshee" ("fancy") Japanese lettering in their Moji Salvage collection.

This style of lettering is mainly found on signage for cafés, “snack bars”, cake shops, and assorted 1950s-1990s service-oriented businesses across Japan. It is intended to be sophisticated, but just as often comes across as tawdry in the contemporary context.

Similar in tone to the "moderne" lettering that Ed Fella rendered in Detroit in the 1960s and 1970s, ファンシ lettering/characters are an exciting and little-explored branch of the global family of lettering.

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Idea Magazine lecture: Emil Ruder

Idea Magazine is hosting a lecture on the work of Swiss typographer and design educator Emil Ruder on Valentine's Day in Tokyo. More.

Entrance is limited to 120 folks. ¥700 admission. Aoyama Books Omotesando flagship store.

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Obsessive Consumption

I recently discovered the work of Kate Bingaman-Burt, and was surprised (but not too surprised) to find out she lives in Portland, OR, and teaches graphic design at PSU. She draws her daily purchases and they provide a different take on consuming altogether.

Visit Kate's website here.

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