shape+colour = 2.

This week shape+colour turns two years old. I still remember sitting down to start up with WordPress and write the first post. I had no idea how many amazing things would come from it and how many art lovers, fellow bloggers,  and crazy talented people, from all around the world, I would have the privilege of meeting.

Major thanks to everyone who stops by and to everyone who shares their own work, their links, or their thoughts. It means so much to me that you take time to send your art and your opinions my way, and I can never thank you enough. Art is meant to be discussed, pondered, considered, and shared, and sharing what I love with all of you is one of the biggest highlights and most special parts of my life.

Jeremy.

off to south africa…

Howzit. Tomorrow I’m heading off to South Africa. I’m not sure what the internet connection (if any) will be like in the rural area where I’ll be, but while I’m there I’m going to try and update on my trip-blog, Small Great Love.

I’ll be back posting to shape+colour on April 28th.

small great love.

Hey everybody. Some of you have noticed the new tab at the top of the blog, but today I’m officially kicking off a side project: Small Great Love.

Next week I’ll be going to South Africa, with 9 other people from Virgin companies around the world, on a “Wake Up Trip” created by Virgin Unite – Virgin’s global charity. We’ll be heading to Newington – a village about 6 hours drive northeast of Johannesburg – where we’ll spend a week building a crèche (the South African term that’s similar to “kindergarten”) for the local families. Their current crèche is run down and, even worse, the 5 and 6-year old kids are forced to cross an active railroad track to get to it. We’re going to not only be building on the safe side of the tracks, but we’re also going totally environmentally friendly: VOC-free paint, recycled materials, eco-friendly learning toys, a play set made from recycled tires, a vegetable garden, rain-water collectors, and way more.

Starting today, I’ll be chronicling the trip on Small Great Love. The name arose from a quote by Mother Teresa, that “we can do no great things, only small things with great love.” This idea means a lot to me; it speaks to the power we all have to do small things that are unspeakably meaningful. If we look at the world as a whole, our problems easily seem insurmountable. But with acts of small great love any person, any where, can make a difference in the life of someone else. To me, that’s such a beautiful, life-affirming thing.

If you’re into it, please check out Small Great Love. Follow it so that I can show you the trip. And if you want, you can also donate online to the crèche directly through Virgin Unite. The more cash we can raise, the more support we can give the kids at the school. Thanks y’all.

mikel uribetxeberria.

I love it when my expectations (and my notions of what belongs where) are shattered. And when it’s done by a beautifully-honed image, then that’s even more kick ass.  It’s the sort of unassuming subtlety of these shots by Basque photographer Mikel Uribetxeberria that gets me. The locations are sort of banal and sterile, while the animals don’t appear unnerved; they’re almost pensively bored more than anything else. It’s the apparent, unapologetic normalcy of such an incrediblly abnormal situation that makes these shots so interesting.

benh zeitlin: glory at sea.

The naming system for storms has always struck me as odd. We don’t humanize the names of earthquakes, or tornadoes, or avalanches, or famines, or any other force of nature or human evil that occasionally ravage and remind us of how helpless we really are. Hurricanes and cyclones are different. Perhaps because they’re so predictable now, so much technology to heed their arrival. Perhaps we decided, like so many things, to name it a certain way in an attempt to forget what it really is. Such pretty names for such violent upheavals: Camille. Celia. Isabel.

And then one day came Katrina…

Like a modern day Atlantis, in 2005 a city was swallowed by the sea. But it won’t be the violence of the storm that history will note the most. The flood will not be remembered as the disaster, but as the precursor to the real cataclysm: the failure of a government which created a catastrophe worse than the storm itself. More brutal in that it perpetuated death instead of fighting it and more evil because it was created at the hands of humans. The storm must be excused as a random act of sea and sky. The men and women who failed to respond cannot be excused. And so the world watched as one of the biggest cities in one of the richest countries in the world quickly drowned and then slowly rotted.

And so what becomes of those who are left? Benh Zeitlin’s stunning surrealist film “Glory At Sea” shows how the forces that tear us to pieces aren’t as strong as the human need to find our way home and reunite with everything we’d been denied. Told piercingly beautifully, it lets us know that no matter how brutal, nothing good ever really ends. And no one is truly alone.

Via No Fat Clips!

holger pooten.

Slick-looking surrealist and gravity-defying shots from German-born, U.K.-based photographer Holger Pooten. Besides his personal work he’s also shot for heavy hitter clients like Adidas, Nike, Virgin, Orange, and Vogue. I’m especially into the first series of shots with the freeze-frame sprays of various projectile particles held geometrically in the air and the gravity-defying 3-D dissections. If you dig Pooten’s stuff, then you need to also check out the work of Denis Darzacq and the (again, German) team of Vivien Wayruch and Fabian Röttger.

Via PICDIT

gary hustwit: objectified.

Yes please. The amazing Gary Hustwit’s new full-length industrial design doc, “Objectified”, is gearing up to hit the festivals this spring and the trailer has just been released. Featuring design luminaries like Apple’s Jonathan Ive – the man who led the designs for nothing less than the iMac, Powerbook, iPod, and iPhone – and many more, “Objectified” opens our eyes to the fact that everything we see, all around us, every day… was designed. Someone, somewhere, is responsible for the specific way we interact with everything we touch. If you think about it long enough, you start to go nuts.

Watch the trailer. Watch it right now:

Hustwit also directed 2007’s “Helvetica”, one of my fave documentaries ever, about the ubiquitous, much loved (and much maligned… someone’s always gotta hate) mega-font. If you didn’t see “Helvetica” then you missed out. Even if you’re not a design nerd you’ll enjoy it. And if you are a design nerd, then “Helvetica” is pretty much typophile porn. I dare you to watch it without touching yourself…

ernie + bert: have yourself a merry little christmas.

Best. Christmas. Show. Ever.

The only thing better than some old skool E+B is them singing Christmas carols. This is one of my best memories of Christmas as a little kid.

No matter what you celebrate, or if you celebrate, it’s cold outside. So at least spend some time hugging somebody… Sexy hugging.

Happy holidays. I’ll be back January 5th.

chuck anderson: wandering off into space.

NoPattern (a.k.a. Chuck Anderson) is one of my fave artists ever. One of his prints, “Places You Can’t Imagine”, hangs above my bed.

Now, his website has (huzzah!) a promo for a new book of art, design, illustration, and photography he’s releasing, called “Wandering Off Into Space”,with (boo!) absolutely no details other than it’s coming in December 2008. It’s already the 17th. I need it now. I don’t need to know anything about it. If it’s from Chuck Anderson, then it’s awesomeness is guaranteed.

UPDATE: The book is now totally up for sale for the crazy reasonable price of only $25. Considering the quality of his work, Chuck is basically giving thie shit away for free. I’ve already ordered mine, and so should you. Right now. Plus there are some gorgeous new pics of the book as well. As if this wasn’t already all incentive enough, it’s been announced that a portion of the proceeds from the book are going to Invisible Children.

the american dollar: anything you synthesize.

This video is so fucking beautiful it makes me ache. Slightly reminiscent of Björk and Michel Gondry’s legendary vid for “Jóga”, Dutch creative studio Onesize and director Kasper Verweij have created a simply mind-numbingly gorgeous glimpse of sand, earth, and sky for experimental U.S. duo The American Dollar‘s “Anything You Synthesize.”

Languid and immersive, the video scrolls in one long, looping slope through time and space without any shots of the band or any other human being. Constantly moving, it’s earthy and ethereal vibe cycles through nature in one of the most  exciting visual landscapes I’ve ever seen: teeming and florid, decayed and hopeless. In a world So barren it’s lush, so dark it shines. It’s like drugs for your eyes. The visual are grainy and aged, like a memory, and give the whole thing the feeling of re-visiting a place you’d forgotten you’d been. The ultimate déja vu.

Shut the door, dim the lights, turn off your phone, and give yourself four minutes to do nothing but behold…

Vodpod videos no longer available.

From Onesize’s website:

“After hearing work from ‘The American Dollar’ we really felt the urge to create a music video for one of their new songs. Inspired by the music we had the idea of making a decaying world. One single cameramovement from left to right, showing a landscape, looping 9 times. Day becomes night and even the seasons go by. After we finished the production, we decided to reverse the whole video. This gives you a seamingly happy end, but you know what’s going to happen. There are no lyrics and we did not pay attention to the title of the song, we just felt this was the right thing to do.”

Via Motionographer + Ventilate