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With artist/skateboarder Ed Templeton’s show The Seconds Pass passing through Los Angeles tonight, I thought it would be apro-pro to point you towards WKE and Aaron Rose’s ongoing D.I.Y. America series which is currently focusing on skateboarding and creativity.

(click corresponding images to view episodes)

• Skate and Create: Part 4 The Artists features icons who’ve taken lessons learned from skateboarding into their respective crafts such as Geoff McFetridge, Thomas Campbell, Andy Jenkins, Ray Barbee, Kevin Ancell, Thurston Moore, Tony Hawk and more.

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For the denizens of design: My dear design-minded Gelatobaby friend Alissa Walker has been selected to co-curate The Pasadena Museum of California Art’s fourth annual California Design Biennial and is looking for a few good like-minded contributors for the Industrial Design portion of the show. Details and info below and remember, entries due by March 1, 2010.

From Ms. Alis:

“I’ve covered the PMCA’s design biennial for the last few years and it’s always served as a great survey of the state’s design. This year, however, we decided to theme it in a way that was appropriate to these times:

“Americans today live in a world of transformation and upheaval; we are facing a national economic  crisis and worldwide political uncertainties and are becoming increasingly attuned to environmental issues. The designs in California Design Biennial: Action/Reaction will address how designers are responding to these issues and how the products they create reflect the influences of our changing world.”

So, I am looking for a range of industrial design pieces, from furniture to gadgets, which evoke these principles:

1. Visually excellent (this goes without saying)
2. Initiated or furthers positive change:  economic, political, environmental, or social (creates an Action/Reaction, if you will)
3. Designed in California between January 2008 and early 2010 (as in by now)

To help me out, add worthy products—either your firm’s, something you own and love, or maybe something you spotted in a magazine or blog—to the CA Biennial Industrial Design Flickr group (or you can email directly to me, but uploading to Flickr would be really great). And if you’ve got something in the Graphic Design, Fashion, Architecture or Transportation fields, be sure to pass it along to my cohorts. We must receive all submissions by March 1, 2010.”

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Beautiful Losers graphic/poster designer and my good buddy Keith Scharwath is now also a good art director as he guest art directs the upcoming Neighborhoods issue of GOOD magazine. In his new do-gooder role he’s looking for a few good contributors and that’s where you good creative types come in. Get in while the gettings good!

From Keith’s Carwash (obvs cover deadline has passed but content submissions ongoing through Feb 15!):

“Are you an artist or a photographer? We’ve opened up the issue to the greater creative web community through Society6 for visual artists, and Pictory for photographers. What this means in a nutshell is if you are interested in having your art in (or on the cover) of the magazine, you can participate on these sites and your art may be chosen.

The Society6 deadline is end of day tomorrow – Feb. 9th. Click here for more information about participating on Society6.

The Pictory deadline is Feb. 15th. Click here for more info about submitting a photo to Pictory.”

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New is old and old is new again with Robert Penney’s CVS 2600 video game box art of recent films, including one for something called Avatar(?) Reminiscent of graphic designer Spacesick’s clever “I Can Read Movies” series-an ongoing collection of film-based retro book covers.

Click here or a game below to see the entire set.

And for kicks, here’s a couple of the Spacesick’s latest “books” from the aforementioned “I Can Read Movies” series.

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Attention creative types: the collaborative project Artists Wanted has come up with a self portrait contest for you. Depicting yourself through “Fine Art, Painting, Sculpting, Drawing, Installation, Print Making, Graphic Design, Glass, Book Arts, Performance, Video Art, Street Art/Graffiti, Photography, Tattoo Art” and be judged by an esteemed panel of judges (Steve Buscemi?!) The grand prize winner will receive $7007 or 6 months free living in NYC. Submissions are due by January 14th, 2010.

Read on below or click Dali for more info.

From Artists Wanted:

“You are invited to participate in “The Power of Self” an international competition celebrating the vitality of self portraiture. A panel of judges including actor Steve Buscemi, director Chris Weitz, Guggenheim curator Helen Hsu and Flavorpill founder Sascha Lewis will award one artist a package of incredible prizes including six months of free living at The Edge in New York City or $7007 in cash. The most popular portfolio as voted by the public will also receive $1,000 cash. Your images have power. Now is your moment to reveal them to the world.“

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Yes, you read that right, free money! Courtesy of my bearded graphic designer buddy Keith Scharwath in commemoration of the grand opening of his blog Carwash, Keith will be giving away 100 free Gocco prints on dollar bills with a special message printed on each hand numbered bill. In addition to designing the beautiful poster for Beautiful Losers (which is always up on the left side of this site), Keith has worked on a wide variety of design projects ranging from album covers; logos corporate and non; good work for GOOD; and various Nike projects amongst many others. Please help welcome Keith’s new blog, Carwash, to the interwebs by clicking over for some visual stimulation, inspiration and a “free print (or a free dollar)” while supplies last!

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A solid first weekend of November with friends in art shows, friends being crafty, and Pac Man going up against Kitty. I got my money on Manny.

• Fifteen years strong, Marsea Goldberg’s venerable New Image Art Gallery keeps banging out the hits with the help of special human being Amber Abramson (who herself is often busy-being) as they present the group show 14 Artists. And these aren’t just any artists, they’re heavy hitters Judith Supine, Cleon Peterson, Skullphone, The Date Farmers, Richard Colman, and Erik Foss among others. Party starts at the gallery and continues on to the after-party at the Cha Cha in Silver Lake.

• Get your craft on at the Contemporary Crafts Market in Santa Monica as my dear old friend Tianna Osborne will be displaying (and selling) her art through her uniquely beautiful purses through the weekend. Flyer below is good for free admission for two!

• Want more Manny? Of course you do! So I suggest you start waiting in line now at Hollywood’s Montálban Theater as Nike Sportswear presents Under the Hood with Manny Pacquiao, a send off celebration and Q&A with the man himself and his team of Freddie Roach, Buboy Fernandez and Alex Ariza. RSVP is mandatory and capacity will surely be reached, but if you can’t make it in person the event will be streaming live on Niksportswear.com, Complex.com, and Facebook.

• The HVW8 Art+Design Gallery on Melrose reunites three old designer friends with the show Michael, Kevin & Geoff. Those three amigos would be: Geoff McFetridge who was of course in Beautiful Losers and whose work you’ve most recently seen in the title design of Where the Wild Things Are; graphic designer Michael Leon whose work with Nike is well documented; and Kevin Lyons who’s well, Kevin Lyons.

• Ever wanted to know how to blow yourself up? If your answer is yes (or if you just want to see some good art) then you’re in luck as WK Interact teaches you how to do so at Echo Park’s Subliminal Projects with his solo show aptly titled How to Blow Yourself Up.

• Speaking of blowing stuff up, the Three Apples Exhibition Celebrating 35 years of Hello Kitty continues at the Royal/T Cafe in Culver City with limited edition print releases, live painting, and meet and greets with some of the participating artists of this never ending event. Along with my Hit+Run homeboys silk-screening gear, Buff Monster and Plasticgod will be among the artists on hand from 4-9pm. Presented by Juxtapoz and Japan LA.

• And finally, another celebratory show as the clothing line Blood is the New Black celebrates their five years of existence with a group show and party at Silver Lake’s JÜNC Gallery. And what would an art party be without my talented friends, the lovely Jesse Spears and the sometimes bearded Dan Monick, among the many participating artists.

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Music meets design meets America as musician Orba Squara (a.k.a. Mitch Davis) went on a 10 city tour in 10 days via bus to promote his latest album fittingly titled The Trouble with Flying. And tagging along to document the magical mystical tour across the country was Random Collective designer and former Wieden+Kennedy creative director José Ricardo Cabral Cabaco. What came of this trippy trip was a truly unique multimedia tour diary featuring “a 430-ft. lateral scroll that takes visitors on the road through lyrics, musings, photography, illustration and typography.” From New Jersey to New Mexico, Pennsylvania to Portland, you could side scroll for hours on their site while virtually visiting the stops they made on their epic journey at the equally epic Orbasquara.com.

Also you can read the AIGA’s interview with José Cabaco here.

The following is a selection of stills from the incredibly impressive Orbasquara site.

*And where might have you heard Orba Squara’s music before? Maybe from this little diddy in a commercial for something called an “iPhone”:

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Nothing like a little “Eggs and Sausage” served up by Tom Waits (who you just saw as The Devil) to get you through your hump day blues, or quite possibly keep them going on this gloomy August L.A. day. Brought to you by New York based graphic designer Jackie Lay who was awarded the Certificate of Typographic Excellence by the Type Directors Club.

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With the latest Where the Wild Things Are trailer comes another set of poignantly simple and elegantly hand drawn titles designed by the mcmaster, Geoff McFetridge. You can check out Geoff’s previous title work for the first theatrical trailer over here. Does anything else need to be said about this film other than that it comes out October 13th? I think not.

Where the Wild Things Are subjects of previously related webternet postings:

• Where the Wild Things Are Featured in a Featurette

• Where the Wild Things Love You So

• Kubrick and Geoff McFetridge meet the Wild Things

• New Wild Things theatrical poster
  

• Where the Wild Things Are theatrical trailer and photo gallery

• One sheet poster and theatrical trailer info

• Wild Things skateboards and shoes

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