New In The Shop

I was inspired to make a needle felted monster for my little niece who just turned seven. She will love him so much (he's the purple guy on the right). During the process of creating him from a puff of wool, I fell in love with the technique and created a few more. Murray is the guy on the left with the three eyes and three legs. Vitelli is the blue guy and those are his records which fit into a pocket on his back. George is the red orange guy holding a purple flower. 

Each of these little colorful characters stands between 6-7 inches tall and can be found in the shop.

Inside Out

"I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we'll turn the world...INSIDE OUT." -JR

Can art change the world? Yes! Have a look at the 2011 TED Prize winner's wish here: 

from TED.com:

Working anonymously, pasting his giant images on buildings, trains, bridges, the often-guerrilla artist JR forces us to see each other. Traveling to distant, often dangerous places -- the slums of Kenya, the favelas of Brazil -- he infiltrates communities, befriending inhabitants and recruiting them as models and collaborators. He gets in his subjects’ faces with a 28mm wide-angle lens, resulting in portraits that are unguarded, funny, soulful, real, that capture the spirits of individuals who normally go unseen. The blown-up images pasted on urban surfaces – the sides of buildings, bridges, trains, buses, on rooftops -- confront and engage audiences where they least expect it. Images of Parisian thugs are pasted up in bourgeois neighborhoods; photos of Israelis and Palestinians are posted together on both sides of the walls that separate them.

JR's most recent project, "Women Are Heroes," depicts women "dealing with the effects of war, poverty, violence, and oppression” from Rio de Janeiro, Phnom Penh, Delhi and several African cities. And his TED Prize wish opens an even wider lens on the world -- asking us all to turn the world inside out. Visit insideoutproject.net ...

"I would like to bring art to improbable places, create projects so huge with the community that they are forced to ask themselves questions."

JR, Beaux Arts Magazine

Matthew Cusick

Matthew Cusick was born in New York City in 1970 and graduated from The Cooper Union with a BFA in 1993. His work has been exhibited internationally since 1996.

Cusick lets his work be guided by his various materials: maps, atlases, encyclopedias and school textbooks. “I like to catalog, archive, and arrange information and then dismantle, manipulate, and reconfigure it. I use maps as a surrogate for paint and as a way to expand the limits of representational painting. Through a process of cutting up and reassembling fragments of maps from different places and times, I am attempting a more complete representation of an existence, one that incorporates the geographical and historical timelines of that existence within the matrix of its image.”

lil fish studios

Look what the mail brought today! 2lb of unsorted vintage buttons from lil fish studios. She's had give-aways and listed these bags before, but they were always sold out by the time I got to them. This time, when I saw her post on twitter, I jumped at the chance and I'm not disappointed in the least. There are some real beauties here. I am full of ideas and excited to create things just for certain buttons. If you have a moment to check out her etsy shop, please do.. She does fine work and ships quickly too.