Kids love blowing bubbles, that much we know. When I was a kid, I also enjoyed this fun pastime, although back then bubble liquid came in plain plastic bottles (yawn, so boring) and not an insanely cute bottle shaped like a Pig. Life is not fair.
A close-out store recently opened not far from where I live in the East Village, and it was on my very first visit that I spotted this week’s Pink Thing: Bubble For Kids featuring an adorable, tiny Pink Mermaid. Squee.
There is so much beauty in NYC, and you don’t have to look very far to find it. I was getting my steps in one Sunday afternoon when I noticed this beautiful, mirror-polished stainless steel abstract sculpture for first time. I took a handful of photos and then did some Googling to get the lowdown on this artwork, and this is what I found out. Artist David Fried’sStemmer (part of an eponymous sculpture series ) is a public artwork that was permanently installed on the northeast corner of 34th Street and First Avenue in April of 2019, while the site (which is the courtyard of a high-rise apartment building) was still under construction, and before the plaza officially opened to the public in May. Continue reading David Fried’s Stemmer Gets a Permanent Home on East 34th Street→
In imagining Michael Jackson (1958 – 2009) as a contemporary god of pop culture, Jeff Koons draws on long histories of representing mythic figures in sculpture. In Michael Jackson and and Bubbles (1988), the singer cradles his pet chimpanzee, mimicking a Pieta as perhaps a poignant evolutionary take on the composition of a mother and her child. Koons uses the techniques and conventions of traditional Meissen porcelain — a medium often associated with kitsch — on a grand scale, to underscore the mass appeal of his subject. Similarly, the pronounced use of gold signals excess to the point of banality, even as it reflects the brilliance of the megastar in the manner of an Egyptian pharaoh.
Photographed as Part of the Exhibit Like Life: Sculpture, Color and The Body, at The Met Breuer, NYC.
Swedish design firm Front’s Surface Tension Lamp (2014) was the result of a collaboration with the Dutch design firm Booo. Asked to create a light that used LED technology, the group took a counter-intuitive approach. Continue reading Surface Tension Bubbles Lamp By Front→