All Photos By Gail
Wendell Castle (1932 – 2018) was one of America’s most important contemporary furniture makers, with several distinct stylistic phases in his career. At first he employed both exotic and native American woods to produce furniture characterized by biomorphic forms and attenuated surrealism.
Continue reading Eye On Design: Wendell Castle, Nirvana Armchair
All Photos By Gail
“I think that, with hindsight, this may have been a moment in my career where my own past and present truly came together, more so that with other collections, which, however much I cherished them, were a carefully stitched-together tapestry of obsessively researched elements. My Grunge collection was more ‘felt’ than it was thought.”
The 1993 Grunge collection secured Anna Sui’s place in the history of fashion. She saw Seattle’s grunge music scene as the major force in the youth culture of that period, and used the layering and mixing typical of its style to great effect, riffing on the youthful sincerity of the movement to produce some of the most influential looks of the nineties.
Anna Sui Grunge Kilt Ensemble, Detail: Polyester and Cotton Tank and Leggings with Totton Kilt and Shorts
Grunge style sprang out of a Seattle subculture in which a new wave of musicians, including Nirvana fronted by Kurt Cobain, sported a “thrift store” style of dressing that seemed to mirror their novel sound. This “un-fashion” style chimed with the decade’s rejection of the excesses of the 1980s and quickly went from subculture to mass culture. Marc Jacobs, working for Perry Ellis at the time, glamorized this style to create a grunge collect for Sping 1993. Sui’s references to grunge in her own collection, in contrast, are colored with optimism and a “hippie” sensibility. The outfit seen here features a kilt, widely associated with grunge, as well as a flower belt more reminiscent of the sixties or seventies
Lunchbox by Designs from the Deep, Cowhide/Rubber Boots by John Fluevog for Anna Sui
Anna Sui Grunge Kilt Ensemble (Spring 1993) Photographed in the Museum of Arts and Design
This Image By Poet, Other Photos By Gail
Poet is the name of a street artist whose work I discovered through his Pink Mail Box series, which is called Love Letters. I started following him on Instagram under the hashtag #poetwastaken and, over the weekend, I went out looking for a few of the works he’s been posting on his feed. This piece, which includes an image of Kurt Cobain alongside a spray painted quote, is located in Freeman’s Alley on the LES.
Once I found the piece in person (and if you’ve seen Freeman’s Alley, you know that’s no easy feat) I was disappointed to discover that the quote had already been pasted over by another artist’s work, even though Poet’s piece had only been up since January 28th. This kind of thing happens so often that Poet said he has learned not to let it bother him. Everything is a work in progress.
Poet, who is based in Los Angeles, told me a bit more about the Cobain piece in a chat via Instagram. “The Kurt Cobain piece was actually initially derived from his quote “Thank you for the trajedy (sic), I need it for my art.” I had spray painted that next to that paste up, but the very next day it was covered by another paste up. This lead me to a add a short and sweet message of “I’m so happy” over Kurt’s image. I’ve been painting that quote for about a year now, and with paste ups only for a few months.”
Watch for more street art by Poet to be featured here in the coming weeks!
UK-based rock quartet Milk Teeth embrace a ferociously energetic Retro Grunge sound coupled with a Modern Metal edge and an adhesive melodicism throughout. And if that description doesn’t pique your interest, you may be dead between the ears. Who can say. Comparisons to Nirvana (which we also saw in this spot just last week) are unavoidable, but there are way worse things a new band could be guilty of than inspiring enthusiastic comparisons to one of the most important and influential bands of the last 25 years. So any haters out here need to shut the fuck up.
A trade off of Melodic vs Aggressive vocal interplay between bassist Becky and guitarist Josh is a compelling highlight of this great clip, which mixes various scenes of the band’s wildly kinetic live shows with snippets of on-tour hang out activities, such as going to the zoo or hula-hooping back stage. Not only do they look like they are amazing live, but they also seem like they would be cool guys to hang out with. Win Win!
Milk Teeth released its latest EP, Sad Sack, earlier this year via Hopeless Records. I can’t imagine that it isn’t excellent. Like them on the FaceBook at This Link Enjoy!
Wow! When was the last time you heard somebody compare a current rock tune to a track from Bob Mould’s 1994 masterpiece, File Under: Easy Listening (recorded with his band Sugar), or an infinitely less dreary version of Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box”? Never? Yeah, probably. And yet, that is what we most want to convey about this week’s featured Video Clip, Creepoid’s “Dried Out,” off the band’s new album Cemetery Highrise Slum (what a great title!), which was just released on Collect Records. And that is high praise indeed.
The band explains that the video “was filmed the day after the last show of our US tour this Spring with A Place To Bury Strangers.” The Mitchell Wojcik-directed clip was shot on location at California’s Salton Sea (an enigmatic place of myth and legend if there ever was one) and features Kurt Heasley of Lilys playing a prominent role.
Maybe we’ve watched too much Breaking Bad, but what we can’t help but think of every time we see footage taking place in an arid, desert-like landscape are those scenes of Walt and Jessie meeting up with Gus and his various malevolent henchmen in a trailer out in the middle of nowhere. Much like those tenuous negotiations, the story told in this video doesn’t end well for anybody involved.
Find Creepoid’s US summer tour dates listed below. Enjoy!
Creepoid photo by Jammi York
