So Fresh and So Green

We’re running out of all of our energy sources. Four hundred trees are burned to make 25,000 bricks. It’s a consumption issue, and honestly, it’s starting to scare me.” ~Ginger Krieg Dosier, 2010′s Next Generation Design Competition winner

The 32 year old Dosier is an American architect in Abu Dhabi who won an innovative design prize for her “green” bricks. These bricks are made with sand, common bacteria, calcium chloride and urea (a compound found in urine) in a process called microbial-induced calcite precipitation. The bacteria is non-pathogenic, no heat is used just mixing and what’s greener than reusing what’s in urine?

How is it made? (more…)

If you like it then you shoulda put a bookmark on it!

The first time Gigi Bio showed me her work she said, “See, this is what it looks like in my head”. So what’s in her head are photos from multiple views, images of New York City’s urban landscape, herself, and those she meets in her travels. Each image layered upon each other is unique like the snowflakes that come together to blanket her adopted city in the middle of winter.

The single image formed can show anything from hard angles in architecture softened in a layered, loose, curvilinear composition or a reflection of the ever shifting energy of urban life swirling around a singular figure simply waiting for a walk signal on a street corner.

I told her my first thoughts were of cubism, specifically Marcel Duchamp’s cubist inspired “Nude Descending A Staircase No. 2″ pictured left, which depicts a woman at multiple moments while in motion through still images, abstract lines and planes presented all as one image. Gigi shut down that label with the quickness!

I set out to find out what the stuff in Gigi’s head is, how it got there and what she intends to do with it next. Oh yeah, and why she doesn’t want to be called a cubist! (more…)

If you like it then you shoulda put a bookmark on it!

Untitled (2005), photo on russian baltic birch multi-ply plywood, 72″x48″, corporate headquarters, Vitamin Water.

I got the opportunity to throw some questions out at artist Josh Goldstein about his art, his love of New York City and a major theme in his work, NYC’s local convenience stores- bodegas.

Madam Toussaint: The economy is effecting our corner stores now too. I never thought I’d see the day when even bodegas would be going out of business, not mention the exterior replacements with “impermanent vinyl awnings”. In these times it seems your work is taking on a historical/archival tone. You couldn’t have predicted the economic crisis but how do you feel about the tone of your work possibly changing?

Josh Goldstein: I love bodegas. Especially a classic bodega with all the Dominican candies in the plastic canisters on the front counter, and an endless supply of tropical sodas from the Bronx, and the Yankees game playing on a small TV above the deli counter. But I’ve never really thought of my work in an archival way. It’s true that I’ve focused a lot on bodegas, but mostly it’s their energy that inspires me, not really their particular look from a particular time. It’s that raw energy that I try to use as a starting point to capture the energy and chaos of New York. (more…)

If you like it then you shoulda put a bookmark on it!