We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

A new delicious cookie blog from our friends at Band of Outsiders. Megan’s cookies got great a review. If we can use this to convince her to to leave The Ringer to open a Girl Skateboard bakery, then all we be perfect.

Jasoux creates pictures with the density of a Where’s Waldo illustration and the delirious beauty of a Tomi Ungerer drawing. Using watercolor paint, black ink lines and felt pens on paper, the artist scans in the images and occasionally re-jiggers the compositions ’til its perfectly imperfect.

Characters sprout grass from their legs, twist into knots, fall into holes, think about mustard and walk down lonely streets. There are floating heads, fantastical creatures, 3-D polygons, blobs, little dudes, big dudes, medium-sized dudes, and adorable aliens. You could call them automatic drawings or stream-of-consciousness images, but we just like to think of them as direct visual extensions of Jasoux’s imagination.

The small press superstars at Nieves just released a beautiful zine comprised of images from Spike’s new short film, I’m Here. Cinematographer Adam Kimmel’s gorgeous grain and seductively smoky light take center stage here, in a selection of stills that underline the exceptionally organic vibe of this subtle sci-fi tale. From Nieves:

Spike Jonze’s new half-hour short film titled I’m Here is a robot love story celebrating a life enriched by creativity. The movie is set in contemporary L.A., where life moves at a seemingly regular pace with the exception of a certain amount of robot residents who live among the population. A male robot librarian lives a solitary and methodical life – devoid of creativity, joy and passion – until he meets an adventurous and free spirited female robot.

YES WAY, JOSE.

We Love You So’s very own Molly Young has collaborated with artist Christopher Luxton on a limited-edition 80-page manual titled Troubleshooting. The book is stuffed with gnomic images, instructions for living, aired regrets, riddles, confessions and trade secrets…all wrapped up in an ombré-dyed cover. Imagine a cross between a zine, an encyclopedia, and a diary. That’s the general idea.

The book will soon be available at Urban Outfitters. For now, scoop up your copy right here!

It’s a sad day for bananafish: the great J.D. Salinger passed away yesterday at the grand old age of 91. Celebrate the author of Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey and Nine Stories with this splendid hand-drawn wallpaper from Stickers and Donuts. Here’s raising a glass to Mr. Salinger.

Join us at the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood this weekend for Mastodon Mesa’s debut group show, Mastodon Maze! I co-curated this show with Mya Stark. It may or may not include: ballroom dancers, gynecological blasphemy, paleolithic wool-spinning workshops, modular tetrahedrons, fabric portal party arteries, haunted mirrors, cup-string telecommunications, undead florae, trompe-l’oeil record collections, dream object development, horrific make-out closets, free wine, lovable mermen, hair-dryer symphonies, two stunningly chromatic landscapes, and a prism parlor.

It definitely includes work from more than 20 of our favorite artists, notably a wall of wonders from We Love You So friend Michael C. Hsiung. There’s a huge art fair going on at the Pacific Design Center all weekend, so if you check that out (on the 2nd floor), don’t forget to head up to the 5th floor to get lost in Mastodon Maze.

Kevin F and John G are a pair of artists working outta Cleveland and doing their part to create (and conserve) a vibrant little arts and comics scene in the Buckeye State. They deserve a round of applause and a series of vigorous high-fives, at the very least.

The boys have been kind enough to post the first issue of Shiner magazine online for free downloading so that anyone can soak up the anthologized short stories of John G, Kevin Fagan and George McDougall. When was the last time you read comics that dealt with memory, ennui and various other weird psychic spaces? And that also included kittens? Hmm?

Go on, then.

Do yourself a favor and peruse the playful paintings of Coles Phillips. Surging to prominence after World War I and riding the wave of the roaring 20’s, Phillips was a young genius of editorial art whose work conquered the newsstands on the covers of periodicals like Life and Good Housekeeping. Deceptively straightforward, Phillips’ style isn’t far off from the eye-popping photorealism that Norman Rockwell would later hone into an art– yet each piece seems to be hinting at something beneath the surface. Establishing a distinct voice in the early days of visual mass media couldn’t have been easy, but Phillips’ work manages to tell you who he is even as it sells you cars, silverware, and the American dream.

Procrastination is Johnny Kelly’s graduation film for MA in animation at the Royal College of Art. An investigative study into the practice (and art) of putting things off, it offers the thesis that sometimes the only way to get something done is to do two dozen other things first. Sound familiar?

If you had a personal in-house artist to illustrate your nightmares (and maybe a couple of your dreams), the result would be something like Dantes Wharf.

Not sure what the overarching scheme of the site is, but it sure as hell does a good job at assembling all the classic nightmare signifiers in one place. We’ve got hominid skeletons, beady-eyed reptiles, de-gloved arms, swirling indescribable polygons, disturbing girls with Princess Leia buns, overenthusiastic canines, aliens, freaky kids, ultrasound machines, jellyfish, robots, anthropomorphism, googly eyes, human hearts, the food pyramid, blood, guts, horns, beaks, contorted mannequins and so much more.

The browsing might give you a heart attack but, hey, what’s a heart attack now and then? It’s worth it. We promise.