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

Peter Nencini’s Hand Werk boxes are sets of materials and forms designed for abstract play. The components—made of wood, plastic, ceramic, rubber and fabric— are “mostly designed and cut to combine with counterparts sourced from school science lab suppliers for example, have a character that sits somewhere between board game bits, measurement tools, ambiguous accessories for clothing, for eating.”

The object of the sets is to encourage truly imaginative play; that is, play free of rules, goals, guidelines or restrictions. Nencini provides forms that beg to be touched and stacked and rearranged, then lets viewers do the rest. Each kit is boxed in a plain brown container and comes without instructions. Brilliant.

Ahoy! Looks like the new issue of our favorite art journal is out. It’s Nice That Issue #3 is 128 pages of brainy, eye-popping fun. Numero tres includes interviews with photographer Dan Tobin Smith, a feature called “Graphics vs. Poetry” by WLYS fave Geoff McFetridge, work by Adam Voorhes and Taizo Yamamoto (among others), and an interview with the esteemed graphic designer Milton Glaser (AWESOME.)

As eternal students of the creative process, we’re equally charmed by the Flickr set documenting each step of Issue #3’s production.

Three cheers to Will Hudson, Alex Bec, Florencia Soto and the rest of the team for their impressive contribution to bookshelves everywhere. Y’all should get your orders in swiftly!

Jean Jullien’s work is joyous and wide-ranging. There’s the illustration, for one thing, not to mention the videos, costumes, installations, books and posters. This might be old news to you—the guy IS, after all, pretty famous— but what about his diary? Have you seen that?

If not, get on it! Jullien posts prodigious excerpts online from the notebook he fills with daily writings and drawings. Browsing the scans is like flipping through the sketchbook/journal of a 21st-century polymath. It’s an easy and efficient way to get your daily requirement of RAD.

Rose Clark does a lot of things— too many to name in one place but all worth examining more closely at her website. The artist/designer is effortlessly versatile, producing everything from an Edwardian tuxedo shirt and wearable paper trousers made from Tyvek to a poster made in homage to the Bodoni typeface (with information about its creator and history of use) to a research project examining the history of pattern cutting in folk clothing around the world.

There’s so much to see here; we haven’t even mentioned the gorgeous book designs and collages from found photos and abstract landscapes. Clark’s is the kind of astonishing range that can make a person crazily envious or crazily inspired or both. We’re sticking firmly with “inspired”.

Emily Cheng’s projects are tinged with humor and exquisite taste and influenced by everything from Mexico City architecture to fallen trees to radio infrastructure maps.

Her experiments—some documented online here— include a USB teddy bear based on Deleuze & Guattari’s writings on the rhizome (see above), a hypothetical tour bus for Chaucer’s pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales (it features wall-sconce lighting and goblet holders) and an installation that metaphorically (or metonymically?) contains the elements of a cloud storm in one room via white balloons suspended at varying heights.

The connecting thread among Emily’s works is a conceptual rigor matched with technical perfection and…most importantly…a distinct element of zaniness. Behold.

Mina Fina, in her own words, “wakes up everyday with good intentions but ends up eating cakes.” Oh, but she does so much more! Living and working in Slovenia, the artist is a wellspring of creativity. She makes videos, books, drawings, websites, zines, keeps a Polaroid diary, sends exquisite cards to her friends and collaborates on installations.

If it were possible to reproduce Mina Fina’s entire portfolio right here, in this blog post, we’d do it. We like it that much, and want to share it that much. Given the constraints, however, you’ll have to go spelunking on your own. The best we can do is supply a bouquet of links and point to the news page of Mina’s website, which keeps us up to date on her output.

Finally and also worth mentioning is the artist’s interactive experimental comic book project Enoletnica/YearBook. We were lucky enough to obtain a copy of the book project, which is a gorgeous, sturdy diary-calendar divided into twelve months. Cryptic drawings, prompts and designs cover each page, and a sheet of stickers is included for customizing the book. Instructions and further keys to interpreting the book are available each month the book’s corresponding website.

Maxwell Holyoke-Hirsch has created illustrations and images for everything from old guards like The New Yorker to WLYS favorites GOOD Magazine.

Holyoke-Hirsch does gorgeous, risky things with color, and his illustrations are both expressive and precise—a thorny balance to strike. The artist’s positive energy and enthusiasm are also infectious in the best possible way: check out his blog for proof, as well as this visual diary of his process, easily one of the most articulate (yet: wordless!) accounts of creativity we’ve seen on the internets.

Until Danny Espinoza gets his website up, we’re gonna have to settle for obsessive viewing of his flickr page. Espinoza’s drawings and illustrations have a lightness and humor that we can’t get enough of. He’s like that kid in high school chemistry class that you always wanted to pass notes with. We’re enchanted and intrigued.

Christopher Svensson’s work is conceptually, visually and imaginatively awesome. These qualities often appear individually in artists and designers, or *maybe* in conjunction with one other, but it’s rare to find all three in the same person. Call the search off!

Happily, Svensson documents his work for us online. A few highlights include his useful information graphic poster comparing the sound qualities of the Neil Young song “Cinnamon Girl” in two different audio formats, a series of knit works based on internet memes, book interventions (see here), and another infographic dealing with a signature Phil Spector moment.

Karen Barbé is a textile designer from Santiago, Chile, and her work is heartbreakingly beautiful. Moreover, she keeps a rigorously-updated blog documenting her work and her aesthetic fixations, and the blog is a work of art in itself. Not only is the author unstoppably creative, but she seems to have the Midas touch: in Barbé’s hands old cross-stitch patterns become gorgeous cut-outs and empty plastic bottles turn into adorable pins.

Inspirations include traditional Chilean pottery, books of vintage patterns, Macedonian aprons, Lanigrafía (”the art of depicting landscapes or objects using different embroidery stitches and colors”), thrift stores, quilting, vintage fashion sketches and so much more.