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Art Craft Documentary

A Book and New Documentary Explore the Possibilities of Ink-Making in Urban Environments

Jason Logan’s entry into ink-making started with a black walnut tree he encountered while biking through a local Toronto park. After gathering the fallen seeds and bringing them home, he boiled the green nuts until they produced a rich brown pigment. Now nearly ten years ago, this moment became the catalyst for what’s grown into an expansive network of projects exploring the possibilities of color and foraging in the most unlikely spaces.

Logan founded The Toronto Ink Company in 2014 and began to create pigments from materials gathered around the Canadian city, including the aforementioned black walnut but also street detritus like cigarette butts, soot, and rust. The idea was to create more environmentally conscious products and extend foraging into urban environments. “You start seeking out hopeful green spaces under a highway overpass or in a back alley,” Logan said in an interview. “A rusty nail becomes a possible ink or a penny with greenish oxidation on it.”

These discoveries led to Make Ink, his 2018 guidebook for scavenging with recipes and tips on creating pigments at home. Organized by color, the 192-page volume encompasses history and science and focuses on the alchemy behind his work. The book is also the predecessor to the artist’s latest project, a feature-length documentary that delves into his harvesting and production process.

Currently screening in Canada, The Colour of Ink follows Logan as he gathers organic and human-made substances and transforms them into usable goods. Featuring artists and writers like Margaret Atwood, Kōji Kakinuma, and Heidi Gustafson (previously), the film highlights the connection to the earth and emphasizes the lively qualities of the material. “The ink I make is unpredictable. It’s fugitive. It’s on the run,” Logan says in the trailer.” “What I’m hoping to do is draw people’s attention to minute differences.”

Pick up a copy of Make Ink on Bookshop, and follow Logan on Instagram for updates on additional documentary screenings, which are likely to happen in Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, and throughout the U.S. in the coming months.

 

Photography

Highlighting Wildlife in Crisis, ‘The New Big 5’ Celebrates the Diversity of the World’s Animal Denizens

In the Victorian era, big game hunting saw a meteoric rise in popularity, coinciding with Britain’s colonization of numerous regions in the so-called “Scramble for Africa” and the advent of more accurate firearms that galvanized a fashion for amassing “exotic” trophies. Sometimes intended for museums, specimens were often bound for private collections, and creatures that roamed the vast African continent were considered particularly attractive prizes.

Known as the Big Five, the lion, leopard, black rhinoceros, African bush elephant, and African buffalo were considered the most difficult species to hunt on foot. Today, many of these animals are vulnerable and endangered and must be protected in nature reserves in order to prevent being unlawfully hunted to extinction. In his forthcoming book The New Big 5, photographer Graeme Green wants to flip the narrative: “Shooting with a camera, not a gun.”

The New Big 5 is the culmination of a three-year project celebrating the remarkable multiplicity of Earth’s inhabitants, which also aims to raise awareness of the fragility of their existence as their habitats are increasingly threatened due to the climate crisis. In April 2020, Green asked people around the world to suggest what animals they most enjoyed seeing in photographs. More than 3,000 people voted for their favorites, and the list includes species found in Asia and North America, too: elephants, tigers, gorillas, polar bears, and lions. Family life is a particular focus, emphasizing the universally tender relationships of parents rearing their babies.

With more than a million species at risk of extinction worldwide, Green wanted the project “to focus attention on all of the world’s incredible wildlife, large and small, and the urgent need to act together globally to save these animals, our planet, and ourselves.” The book brings together more than 200 photographs by 146 photographers from around the world and contains numerous interviews and essays by some of the foremost conservationists, scientists, and activists working today.

Scheduled for release on April 4, you can pre-order a copy on Bookshop, and visit the project’s website to learn more.

 

Design Photography Science

‘Open Circuits’ Slices Everyday Electronics to Reveal Their Surprisingly Stunning Insides

Whether the invisible circuitry that powers our phones or the bundled cables that transport sound and data, it’s easy to appreciate common technologies for their functional purposes and simplification of daily life. A recently released book from No Starch Press, though, treasures these components for the artistry of their engineering and highlights the intricacy and elegance inherent within each design.

Open Circuits: The Inner Beauty of Electronic Components features photographs of 130 technologies cross-cut or altered to reveal their otherwise hidden elements. Written by Windell Oskay and Eric Schlaepfer, the book features a vast array of objects like headphone jacks, HDMI cables, and even retro neon lamps as it offers nearly impossible glimpses for those of us interested in keeping our devices intact. Each page is both a dive into technological history and an ode to the evolution and aesthetics of electronics themselves.

Although Open Circuits is currently back-ordered on Bookshop, the publisher says that more copies should be available within the coming weeks. Until then, check out the book’s site and watch the making-of video below. (via Kottke)

 

Art History

After Sitting in Storage for More Than Three Decades, an Art Amusement Park Is Finally Going On Tour

In the summer of 1987, a carnival like no other popped up for thirteen weeks on a public green in Hamburg, Germany. Walking through a gate featuring an oversized painting by Sonia Delaunay, visitors entered the world of Luna Luna, an amusement park brimming with rides and kiosks designed by some of the most recognizable names in 20th century art history like David Hockney, Roy Lichtenstein, and Salvador Dalí, to name a few. Altogether, thirty-five artists were invited to create new works for the fairground, which was slated for a global tour, including a Ferris wheel by Jean-Michel Basquiat and a carousel by Keith Haring.

Luna Luna saw nearly a quarter of a million visitors in its first—and only—summer. A change of ownership after its initial installation trapped the project in a legal battle, and it was instead locked away in storage. It was more than three decades before it was seen again. In 2022, a team of creatives organized to buy the contents of the original presentation, restore it, and launch a multi-city tour starting in 2024. To mark this new chapter, Phaidon has also re-issued Luna Luna: The Art Amusement Park, a book first published in 1987 that includes numerous photographs and documentation along with cover drawings commissioned by the artists.

At Luna Luna, art was for all. The book’s author, Austrian artist and curator André Heller, described that the ethos behind the project was that art “should come in unconventional guises and be brought to those who might not ordinarily seek it out in more predictable settings.” The artist-designed environment was an opportunity to imagine a kind of art utopia, drawing on the nostalgic popularity of amusement parks as places of entertainment and escape for people of all ages. The Luna Luna team aims to pick up where the original edition left off, evolving and incorporating new commissions from innovative and influential artists working today.

While the components of the park are currently being restored in Los Angeles, you can grab a copy of the book on Bookshop. Find more information on Luna Luna’s website, and follow on Instagram for updates about the upcoming tour.

 

Design History

Shift Happens: A Forthcoming Book Catalogs the 150-Year History of the Keyboard

What if QWERTY wasn’t the standard keyboard layout? A forthcoming book by Chicago-based designer and writer Marcin Wichary examines the now-ubiquitous format and how it came to dominate modern technology.

Fully funded a few hours after launching on Kickstarter, Shift Happens documents 150 years of keyboard history from early analog typewriters to the pixelated versions on our phones. The 1,200-page book is split into two volumes that encompass a broad array of innovations and feuds from “the Shift Wars of the 1880s (and) Nobel-prize winner Arthur Schawlow using a laser to build the best typo eraser (to) August Dvorak—and many others—trying to dethrone QWERTY (and) Margaret Longley and Lenore Fenton perfecting touch typing.”

Seven years in the making, the book features 1,300 photos of devices and typists at work, some of which document collections and archives that have never been seen before. Wichary emphasizes the cultural implications of the commonplace objects, saying he focused on the people behind the technology. “I wanted a book that told all the personal stories about keyboards tied in with a historical, social, and political context,” he shares.

To grab a copy of Shift Happens, head to Kickstarter, and follow Wichary on Mastodon for updates on the project.

 

Art Illustration

Fairytale Scenes Nestle Between the Covers of Isobelle Ouzman’s Altered Books

Open one of Isobelle Ouzman’s books, and you’ll be transported to a whimsical world of flora and fauna. The Bratislava-based artist (previously) carves pages of found novels and other tomes into intricate paper labyrinths of forests and meadows. Often occupied by a lone hare or fox, the fairytale scenes are imbued with a quiet, calm sense of mystery about the machinations of the imagined environments and their inhabitants.

Ouzman shares that she gravitates toward mass-produced volumes in poor condition. “Book size, depth, and paper texture play a big role in my decision as well, and I often need to hold a book in my hands before I can visualise a new artwork,” she says. The carving and drawing process depends on both the physical object and the intended narrative, taking between three weeks and three months to complete.

Find an archive of Ouzman’s works and glimpses into her process on her site and Instagram, and shop prints on Etsy.