material concern

my picture’s up on the Urban blog for the Hattie Stewart event a couple months ago. Read more about her and her work here.

was the COOLEST.

She grew up in Milwaukee and graduated from the University of Wisconsin (this is a cool-girl pedigree if I’ve ever seen lived it), and she wrote some of the best children’s books ever, like my favorite, The Westing Game

The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon (I mean Noel)

The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues, and Figgs & Phantoms.

She also did all the graphic design and illustration for these books, and, as I just learned today, she designed other book covers as well, including one of the most iconic: this awesome Wrinkle In Time cover.

The University of Wisconsin has the Westing Game Manuscript...something to check out the next time I’m there.

The UW site also has more info about Raskin than anywhere else I’ve seen online. She died in the early 80s, and her daughter  runs a foundation to help cats.

funny interview with the one and only Lisa Frank, here.

it’s a small edition…at a sweet price…so get to it!

blows me away…and she just won the British Fashion Council awards, too.

textiles at LACMA

at the jewish museum. these were some of my favorite books when I was in kindergarten. great article in the times yesterday.

it’s funny to me that people think LA is a cultural or intellectual hinterland when so many cool things keep happening. Maybe those people just watch too much cable?

Case in point: Slake Magazine is now on it’s 3rd issue (as in printed,  heavy and hold in your hands issue), featuring writers such as

• Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight and I, Fatty and lots of other books
• James Greer, who writes beautiful experimental fiction and wisely spent part of his youth as bassist for Guided by Voices
• Local legend C. R. Stecyk III, who was included in MOCA’s recent Art in the Streets, has contributed a few photo essays

and young artists like

• Anne McCaddon (we will actually be posting images of anne’s beautiful work and studio this week)
• Michael Dopp
• and illustrators like Dan Peterka (work is shown below)

and they throw pretty good parties too.

Haven’t checked it out yet?

Now’s your chance to get with Slake and possibly get a free pair of sunglasses.  The contest is fairly straightforward: if you buy a one-year ($60), two-year ($110), or gift subscription to Slake by October 20, you’ll be entered into a contest to win one pair of l.a.Eyeworks-brand sunglasses. There’s more details about the contest, and more about the magazine in general on their site here. Contest ends on the 20th!

while you are there: check out the limited edition prints of illustrations that have appeared in the issues.

by the way: if i win, these will be mine:)

our friend Annie sent us a belated but/and very awesome wedding present recently: a Great Lakes prism from the Wild Unknown.

It’s super lovely with sand, driftwood and feathers gathered from the shores of Lake Superior: which is pretty perfect timing as i’m currently obsessed with all things Great Lake, and grew up on the shores of a different one.

funnily enough, we all realized that the creative mind behind the prism (and the beautifully rendered prints below) is Kim Krans: a friend of Isaac’s from college, and a friend of Annie’s from Brooklyn. You can see more prints, prisms and great calendars online at their site here.

seriously having a huge girly crush on the illustrations of Bernadette Pascua… so perfect: stylized but not cutesy or agressive: just lovely and cool. and her blog paints a pretty picture too.