We'll Take It!

There was an interesting article in the Times yesterday about the works of art the Obama's have borrowed from galleries and museums around DC to decorate their private residence at the White House. It reminded me of a little game Lauren and I play every time we go see art called, "We'll Take It!!". With that in mind...here are a few choice pieces we'd like to borrow for our home from some local art institutions.

Three Black Fishtails by Alexander Calder, 1960

From the Doris & Donald Fisher Collection

The Rebel Albert Camus: Twenty-Five Typographic Meditations, by Jack W. Stauffacher, 1969
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco

Promenade Deck, M.S. Brimanger, Pacific Ocean, by John Gutmann, 1933
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco

Alameda Gran Torino, by Robert Bechtle, 1974
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco

Water Tower, Toledo Ohio, by Bernd and Hilla Becher, 1978
Fraenkel Gallery

Model for Total Reflective Abstraction (after Buckminster Fuller and Isamu Noguchi), by Josiah McElheny, 2003
DeYoung Museum

Everything is Invented.

A little inspiration for this Tuesday morning. (via Maira Kalman's NY Times blog)

Pop-Up magazine

Just wanted to do a quick post about last week's Pop-Up magazine. Thank you so much to everyone who joined us, especially the amazing, amazing contributors! It was such a wonderful, exciting, interesting, fun, funny, and very special evening. There's no documentation (on purpose), but the picture above will give you a sense of the good times that were being had by all, as the audience and contributors mingled and drank and ate for many hours after the event had ended.

This was our Table of Contents, and below is a list of the contributors who made the magic happen. I've included links to many of them, some of them are either too prolific (thus difficult to pin down with Google...) or too lazy (and don't have websites), or very likely both:

Evan Ratliff, Steven Leckart, Farhod Manjoo, Marc Hawthorne, Bonnie Tsui, Philip Wood, Aaron Ximm, Jon Mooallem, Steven Okazaki, Joshuah Bearman, Elena Dorfman, Nate DiMeo, Darcy Padilla, Jeff Chang, Daniel Alarcon, Sam Green, Dave Cerf, Wayne White, Paul Schiek, David Maisel, Amy Standen, Elif Batuman, Tiffany Campbell & Andria Lessler.

Thanks again everyone...Hope to see you at Pop Up #3!!!

"Spooky": This week's special Photo Assignment!!!!

We've mentioned more than once here on Smarts & Crafts how much we LOVE libraries!!! So you can imagine how excited we were when Rosie (who is lucky enough to actually work at the library) invited us to participate in San Francisco's One City One Book Project. For any of you not familiar with the program you can click here to find out more, but basically it's a fun way to encourage reading, conversation, and community. And of course it's great for all the amazing writers whose books are featured—sort of like San Francisco's version of Oprah's Book Club (only cooler!!!).

Well this month all of us here in San Francisco are reading "Alive in Necropolis" by Doug Dorst. We've just started it, but it's already reeled us in....not only because there are tuxedo'd zombies running around, but it just so happens to be beautifully written. Here's the blurb on the back to give you a little taste:

"Colma, California, is the only incorporated city in America where the dead outnumber the living. A "cemetery city" serving San Francisco, Colma is the resting place of the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Wyatt Earp, and William Randolph Hearst. It is also the home of Michael Mercer, a rookie cop trying to go by the book as he struggles to navigate a new realm of grown-up relationships. But instead of settling comfortably into adult life, Mercer becomes obsessed with the mysterious fate of his predecessor in the Colma PD, Sergeant Wes Featherstone, who seems to have spent his last years policing the dead as well as the living. As Mercer delves deeper into Featherstone's story, his own sanity starts to slip, too—either that, or Colma's more famous residents are not resting in peace as they should be."

Exciting, right?!? So head off to your local library and pick up a copy, SF residents can just click here....

So before next Thursday send your very best, most "spooky-iest" picture to smartsandcrafts@gmail.com. We'll pick the one that gives us the biggest chills and that lucky person will get a free copy of the book, courtesy of our friends at the SF Public Library.

Photojojo!

Photojojo is an awesome website full of tips, tricks, projects and reviews for photography enthusiasts (like us!) and we were super excited when they asked us to contribute a DIY project for their new book which is out today.

Our magnetic photo frame how-to is one of many inspiring DIY projects in this book, which also includes instructions on how to make a snow globe, a wallet, a lampshade, a wall mural and many, many more, all featuring your own images. It's time to get your digital photos OUT of the computer and turn them into creative, fun projects!