These projects took place at seperate times and I don’t know where I put the process pictures but you can see the finished product at least. They bring us a good deal of pleasure and are very useful at the same time.

Our friend Tracy opened a new food and wine shop in Chicago called Provenance and we wanted to make something for it. So Tina designed these signs and I carved them, then she painted them.

When I want to make a purchase, give a donation, complete a business transaction or share an idea I turn to the internet. The speed and convenience of this digital world serves me well in these relationships. Daily information gathering and communications are similarly well served online. So when is it the right time to go offline?

This time of year is an endless deluge of ads and donation requests. It is with pleasure then that over the past week I have received a few very enjoyable pieces of literature from organizations and companies that I am connected to. I am specifically using the word “literature” because what they have sent me is many things but is definitely not merely an “advertisement” , “sales flyer”, “catalog” or “donation request”. All of those are certainly components of the various mailers but each one of them is significantly more than that. They are filled primarily with the thoughts, feelings, concerns and aspirations of the individuals involved in the organizations. Well crafted expressions and stories that don’t rely on product or cause tie-ins.

I believe that special moments during the year – and year ends/year beginnings are certainly that – are the perfect opportunity to connect with people on a deeper level. Rivendale Bicycles sent out the latest edition of their Reader which hadn’t come out in over a year; Voyager North sent out their latest Gazette. In it, like always, they provided me with stories that had little or nothing to do with their business but that they found important enough to their perspective and lives that they wanted to share them. The sharing of themselves fills me with a bit of wonder and engagement: it’s like magic.

These are the sorts of stories that are highlighted even further by saying, “this is something worthy of being printed”. I relish in the thought provoking and engaging statements that bring me in closer to these people. The organizations that recently mailed me their literary contributions have sent me a gift. The effort in choosing the right paper, creating a beautiful layout and filling it with only the most thoughtful and heartfelt content is the sort of thing lost in the speed of the digital world.

If I received this type of physical mailer more regularly though it would lose that special-ness. I suppose the gift that the internet has then given me is an even greater appreciation of the slow, handmade crafting of the physical world.

While advertising and marketing are clearly an art of a sort, more for some than others, it is still an effort to sell a product to consumers. That being said there are certainly a small percentage of advertisements that, were they to exist without any voice over or end text you may see them for what they also are; art. These messages may present challenging social ideas or just beauty for the sake of beauty but they do manage to stir our emotions. The stirring of our emotions is what puts us into a mindframe for accepting the product being advertised but what if we had an opportunity to merely allow our emotions to be stirred and then draw our own conclusions about what that means, individually.

Sony is one of those companies which spends a good deal of money and effort in making art our of advertising. The most recent piece, Domino City, is a great example.

You can also check out the making of the ad here.

Sadly it is advertising that provides the greatest connection to art and creativity to the general public. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing but for the fact that so much of advertising and marketing plays off of the cheapest sensitivities of humanity; fear and greed. As our schools and communities face deepening financial crisis we see deeper cuts in public arts funding, art classes and other creative endevours.

Juxtapose that with the fact that US cities are fighting to attract a global “creative class” as the way of sustaining the city and the culture, ultimately hoping that the creative’s will attract a greater diversity of tax base and eventual financial success.

I’m a fan of creating things, or enjoy other people’s creation as a way of filling my life. What if more people spent time doing this instead of trying to merely consume? What if advertisers spent more time crafting art for arts sake, instead of for product consumption?

I just want to throw this out there and see if anyone with connections to COTA (or COTA themselves) are interested in the idea and want to run with it. As a member of UAArts.org I am challenged to find ways to raise funds for the arts; I also happen to be someone with a great love of public transit and realize increased ridership is the only way to bring better transit options to Central Ohio.

With that in mind I thought a great event would be something like this. All of the arts organizations (I’ve been told there are about 600) in Central Ohio sponsor artists to participate. An equivilant number of scale model COTA busses are distributed to the artists (think something along the size of 2 feet long – easily displayed and transported).

The artists paint these models in anyway they see fit with the understanding that the result has to be family friendly and flat – ie no art car type attachments that pose a service issue for actual busses. Once the artists have created their pieces then the art is transfered to the actual COTA busses. The effect being a higher attention to the busses and some beautiful art moving throughout the city day in and day out. Contests could take place to get people to try and get a picture of all of the different busses, etc. The visibility for COTA would be immense and this project should bring in tourists to see the busses.

The model busses then get auctioned off with the money going back to the arts organizations that sponsored the artist. This way these organizations can continue their mission of bringing public art to Central Ohio.