Storyboard

April 12, 2013 2,323 notes

The Creators of Chicago: Artist Luke Pelletier
Graphic designer Lucy Hewett was 27 when she quit her job at a marketing agency and taught herself to take photos, experimenting on friends to hone her portraiture skills. Going freelance was a struggle (stylized portraits don’t pay quite like ad campaigns for McDonald’s) but Hewett credits her success, in part, to the support of her local creative network. This would have been the first in a series of ten profiles, but life had other plans. Enjoy this first and last installment anyway, and thanks for reading with us.
[[MORE]]
Luke Pelletier
Luke Pelletier describes himself as a “painter, printmaker, musician and skateboarder.” He’s a sophomore at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but spend several minutes on his blog and you can tell he was making art long before he entered school.
Pelletier’s West Coast vernacular and bright, sometimes tropical, imagery might lead you to think he migrated from SoCal to Chicago, but he’s originally from Brevard, N.C., where he grew up skateboarding, playing in punk bands and drawing.
At first, it’s astonishing just how much work he has — and how good it is. “Having a lot of different outlets kind of makes you wicked productive,” he says. Sharing something almost every other day on his Tumblr – songs, sketches, paintings and photos, has become a part of his work flow.
You live in Pilsen, on Chicago’s South Side, which is known for its artistic community. Is that why you chose it?
It’s wicked cheap here. And it has two things I like: not paying much for rent and lots of Mexican food.
What inspires you?
Skateboarding was when thinking creatively came into what I did. When you skate, you can look at a handrail and a switch can go off in your head and its not a handrail anymore, it’s something you can skate. That’s how I learned to think about art – taking something that already exists in the world and then making something new. Also, I got into punk when I was really young. Skateboarding and punk both have very distinct aesthetics and bounce off each other really well.
Has art school been a good thing?
School is weird, but it’s getting better. It’s great in some ways because it forces me to think more conceptually.
Do you worry that when you graduate you’ll have to get a “real” job?
The thing is, I don’t want to make trading cards for rich people. What happens when you sell your art to those dudes, especially the really rich people, is they put it in a closet for like 20 years and then when they’re about to die some gallery curates a room full of their stuff, so they can just show off what they own. At the same time I love making paintings and paintings have a certain amount of time and money put into them. There is a price that you have to charge. I think working on commissions kind of fixes that dilemma for me. I can make a T-shirt for a company and a kid can buy a print of my art for twenty bucks.
What kind of projects are you working on now?
Tumblr is actually how I started connecting with people all over the world. I did a split zine collaboration with Ben Jensen, who lives in Canada. After that I just started curating a bunch of different shows with people I met online.
—Photos and text by Lucy Hewett

The Creators of Chicago: Artist Luke Pelletier

Graphic designer Lucy Hewett was 27 when she quit her job at a marketing agency and taught herself to take photos, experimenting on friends to hone her portraiture skills. Going freelance was a struggle (stylized portraits don’t pay quite like ad campaigns for McDonald’s) but Hewett credits her success, in part, to the support of her local creative network. This would have been the first in a series of ten profiles, but life had other plans. Enjoy this first and last installment anyway, and thanks for reading with us.

View post 2,323 notes

April 11, 2013 1,715 notes

Welcome to the Museum of Copulatory Organs

It all started with a flea circus. This is the story of Maria Fernanda Cardoso, whose biology-based artwork progressed from her very own circus of live fleas to detailed models of nature’s most intricate and unlikely reproductive systems. Industrial design, electron microscopy, and 3D printing were all brought to bear, and the results are fascinating.

This story, created in partnership with Symbolia and Popular Science, was illustrated and animated by Andy Warner. “My father is a marine biologist who specialized in fish sex change,” says Warner, “and I grew up learning about weird and wonderful animal behavior and morphology at the dinner table.”

View post 1,715 notes

April 10, 2013 12,694 notes

‘The Blue Umbrella’: Inside a Pixar Love Story

The process began on one of those unusually rainy but otherwise ordinary California days. Pixar camera and staging artist Saschka Unseldwas walking through downtown San Francisco. Something caught his eye. He looked down, studying more closely an object stuck in the gutter in front of him.

View post 12,694 notes

April 10, 2013 3,374 notes

Cooking with Harry’s Pizzeria: Short Rib Casserole
“People would show up early. In Miami, that’s quite an accomplishment.”
It takes a lot to surprise Miami chef and restaurateur Michael Schwartz these days. With four restaurants in his portfolio, and a fifth — a more formal room with an old Florida atmosphere called The Cypress Room — just open, he’s a pretty unflappable guy. But Harry’s Pizzeria, the affable, overachieving middle child in his family of restaurants, has the ability to confound expectations — even those of its owner.
[[MORE]]
Partly opened to provide a more casual and less expensive destination in Miami’s design district, Harry’s has also made its mark as the venue for a hugely popular monthly guest chef pop-up dinner that has brought the likes of Paul Kahan of Chicago’s Publican, Philadelphia’s Marc Vetri and New York’s April Bloomfield to Miami. So eager are ticketholders for these dinners, that they’d show up to the restaurant before the appointed hour- something unheard of in a city that exists in perpetual mañana time.
Not bad for a little pizza joint.
The pizzas that keep the crowds coming on a day to day basis reflect the sensibility Schwartz honed in his flagship restaurant Michael’s Genuine, rather than a bow to pizza orthodoxy. “I wouldn’t classify it as any single style of pizza. “It’s on the thinner side, but with a nice chew in the crust,” he says. “I like to do unusual and interesting topping combinations. It’s all in a good place right now. We don’t change the menu that often; it’s not that kind of place, but we do change with the seasons, as ingredients come and go.”
The centerpiece of the restaurant is the wood-fired oven, and more often than not, during the pop-up dinners, that’s just where you’ll find the visiting chef, chatting with guests and keeping an eye on the kitchen, seeing to it that the family style platters are up to snuff before they head out to diners.
The work starts long before food crosses the pass, though. “We invite friends; chefs that have common sensibilities about how we prepare food, and have similar philosophies. We work with them on a menu format that we’ve found has worked; there’s a welcome cocktail that the guest chef inspires or provides a recipe for. Then there will be some passed around snacks, which usually includes a pizza at that point. Then it’s typically four courses, all family style, with lots of sharing going on. Instead of pairing wines or beverages with each course, we just offer a great selection of wines and our Homebrew beer. And that’s all just put on the table for people to pour and pass so it’s a real casual family style thing.”
Recently the restaurant launched brunch service, and along with the full lineup of pizzas, came a slew of more “egg-centric dishes.” One early favorite from Schwarz’s sous chef Manny Sulburan is a casserole of braised short ribs, rice and beans topped with an egg, put in a blazing hot oven until the egg just sets. When it comes out, the rice has formed a bit of a crust at the bottom of the pan — you end up with something like a Miami Bi Bim Bap.
It’s a dish that you’ll want to show up early for, even if your watch is set to mañana time.
While the recipe may look like a lot of work at first glance, the short ribs and beans can be made at the same time, both largely unattended. Both can be made in advance, so come brunch time, you’re only assembling the dishes and baking the eggs.
Short Rib Casserole
Serves 4-6
Short ribs:
1 tablespoon sweet smoked paprika
1 tablespoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon chili powder
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons canola oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
2 Large, meaty short ribs
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups chopped onion
½ tablespoon chopped garlic
2 cups chopped tomato (approx 1 28oz can)
1 cups chicken stock
Red Beans:
2 strips of bacon, chopped
½ cup chopped onion
½ teaspoon ground cumin
1 bay leaf
1 clove of garlic, chopped
1 cup dried red beans
Salt and pepper to taste
Casserole:
4-6 eggs
1 tablespoon chopped scallions
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
3 cups cooked white rice
In a small bowl, combine the paprika, ginger, chili powder, garlic, canola oil, salt and pepper; stir thoroughly to combine. Rub the spice mixture all over the short ribs to evenly coat the meat. Transfer the ribs to a large resealable plastic bag and refrigerate overnight (or up to 24 hours). At the same time, cover the beans with 3 cups of water, and leave to soak overnight as well.
Preheat oven to 300˚F.
Arrange the short ribs in a casserole or deep skillet and cover. Bake for 90 minutes.
While the ribs are in the oven, put a medium saucepan over low heat and add 2tbsp olive oil. When the oil is warm, add the 2 cups of onion. Cook, stirring, until the onion is translucent, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic, and saute for another 5, then add the tomatoes and chicken stock. Let simmer uncovered until it reduces by half, about an hour.
At the same time, place a medium saucepan over medium heat and sauté the bacon until crispy. Add the ½ cup of onion, the cumin and bay leaf, and sauté until the onion softens, then add the garlic. Pour in the beans with the soaking liquid. Simmer until tender, about an hour. Add hot water as necessary. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
After 90 minutes, pour off some of the fat from the short ribs, and add the tomato-onion mixture to the pan. Cover, and return the short ribs to the oven for another 90 minutes.
Allow the ribs to cool to room temperature, then cover and chill completely in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. Remove the short rib meat from bones, pull apart into small pieces, and place back into the sauce.
This can be done up to 3 days in advance.
When you’re ready to serve, preheat the oven to 475 degrees.
Combine ½ cup each of of the short ribs, beans and rice in a 6” skillet or casserole. Top it with a cracked egg and bake until the egg just set, about 10 minutes. Garnish with scallions, cilantro and drizzle with olive oil.
— Matthew Kronsberg

Cooking with Harry’s Pizzeria: Short Rib Casserole

“People would show up early. In Miami, that’s quite an accomplishment.”

It takes a lot to surprise Miami chef and restaurateur Michael Schwartz these days. With four restaurants in his portfolio, and a fifth — a more formal room with an old Florida atmosphere called The Cypress Room — just open, he’s a pretty unflappable guy. But Harry’s Pizzeria, the affable, overachieving middle child in his family of restaurants, has the ability to confound expectations — even those of its owner.

View post 3,374 notes

April 10, 2013 517 notes

The Paddling Machine: Berlin-Style Ping Pong

A couple years back, Allan Hough went to Berlin and came back to San Francisco a changed man. He had a snappier wrist. A lager-filled belly. And he was inspired. Why don’t we play ping pong the way they do in Berlin? he pondered. It sounded silly — but this is a man who takes ping pong seriously.

On a recent afternoon, Hough is leaning against a pool table, arms crossed, staring into the corner of his cluttered, Christmas light-laden garage in San Francisco’s Mission district. In a chaos of surfboards and bike wheels and beer cozies and wooden chairs, two emerald slabs — the gigantic halves of a brand new ping pong table — are neatly propped up against the far wall. “I think we’ll use the new one tonight,” he says matter-of-factly.

View post 517 notes

April 9, 2013 1,081 notes

Everyday Africa: Stories Between the Headlines
In March 2012, two photojournalists — Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill — decided in the middle of a project in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to begin a new, raw media outlet, which portrayed the mundane and casual life of everyday Africans on iPhones and Instagram. A year on, Everyday Africa curates photography from journalists across the continent, and they’re looking to involve locals, too. We spoke to Peter DiCampo to see why he think these images have captured our attention.
What made you decide to start Everyday Africa?
Austin Merrill and I were in Ivory Coast, and we were working on a very specific story on the aftermath of crisis and conflict there. He and I were both Peace Corps volunteers in west Africa, so we spent two years of our lives living in villages. We noticed all of these in-between, daily life, mundane moments, and we realized that, working as journalists, you don’t even shoot these moments. You edit them out ahead of time because they don’t fit into the story you’re trying to tell, which is kind of one of the funny parts about journalism: In some cases, it’s kind of preconceived. In order for a story to make sense, you have to look for certain things.
So we wanted to capture all these other things we were seeing as we went along, which is basically the stream of daily life. Of course “stream” is the key word, because the perfect way to shoot it and the perfect medium to share it is on places like Tumblr, and shooting it on a phone, casually. I think casual and mundane are the key words for this project.
[[MORE]]
Do you think that it’s a failing of the media that news coverage has to focus on these basic narratives we have of Africa?
I don’t know that I’d call it a failing of media because by its very nature media is there to look at the big events, so you’re often seeing the extremes: either the crisis or these stories of rich Africa.
In the US, or the UK, we do often see stories of poverty in western countries. But when I look at a story of poverty in the US, I see this family going through these depressing moments; but because the setting is more familiar, I know it’s not like their entire lives are lived in extreme moments. When the setting, to our eyes, looks as exotic as an African setting looks, you very easily have the assumption—– if you see 10 pictures of Africa, and all of them are of starving people looking sad in a refugee camp — you just have this natural assumption that’s what life is like for people all the time.
I’m not really sure there’s something the traditional media could do to correct this; it’s not their role. But I do think there’s an amazing role for social media to correct it. Aside from Everyday Africa, you have a simple fact that American and European youth can be following African youth on Tumblr, and understanding that their lives are more similar than they realize.
Is that what you’ve seen from your travels?
There are obvious differences. It’s not like we live in a hut. But I mean much more basic than that, in terms of how our time is spent, doing basic everyday things. Every culture in the world has a strong emphasis on family, has a love of a good meal, has a love of certain types of music. We can lose sight of similarities that are that basic if we just look at the news.
And you’re shooting this on your phone; it’s very much rough and ready.
I think there’s something interesting about keeping it on a phone only. For me as a photographer, it’s interesting in the way it has me shoot, which is much more casual. I find that my images are a little less composed, which I like in terms of the audience we’re trying to reach.
The other thing is all the implications of mobile technology in Africa. We’re going to start including a lot of the work of local Africans, as well as trying to look at what regular people are capturing on their phones anyways. It becomes a cliche to talk about this, but it’s amazing to see the influx of cell phones on the continent. Every time I go back, it seems more and more people have phones, and it’s got to the point that when I visit a village in the Ivory Coast, everyone is photographing me on their phones.
What is it that makes the everyday image so powerful?
I have to say, I’m constantly shocked at how much attention we’ve gotten with a project based on normalcy. It’s mindblowing that it’s apparently enough of an interest to get people’s attention. What I think that means is we are not alone in realizing that this is a gap, that this is something we don’t normally see. It’s a fine line … we want to photograph the mundane, but we want the pictures to be interesting. I think the key element is these are moments we’ve seen in our own lives, in the places we live, and just simply don’t see in a place that seems as foreign as Africa does.
There are people, photographers, who have said, “You know, if you want to photograph on your phone, that’s the sort of thing you should use to photograph your girlfriend or your family.” To me, that’s exactly the reason we should be photographing Africa with phones. It’s just a family snap of a foreign place that you don’t usually see.
* * *
In the past few months, Lindsay Mackenzie, a Canadian freelance photojournalist based out of Spain and Tunisia, has joined Everyday Africa’s ranks. She tells us about how societies’ similarities can bring together western and African youth.
How did you get involved?
I got an iPhone last year — my sister gave me her old one — so I started using Instagram and at some point I read about Everyday Africa. I really like their philosophy because having spent a lot of time in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, I get where they’re coming from when they say what they see and experience in Africa and what they see from the other side of the world in coverage is different. We only really see the extremes and the worst cases. People say, “Oh, it must’ve been really terrible being in Tunisia.” Not at all. I lived by the sea. They have fashion shows, and art events, and people go to the beach and the mall. I wanted to show this is a very normal place most of the time.
So this is filling in the gaps TV news and print media miss?
Yeah. There’s only every one story about Equatorial Guinea. Google it. You’ll only read about Teodoro Obiang and the depth of his dictatorship. While that’s valid, it’s nice to show that people go get pedicures at the market, or that there’s really beautiful in the south. You usually see pictures of Africa that have been filtered through editors and through the constraints of print. It’s what people think we should see. With iPhones and Instragram, there’s nobody between you taking the photo and the person on the other side seeing it.
How important is using a phone for the photos?
I think the type of people using Instagram are a much younger generation. When you think of a 15-year old on Instagram, when they see an Instagram-style photo from Equatorial Guinea or Namibia, they’re used to that. It brings it closer to them, being in the photographic language they know how to speak. The whole photo and platform makes people more normal, more human.
— Chris Stokel-Walker

Everyday Africa: Stories Between the Headlines

In March 2012, two photojournalists — Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill — decided in the middle of a project in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to begin a new, raw media outlet, which portrayed the mundane and casual life of everyday Africans on iPhones and Instagram. A year on, Everyday Africa curates photography from journalists across the continent, and they’re looking to involve locals, too. We spoke to Peter DiCampo to see why he think these images have captured our attention.

What made you decide to start Everyday Africa?

Austin Merrill and I were in Ivory Coast, and we were working on a very specific story on the aftermath of crisis and conflict there. He and I were both Peace Corps volunteers in west Africa, so we spent two years of our lives living in villages. We noticed all of these in-between, daily life, mundane moments, and we realized that, working as journalists, you don’t even shoot these moments. You edit them out ahead of time because they don’t fit into the story you’re trying to tell, which is kind of one of the funny parts about journalism: In some cases, it’s kind of preconceived. In order for a story to make sense, you have to look for certain things.

So we wanted to capture all these other things we were seeing as we went along, which is basically the stream of daily life. Of course “stream” is the key word, because the perfect way to shoot it and the perfect medium to share it is on places like Tumblr, and shooting it on a phone, casually. I think casual and mundane are the key words for this project.

View post 1,081 notes

Storyboard

Posts tagged with storyboard

The Creators of Chicago: Artist Luke Pelletier

Welcome to the Museum of Copulatory Organs

‘The Blue Umbrella’: Inside a Pixar Love Story

Cooking with Harry’s Pizzeria: Short Rib Casserole

The Paddling Machine: Berlin-Style Ping Pong

Everyday Africa: Stories Between the Headlines

What made you decide to start Everyday Africa?

Most Popular

We