Food is delicious. Sure, that’s a blanket statement that hardly makes sense, but I know you’re thinking, “She’s right: food IS delicious.”
It seems only fitting to be consumed by such a thought with the most gluttonous day of the year fast-approaching, but that’s really not what has fueled my hunger.

Instead, I’m inspired by a website of stunning menus featuring distinctive logos and savory typography and delectable descriptions and yummy paper stocks and … sigh … It’s just too much to bear.

Just a taste of www.UnderConsideration.com/ArtoftheMenu/

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I attended a discussion about urban art in the community with visiting artist Lavie Raven at Bemis Center for Contemporary Art last night. To be honest, I was there to support some of the great people that are tirelessly investing energy in arts education in our community; but didn’t really expect to personally, much less professionally, take many juicy nuggets of insight away from it.

Leave it to them to inspire me in spite of myself.

Lavie and fellow panelists spoke to the rush that graffiti artists get from their work. The high generated from writing on a wall – “writing” being more than just words and more than just “tagging” your name with a spray can; but investing in the color, contour and soul of a message that can inherently cross cultural barriers.

Someone in the audience asked if teaching urban art is basically teaching kids to be better vandals, which struck a chord with me because the conversation had led my mind to such a different space. My first thought was, “Wow, if that’s true, maybe I’ve been studying to be a vandal my whole life.”

No, I’ve never done graffiti. But I have been researching art, cataloging my own emotions, and trying to find the perfect words to say exactly what needs to be said ever since I can remember. And now I’m at a place where we’re working every day to strategically develop design and message as eloquently as some of these writers brand themselves. The biggest difference is that our expression of creativity is legal.

It’s so important that we (being the community at large) don’t push these artists away from their amazing raw talent and vision, but appreciate it, help them hone in on it and occasionally look to the writing on the wall for a little inspiration…

I want to say a quick “thank you” to Nebraska Humanities Council, Kent Bellows Studio & Center for Visual Arts, The Union for Contemporary Art, and all of the folks that made the event happen and made me think.

I love being reminded of how easy it is to be enlightened and humbled in a city like ours if you just open your eyes.

The complex and arcane nature of heraldry might appear to make it redundant in contemporary visual communication. Yet for branding there are lessons to be learned from blazon, the vocabulary of heraldry.

The arms above are those of Catherine Middleton, being those recently granted to her father, but born by blue ribbons and in a shape that reflect her unmarried status. Upon her marriage this Friday, the shape will change to a shield. The blazon for this coat of arms is Per pale Azure and Gules a Chevron Or cotised Argent between three Acorns slipped and leaved Or. This description may seem unintelligible, and, indeed, for most of us it is. However, to me Russia’s Cyrillic or China’s character alphabets are equally unintelligible, as I simply have not learned them.

The use of visual elements to communicate comprehensive concepts and important meanings extremely rapidly is powerfully demonstrated by heraldry. There are numerous terms that articulate precisely the miscellany of colors, shapes, position, attitudes and components of every aspect of the coat of arms. It is not for the uninitiated. Fortunately, various heraldic authorities around the world will guide those of us entitled to the grant of arms in their design. The College of Arms in England states: (more…)

We are, of course, always doodling. Not only is it an essential part of our work, but it is in the DNA of our team. Kevin Ryan last talked about the nature of doodling when he asserted in this post, here, that doodling helps him to both free his mind and to pay attention. Apart from the odd dinosaur, here are just a few recent portrait doodles and sketches.

No Content in this Gallery

I treasure the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, as well as the other art galleries and art venues around this city. But I was blown away by the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC), which I visited for the first time last weekend. It combines a phenomenal collection of contemporary art within architecturally inspiring buildings nestled in a bucolic, sylvan landscape.

The buildings alone are worth viewing, having been designed over three iterations by Eliel Saarinen, I. M. Pei and Richard Meier. Both Saarinen’s and Pei’s structures have been added to the National Register of Historic Places. And then there is the art … DMAC states that, “The permanent collection’s overriding principle is a representation of artists from the nineteenth century to the present, each through a seminal work.” DMAC has certainly succeeded in honoring this principle.

I am a huge fan of Giacometti (see my “Fondling Giacometti” post here) and immediately was compelled to make a beeline to DMAC’s Man Pointing sculpture, only to turn and be startled, open mouthed, to see (more…)