Playing the Building by David Byrne, presented by Creative Time, NYC 2008, photo by Justin Ouellette

In David Byrne's world, bicycle racks are reborn as sculptures, abandoned buildings are wired up to become gigantic musical instruments, and PowerPoint is subverted into a tool for making art. The best part is that all of these works are made available for all to enjoy. Byrne's prolific interventions with the everyday bring delight to places that were once overlooked, in a sense personifying our motto: "Art for Everyone."

We're honored and crazy-excited to be releasing an edition by David Byrne, on Monday, October 18th, to benefit our friends at Creative Time. Make sure you're on our list (and ready to click!) to get first dibs on the edition.

Portrait of David Byrne, Chris Buck, 2004

While he is widely known as the co-founder of the band Talking Heads, Byrne has also had an active solo and collaborative music career. His work as an artist (DB is represented by Pace/MacGill) writer and thinker is all over the map—in the best sense! Browsing his website you'll find music, art & books, film & theater, sound & video, a personal radio station and a funny, thoughtful and frequently updated journal. Most recently Byrne released an audiobook of The Bicycle Diaries. In addition to music and narration by DB, it also features location sounds, creating an atmosphere more akin to a radio show than a simple reading of the book.

Arboretum by David Byrne, published by McSweeney's

This summer, Byrne exhibited drawings from his series Tree Drawings at Electric Works in San Francisco, alongside Dave Eggers (founder of McSweeney's who published a gorgeous book of the drawings titled Arboretum in 2006).

Byrne describes the drawings, mostly in the form of trees, as a combination of faux-science, self-therapy, and irrational logic. He writes:

The world keeps opening up, unfolding, and just when we expect it to be closed—to be a sealed sensible box—it shows us something completely surprising. In fact, the result and possibly unacknowledged aim of science may be to know how much it is that we don’t know, rather than what we do think we know. What we think we know we probably aren’t really sure of anyway. At least if we can get a sense of what we don’t know, we won’t be guilty of the hubris of thinking we know any of it. Science’s job is to map our ignorance.

Corporate to Personal Homeomorphism, 2004, by David Byrne, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery

And using his pencil as a "flashlight," Byrne plumbs the depths of satire, culture, and self to create these drawings. It's this delightfully irrational logic which that makes Byrne's work so lovable. He pushes sense all the way past nonsense, until it becomes a whole other invigorating and inspiring kind of sense.

To drop a final hint before the big release, the edition is an image that can be found somewhere in the pages of the Arboretum book, but it's none of the diagrams featured in this post...begin the process of elimination, art-sleuths!

More of David's tree drawings:

You'll Get Used to It, 2004, by David Byrne, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery

From a Seed it's All Downhill, 2007, by David Byrne, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery

Human Content, 2002, by David Byrne, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery

Military Technology, 2004, by David Byrne, courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery