Apartment Therapy recently listed 20x200 as a great place for geek art. Edition-maker Todd McLellan's Old Flip Clock was featured on the site's Marketplace, in a roundup titled "Art for Geeks: Cameras, Computers & Tech Art."

Todd's disassembled series of obsolete gadgetry is indeed a natural fit for the technologically inclined. And if you're looking for more gift ideas for technophiles, check out our gift guide for geeks, or browse by category: technology.

Untitled (300 x 404) by Greg Allen

Here at 20x200, we've been following the Cariou v. Prince case (and ruling) very closely. Chain emails have been flying around the office and the topic seems to find its way into many a casual, across-the-desk conversations. For our collectors out there who might not be familiar with the specifics, you can read the blow-by-blow. When the judge first ruled that Prince was in the wrong, we were most struck by the fact that she changed the standard for fair use: in order for appropriation art to fall within the legal limitations of the fair use clause, she said, it must be "transformative," and also refer back to, or comment on the original piece from which it is borrowed.

The Prince decision has hit close to home, indeed—seeing as how our very own edition-maker Greg Allen once appropriated a Prince piece. Greg's 20x200 edition, Untitled (300 x 404), is a thumbnail-sized jpeg of Richard Prince's Untitled (Cowboy), 2003. After editors at Slate were, "ironically, unable to get permission" to use the image in a slideshow review of a MoMA exhibition featuring the work, Greg took a screen-grab, gave the image a new name and called it his own. If you're familiar with the piece, (or Prince's work in general) you'll know that it, too, was borrowed—Untitled (Cowboy) is a rephotograph of a Marlboro ad by Sam Abell.

Did we lose you? We'll try to break it down:

1. Sam Abell snaps a pic of a cowboy for a Marlboro ad.
2. Richard Prince reproduces said Abell cowboy pic and calls it his own.
3. Greg Allen takes a thumbnail of Prince's rephotograph, blows it up and dubs it his own work.

Got it? Now get Greg's take on the most recent ruling and more details about the making of his 20x200 edition.

In light of the recent court proceedings surrounding Prince, the art of appropriation as we know it could cease to exist, though an appeal could just as easily turn the tables once again. Stay tuned—we'll be here, glued to our screens. In the meantime, you can get a steal: we're offering 11"x14" prints of Untitled (300 x 404) for $30 (usually $50) for today only, until 8:00 p.m. ET.

Rue magazine, January/February 2011

In their last issue, the design-savvy folks at Rue magazine featured a gallery wall curated by Jen. Rue writes:

Guest curator Jen Bekman is the founder of 20x200 and Jen Bekman Gallery on New York's Lower East Side. 20x200 offers limited edition prints by emerging, established and legendary artists, all starting at $20.

The round-up of "cheery," brightly colored prints includes work by Lauren DiCioccio, Jane Mount, Aaron Straup Cope, Amy Stevens, Youngna Park, Jessica Snow, Christian Chaize, Lisa Congdon and Jonathan Lewis. Our prints paired with Rue's fabulous page layout? It doesn't get much better than this.

Ferry from Ardrossan Harbor, 2010 by Laura Bell

The work of Laura Bell may soon hang right above the bed of fashion/design blogger and New York City-based magazine writer Joanna Goddard, according to a recent post on her popular blog, A Cup of Jo. Goddard writes:

Alex and I are giving our bedroom a little makeover, and we've been looking for artwork to go over our bed. How calming and lovely is this ocean photograph? Laura Bell took it while on a ferry in Scotland, and the circular shape makes it feel like she's peeking out of one of those round ship windows. Beautiful, don't you think?

On March 23rd, 20x200 released two editions by Bell, a 2010 Hot Shot.

Kate Spade New York's blog recently featured the home of Lonny magazine editor Michelle Adams—and readers with a sharp eye will notice something familiar hovering just above her television. Christian Chaize's Praia Piquinia 02/08/07 15h16 adds a touch of color to Adams's otherwise muted wall space.

Adams "infuses pops of color throughout the space" to add character to her apartment, as she explains in the video tour of her home posted on the Kate Spade blog. And this isn't the first time that Adams has relied on 20x200 editions to tie her various elements of decor together—last spring, Joseph Holmes's West Nineteenth Street (Yellow Dress) appeared in a spread of images showcasing her living room.

Lonny, Spring 2010

This spring, add a classy hint of color to your own home with one of Chaize's newest prints, Praia Piquinia 11/08/10 12h15 and Praia Piquinia 28/08/10 12h20, released just last week on 20x200.

Praia Piquinia 02/08/07 15h16, 2007 by Christian Chaize

Attention! Nota bene! 20x200 will be releasing two, *all-new*, luminous, sunshine-radiating Christian Chaize Praia Piquinia editions this Saturday and Monday, March 26 and 28.

Just earlier this month, popular design blog Apartment Therapy featured prints from the series in its round-up of "Prints to Lift Your Spirits."

If you, too, are in need of an early release from the wintery, gloomy grip of seasonal affective disorder — don't be SAD — look no further than Chaize's ethereal new editions. Be sure to keep an eye out for the newsletter over the weekend announcing their release!

The World by Paula Scher

Lifestyle and design blog Black*Eiffel recently featured Paula Scher's The World while in the process of "blogging it forward," an idea that encourages a mashup of blogs to write about the things that inspire them most. Of maps, Rachel writes, "I remember gasping when I first saw the above map dress by Elisabeth and the Screenprints by Paula Scher -- my word, they are amazing!"

After we released a limited-edition of Scher's print on 20x200 late last week, Jones followed up on her affinity for maps with a post encouraging people to take a peek at Paula's print. Be sure to check out the detailed 11"x14" panels of each corner of the globe, and pick up a little bit of somewhere else to take home with you.

Elements of Style is the kind of impeccable design blog that makes you want to rethink every item you own. My apartment isn't so much "decorated" as it is "filled with somewhat random useful things"-but browsing this expertly curated site would inspire anyone to channel their inner interior designer!

We're very excited that Elements of Style featured 20x200 as a recommended source of affordable art online. The edition shown here, Jane Mount's Ideal Bookshelf 101: Robert Verdi is still available, as are other great editions from the 11 (!) other 20x200 artists featured. Browse the full 20x200 archives here, and definitely check out Elements of Style for even more great ideas to spice up your outfit, your home and much more.

Before the holiday retail season comes the holiday gift-guide season, with myriad suggestions for almost any type of giftee on your list, from wanderers to homebodies. For everyone else, Refinery29 has put together a well-edited selection of gifts ANYONE will love—one of which just happens to be Craig Damrauer's recent Modern Art edition. We love that Refinery29 is featuring another 20x200 artist, and we certainly agree that Craig’s witty work would please pretty much anyone we know.

Be sure to check out the full guide, which includes a great range of thoughtful gifts- from great art books to bacon-chocolate chip pancake mix. And if you want to give the gift of art but just can’t decide, 20x200 Gift Certificates are always available to come to your rescue!

Craig's print has sold out in the $20 size, but it's still available for $50, $200 and $1000.

With a little more than a week to go before the retail holiday season kicks off on Black Friday (but who's counting), it's time to reference those handy Holiday Gift Guides like the one on Refinery29. They wisely suggest browsing 20x200's selection of affordable prints to find gifts for even the most finicky of your friends, and we (obviously) couldn't agree more!

Aside from the candy-coated featured edition, Sugarcoat by Michelle Hinebrook, we have gift suggestions for everyone from your geek brother to your biggest frienemy.

Feeling overwhelmed? Indecisive? That's what 20x200 Gift Certificates are for!

Thanks to Refinery29 for the shout + good luck with your holiday shopping, collectors!

What does the place where you do your work say about you? According to Kate Donnelly, quite a bit. For some time now, she has been conducting a collaborative project (and accompanying blog) titled From Your Desks, where she asks creative types to turn their eyes inward, and (honestly and accurately - no preemptive tidying allowed!) document their own work spaces in photographs and in writing - studios, home offices and the like. Donnelly writes of the desk's significance:

A Desk is where we work. Symbolic. Psychical. Present. A second home. A Desk is a platform. A hearth. Roots are planted. It’s where hours upon hours pass.

Personally, I want to be (and have always been) inspired by my work space. I’m surrounded by “my stuff” which helps me think and conjure new ideas. I covet solitude; it gives me more time to think. I’m one of those organized clutter types (yes, I remember where it went). I keep torn pages for inspiration on my cork boards and Polaroids of friends which reminds me, I should retell that story. I’m always rearranging, taking things down; keep it choppy and not get too comfortable. Still, I crave familiarity from my workspace.

This past July, we were allowed a glimpse of Mickey Smith's meticulously, enviably tidy home office and of the space Craig Damrauer uses to create his hilarious New Math prints. Now, Carrie Marill has her (slightly busier, but definitely still orderly) workspace featured on From Your Desks, and its cheerful, brightly colored paints and works-in-progress, bathed in warm sunlight seem very much in keeping with what we know and love of her work. Carrie writes of her space:

This is a new studio for me, which is why it looks pretty sparse (although i really like it this way). My husband and I are sharing a studio in downtown Phoenix.

The old house has excellent light, realized I hadn’t painted to natural light in 8 years, so sitting down to paint is like seeing colors all over again.

Kate also talks to Carrie about her attraction to painting birds, how she captures the gaze of animals, her National Geographic fetish and her love for enamelware. See more photographs (including ones of Carrie's dog and kittens!), and read more about her inspirations and her process here. Then browse some of Donnelly's other featured desks, and see if you can't find more connections between an artist's work and the places where they create.

Lazuil Bunting by Carrie Marill

The fashion and design blog newfreshnice featured a totally fresh and nice write-up about 20x200 earlier this week.

The writers over at newfreshnice (in Amsterdam!) are right on the mark when they say:

The time that cool and unique art could only be found in exclusive high brow exhibition spaces is over. Online galleries such as 20x200 are helping artists to crossover, and us to easily buy affordable art. Say goodbye to those white walls, cause with prices starting as low as 20 USD there’s nothing’s stopping you to cover them all.

Although the featured edition, Koolman by Kevin Cyr, is already completely sold out, we still have three other of Kevin's portrait-like editions available on the site.

Thanks for the mention, newfreshnice!

Get Excited And Make Things by Matt Jones

We’re huge fans of the ideals of free and widely accessible information that Creative Commons embodies, and the work that they do to (as they put it) “increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content)…that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing”. We’ve written about them in the past, and furthermore, the proceeds from Get Excited And Make Things, the very, very nearly sold out edition that we put out with Matt Jones, directly benefit the organization.

If you’d like an idea of how the information-sharing endeavors of Creative Commons can function to make the world a better place, here are a few examples:

GlaxoSmithKline, a major pharmaceutical company, recently released its entire malarial data set using CC tools, speeding the urgent search for new medicines to tackle the devastating disease. Online communities at Flickr, SoundCloud, and Vimeo are making creative works available for anyone in the world to use freely and legally through license adoption. Publisher Pratham Books has begun to CC license more and more of the textbooks it provides to 14 million children in India, lifting them from a future of poverty and miseducation. When the earthquake struck Haiti in January 2010, Google and Wired used CC tools to keep information widely available to relief workers, journalists, and governments worldwide.

These days CC deserves some more attention: they’ve very recently launched their Superhero fund-raising campaign, and are looking for supporters to help them reach a goal of $550,000 (after less than two weeks, they’ve already passed the $50,000 mark!)

You can read more about the campaign here, and go here support this cause of superhero magnitude.

Paddy Johnson, friend of JBP and the illustrious editor of Art Fag City - recently initiated a very exciting Kickstarter campaign, with the ultimate goal of producing an album comprised of a variety of New York art sounds. Fittingly titled The Sound of Art, she describes the project as such:

For the past five years I’ve been looking at art and writing about what I see. But I’ve also been listening. Does art have a distinctive sound? Sometimes I think I could be in a remote cabin in Maine, and still instantly recognize the sound of an art video or a performance piece. Yet the things I hear in galleries and performance spaces don’t seem to share any formal qualities – they run the gamut from noise to melody, recitation to wordless grunts…The Sound of Art is a limited edition vinyl LP composed of sounds heard in New York galleries, museums, and project spaces over the last five years. Inspired by classic DJ battle records, it features forty tracks of diverse sounds culled from art video, performance footage, and kinetic sculptures. This is not an easy listening record. It's an audio document and a tool to create new sounds and new work.

For this particular project, Paddy has sweetened the deal by offering a number of contribution incentives – for starters, if you put in $20, you get a copy of The Sound of Art once it’s completed. Larger pledges beget larger rewards, including, but not limited to: tickets to the album's launch party, studio visits and gallery tours, original art and personalized haikus (!) by Paddy herself.

Now, a few words about Kickstarter for the unfamiliar: it's an innovative means by which anyone with a great idea can potentially realize creative projects that might otherwise be intimidating or even impossible, from a financial standpoint. Back in June, we wrote in-depth about how it functions as an excellent funding platform for creative types, and about a number of artists' specific endeavors including Kevin Cyr's Camper Kart and Rachel Sussman's The Oldest Living Things in the World, which both successfully reached their financial goals.

You can learn more about The Sound of Art, the many artists involved, watch a sample video and make a pledge on the project's Kickstarter page. If you like the look (sorry, sound) of Paddy’s dream LP, contribute to the project and help her make it a reality! And, act fast: there are only two weeks left to become a backer for this fantastic project.

Over on the HHS! blog last week, we got to brag about Spring 2005 Hot Shot Rachel Sussman's TED talk on her ambitious project The Oldest Living Things In the World. Watching Sussman eloquently present her research, findings and artwork, we were struck by the (re-)realization of how our own creativity, wonder, and aesthetic sensibilities can be piqued and informed by the TED talks, an amazing (and free!) resource.

If you're anything like me, your RSS feed reader haunts you with unread posts. Ditto on the Instapaper app, your subscription podcast lists, your 43 things, and countless other higher-self, time-saving developments that sometimes serve to create more anxiety in what else I didn't get to that week than alleviate it. So I'm going to make things simple for you. Bookmark this, read it now, send it to yourself in an email, whatever will make you eventually sit down with this post with your headphones on (or what-you-will), and listen to these modern day sages hold court. Trust me, it's worth your while. I give you, dear reader, a totally subjective but art-ified Top Ten TED list:

Maira Kalman: The Illustrated Woman
It's no secret that many of us at JBP HQ have a love for the stream-of-conscious metaphor-making art that Kalman is famous for. In this talk centered on the theme of "simplicity," she begins with the seemingly simple statement that, "I'm trying to figure out two very simple things: How to live and how to die. Period. That's all I'm trying to do, all day long."

Olafur Eliasson: Playing With Space and Light
This master of spatial experience gives a lecture that at moments seems like continental philosophy, at others like you've wandered into an ethics course. The ethics of the art-maker. An excerpt:

How do we configure the relationship between our body and space? How do we reconfigure it? How do we know when being in a space makes a difference? It's about Why? rather than How? The "why" means really: What consequences does it have when I take a step? Does it matter? Does it matter if I am in the world or not? Does it matter whether the actions that I take filter into a sense of responsibility? Is art about that? I would say yes.

Elizabeth Gilbert: On Genius

Unless you've recently woken up from a decade-long sleep, you've probably heard of, and have an opinion on, the work and quick rise to fame of author Elizabeth Gilbert. Whatever your opinion on her best-selling memoir is, this talk is not about that (not really), and is a wonderful meditation on what it is to quell the creative demons both within and without in the ongoing battle of trying to maintain a creative life. Her historical semantic lessons on the meaning of the word are worth the price of admission alone.

Stefan Sagmeister: The Power of Time Off
What's so revolutionary about this talk is that it is a call to a reordering of our values, where we actually act to value our time at least as much as our money. He asks that we wonder aloud (and perhaps act upon) the questions: Is what we are doing with the majority of our time a job, a career or a calling? And does one manage to get from one to the other, if one so desires? This is a great discussion on what it takes to self-regenerate. (Ignore the comments that descend into a discussion of class warfare at the end of this talk.)

Dan Barber: A Surprising Foie Gras Parable
This is my very favorite TED talk. In the spirit of the talk above, it's about how to re-order one's thinking and by doing so, re-order one's value set and personal vision in a way that rings considered and true. Someone send this talk to me on Facebook right after I spent my honeymoon in Montreal consuming vast quantities of foie gras. I didn't click on this link for a month because I thought it was going to be a tsk-tsk lecture on the horrible realities of foie gras production. I was very very wrong and this talk is transcendentally good. And very funny. Don't make the same mistake I did!

Full disclosure time: Because, like you, I am a busy bee, I have not had time to actually listen to all the TED talks on my short-lsit. But I've bookmarked them! And I plan to come back to them! Because there are something on the order of over 500 of these incredible little gems of wisdom provoking things in me that need to be provoked. So I've resolved to "make" myself listen to them so I can make room for more. My Ted To-Do list of my remaining five are after the jump. I'd love to read your favorites and suggestions in the comments, if you're a devoted TEDster or one, like me, who does what she can.

Continue reading "Top Ten TEDs" »

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: 'It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to. — Jim Jarmusch

Well, ironically (in the Alanis Morisette way), because nothing is original and because I feel like Jim Jarmusch says it better than I ever can, I essentially copied and pasted his quote in order to preface my opinion that there is nothing new under the sun. OK, OK, as a lover of art and all things creative how could I say such a thing? Simply speaking, we as humans continually find ourselves inspired and reinspiried by the same transcendental sentiments: love, religion, life, death, depression, happiness, etc. Whether it is Chuck Close pulling from his love of tapestry weaving in order to create his hyperrealist images, or Duchamp using the“new age mechanical reproduction” known as the video camera in order to produce Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 in 1912, artists have always been aware of and informed by the affects of the popular culture surrounding them.

Liz Lerman, the renowned choreographer from Maryland, says "[Lately], I'm doing work with physicists smashing particles. They talk a lot about making something out of nothing. But no one knows how to make something out of nothing like artists."

After one has taken enough surveys in Western art, seminars in Dadaism, courses in gestural abstraction, divisionism, and postmodernism, symposia on regional folk art, and workshops on Pre-Renaissance Byzantine and Gothic art, patterns start to emerge. It is not so much that the art looks the same, but certain allegories and symbols start to repeat. Recycled inspiration.

Here's some quick time travel from the annals of the New York Public Library Digital Collection to the present tense of 20x200's archives, where artists, consciously or not, have re-interpreted and recreated works with related inspiration.

From Turdus pilaris migratorius, The Fieldlfare of Carolina; Aristolochia pistolochia, The Snake-root of Virginia by Mark Catesby in 1754 to The Faceted Couroucou by Carrie Marill in 2010:

From Arents Cigarette Cards offset, photochemical lithographs from the early 20th century to Sharon Montrose’s Baby Giraffe No. 5:

From Yoshiyuki Hagino’s A color combination chart for layered clothing in 1868 to Vanity Fair MAY08:pg269 (and, incredibly, looking not a day older) by Lauren DiCioccio in the 2000’s (both inspired by periodicals of the day):

From Emile Mercier’s bookbinding in the 19th century to Mickey Smith’s conceptual bookbinding photography in 2007.

Smith writes:

Searching endless stacks, I am continually struck by physical mass of information and tenuousness of printed works as they fade from public consciousness. The irony and graphic quality of repeating titles fascinate and draw, no matter how mundane, from known to obscure, from Vogue to Blood. I photograph titles that are flirtatious, utilitarian, and personally or socially symbolic.

All things eventually fade from public consciousness; it takes an artist to make old ideas contemporary, exciting, and unique once again.

"Don't... I can't even think about it."

This is the most common response I've heard whenever entering into a discussion about the impact of the BP Gulf oil spill disaster. My friends don't want to talk about it; my partner doesn't want to talk about it. For my part, even though I do want to discuss it, I'm uncertain as to whether there is anything useful that I can offer to whatever dialogue exists. And maybe frustration about the Gulf is that exactly: a futility of language mixed with the frustration of collective helplessness to be able to do anything of actual use in the situation, which in effect creates a self-canceling predicament of a desire to speak versus the desire to remain insulated from the realities of uncontested fact.

Whether or not you're the type of person that can't stand to look or that can't look away, it's a relative certainty that you have been exposed to some of the imagery coming out of the Gulf of Mexico and the BP oil spill disaster:

Untitled from the documentary Black Tide by Christopher Morris/VII

Crude oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill washes ashore in Orange Beach, Alabama, Saturday, June 12, 2010, AP Photo/Dave Martin

NASA, June 10, 2010

As the actual cause of the spill continues on, and as we are left to wonder what is spin, what is real and what is disinformation in what we are told in the mainstream news, more—and perhaps a different sort of—imagery and commentary is coming in from various pockets of the culture pile. Photographers, graffiti artists, graphic designers and performance activists are all prolifically weighing in on the subject in the best way they know how: by creating something that wasn't there before, and thereby inviting further conversation. What follows is a collection of some of what we've been seeing around the web:

Untitled by Priest, 2010, Mobile, AL

Untitled by Priest, 2010

Alabama street artist Priest has been adding his brand of political commentary in his hometown of Mobile, Alabama. The first image was mistakenly attributed to Bansky, but was soon rightfully accredited back to Priest. In a recent interview with CYFE, he was asked:

How much does art influence your everyday life?

When I look at art in a gallery I generally say to myself, "How did I get here and who are all these twats?" Someone will then say to me, I really enjoyed that piece of art you did on the interstate, you should put it on canvas. Then I get really confused because to me, it is on canvas, the building and the stencil are equally as ugly.

entries for both the Greenpeace and logomyway BP re-branding competitions

Both Greenpeace and logomyway have launched BP re-branding logo competitions and have received thousands of enthusiastic entries. Our friends at Hyperallergic tell us when considering the cultural critique offered by such a competition, the important things to consider are the following:

Does it inspire action, emotion? Does it illuminate a different way of looking at the symbol? How does form, create and enhance meaning? If anything, these images prove the power of a brand’s logo over the consuming public, and many people are stepping up to the challenge of rethinking that omnipresence.

Possibly my favorite recent find is this happening on the steps of the Tate Modern this week:

Mock Oil Spill at Tate Modern, June 28, 2010, Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images and Dominic Lipinski/Associated Press

From the L.A. Times article on June 29th:

...a group called the Good Crude Britannia is demanding that the gallery cut its ties with the company over the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf. The group used a substance resembling oil to stage the mock spill, then covered the scene with bird-like feathers. (One report identified the thick black substance as molasses.)

BP has numerous ties with cultural institutions in the U.K. A recent article in The Guardian stated that the oil company has partnerships with the British Museum, the Tate galleries, the Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery, the Almeida Theatre, the National Maritime Museum and the Science and Natural History Museums.

This quick pass of artistic responses to the oil spill leaves me with the sense that what's being communicated is a desire for a community different from the consumer-community that Western society is typically depicted as being. While it's true that anyone who drives a car requiring gasoline could technically count themselves somewhat complicit with the doings of Big Oil, what's being expressed in the logo re-branding, at the Tate Modern and on the streets of Gulf coast-afflicted states is a frustration with the status quo, the desire for accountability, transparency and a new way of doing things.

I'll leave off with a personal disclosure and a few more links: in my 9-5 life, I work as an editor for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. As the world's largest research center for avian life and whose core mission is conservation and the preservation of biodiversity, my workplace has been ground zero for fielding questions about what's occurring in the Gulf region, what the larger implications are for the bird life and the fragile marsh ecosystems there and what anyone can do to help. Several of my colleagues are in Gulf states now, not just as witnesses to what is happening but as scientists measuring the specific threats and making recommendations to NGO's on what needs to be done to mitigate greater ecological disasters.

Needless to say, the people I work with take what is happening to heart in a way that perhaps only people that dedicate their life's work to studying, understanding and trying to preserve the natural world can. If you are interested in learning about some of the most recent work that they are engaged in, I'd direct you to the following:

Round Robin—the lab's blog written by science writer Hugh Powell. Hugh has been in the Gulf recently along with a video team from the lab to examine specific nesting colonies of shorebirds on the coast. What's written on the blog is of-the-moment, on-the-ground coverage of what natural life scientists are seeing and measuring of the affected wildlife and ecosystems in the Gulf. There are well-done slide shows accompanying each story.

Q&A with the director of Conservation Science, Ken Rosenberg—this is a really thorough and informed interview with one of the lab's experts who knows best what's happening, and a must-read if you want to know what's at stake now and months from now.

The Birds of North America Online—this is one of the sites I manage, and though normally a subscription-based site that covers (quite exhaustively) the life histories of all the birds that live and breed in North America, the accounts related to affected species in the Gulf oil spill have been made free and open access to the public. I'm proud that this information is being made available to the thousands of volunteers that are going to the Gulf to assist in cleanup efforts, as well as to educate the public. You can go to this site to learn about the specific birds affected by the crisis.

Gulf Spill FAQ—this is the lab's main portal for disseminating news related to the oil spill, and for promoting ways in which the public can assist or help.

Copyright is a messy issue, especially for artists, designers, inventors and other creative tinkerers. While copyright laws theoretically help and protect artists and designers, in recent years, as information has become easier to access and remix, these laws have become a burden on creators. Creative Commons (an organization whose name you have probably heard around the web, especially on sites like Flickr and, ahem, this one) is "a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright." By providing the licenses and tools to "mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry" they are empowering a generation of artists to share, remix and reuse.

Get Excited and Make Things by Matt Jones

If you've bought a print of Get Excited and Make Things by Matt Jones, you've already donated to Creative Commons, as the proceeds from that benefit edition go to CC! (There are just 100 prints remaining so consider taking one of the last ones!)

In fact, there's never been a better time to donate to CC because they just launched their new Catalyst Grants program, which is seeking to raise $100,000 to distribute as grants to "innovators, educators and researchers" working around the globe towards goals like open educational resources.

You can visit the Creative Commons website to learn more, including how to use their tools and how to donate.

When I was living in Chicago for grad school, there was a curious local phenomena that occurred every business day at mid-afternoon: the entire north shore of the city would be bathed in the unmistakable sweet scent of chocolate. Many people didn't know where the chocolate smell was coming from, most didn't care, but what everyone did have was a surprisingly variant opinion on what kind of chocolate thing they perceived smelling. "It's brownies," was a popular answer. "Chocolate chip cookies," was another. "Fudge, it's definitely fudge," another would dreamily say, almost leaning into cocoa-scented wafts of air.

This same lack of congenial consensus occurs to me now, as I posit to you, dear reader: When you think of Photography (with a capital "P"), what is it you think of first? Is your answer shaped by your experience as a practicing photographer that still makes their own prints, and sifting through contact sheets and discarded test prints on a constant basis your first thought is of the print itself? Photograph as sheet? Or are you instead a gallerist, an art critic, or simply a lover and follower of the contemporary scene? And is the scene that you're used to seeing one where photographs are shown on a gallery or museum wall? Your chief experience of these artfully made images is a show shaped around an idea, conceit or a big personality—and likely, when you think of photography, you think of these public spaces where you encounter images by being surrounded by them in a room.

Or maybe you're a different sort altogether. Maybe when you think about "Photography" your chief concern is what the artist is relaying to you personally. You are invested in the mano e mano moment. You want to hold photography in your hands, you want to be presented with a thoughtfully sequenced and edited set of ideas and images, you want an experience that is total as it is private. When you see or think photography, your thought is a photo book.

The good thing is the three experience are not mutually exclusive. A person doesn't have to enjoy one of these modes at the expense of the others (nor does one of these methods only inherently contain one static kind of value/experience). But what's true is that you probably think of one of these types first, and that one has more immediate recognition and relevancy for you than the others.

Of the print, the gallery show and the book, it is the latter that is the odd binding force of this trinity. While the print is a idea communicated in singularity, and the exhibition is a culled and ephemeral showing of a continuum of an idea, it is the photo book that can be precedent and antecedent to these. A book can also be a collection of prints or cards, and from what is initially only conceived of as a book, a gallery show can arise. Photobooks, and their future status, has been the subject of much conjecture and debate both online and in-the-flesh. In December, Miki Johnson and Andy Adams helped mediate a crowd-sourced post on the future of photobooks for the Livebooks Resolve blog. Earlier this year, a photobook colloquium (pdf) "Lasting Impressions or Fading Impressions?" was held in Lausanne, to hold roundtables with photographic experts and publishers on three related discussions:

Profusion & Confusion: What is the photography book today?

Menaces & Promises: Where is the photography book going?

Concepts & Objects: A Photobook Laboratory

Steidl exhibit at Musee de L'Elysee, Lausanne by Nick Turpin

Heavy-hitters Gerhard Steidl and Markus Schaden held court on the publishing end of things, along with a retinue of smaller art-house presses, as well as artists, editors and collectors. Nick Turpin's summary of the conversations and concerns are well summarized in this post. Perhaps a culminating sentiment about the future of photobooks can be encapsulated in this observation by Turpin:

Today, Robert Frank wouldn’t wait two years to find a publisher for The Americans. He’d produce 2,000 copies himself and sell it through his website and market it through his blog and Twitter account.

In fact, perhaps looking at Robert Frank would be a good case example for one extreme direction where photobooks are going: at the conference in Lausanne it was revealed that the recent reissuing of Frank's The Americans by Steidl press has sold an unprecedented 80,000 copies since 2008. Turpin added in his summary post, "John Gossage pointed out that 50 years ago The Americans was remaindered in bookstores and you couldn't give it away." At Steidl's list price of $39.95, that amounts to over $3M in profit for the publisher. Steidl's model is to keep everything in-house, both production and distribution (they own their own printing presses), which is a large part of the reason that they have become the most well-known and most utilized art press out there, churning out a staggering four-hundred art titles a year, far beyond what any other competitor can boast.

To take The Americans to another publishing extreme, have a look at what Jeffrey Ladd, author of 5x4 reported last month, that eccentric Japanese publisher Kazuhiko Motomura has released a long-rumored special publication of all of Robert Frank's contacts for The Americans.

81 Contact Sheets, published by Kazuhiko Motomura as seen on Jeffrey Ladd's site, 5x4

Ladd writes about the nearly hedonistic excess that arrives from the publisher:

After getting past the shipping carton which I heard was a solid wooden crate, you discover a large very sturdy black box approximately 20 X 24 inches in size. On the front edge, a label with the edition number lets you know which copy of the 300 you own. Lifting the lid reveals a second box made of light wood - burned into the surface is an enlarged version of Frank's signature. Lifting that lid reveals the interior which is foam lined and cradles a silver folded portfolio upon which is embossed Frank's initials. This is lifted out and when opened, reveals a handmade japanese paper enclosure with a dark silver star at the right edge. Opening that you get to the meat of this endeavor - 81 individual enlarged contacts sheets held in place by a large belly-band.

Sounds great, right? Sign me up, right? Wrong. Ladd burst the book prospector's bubble, and reveals that there's an elite even among the book-buying public:

Now before you get too excited; A) it is very expensive at $1500.00 B) Mr Motomura only sells books to people who have bought in the past or will buy a set of ALL of his previous publications which totals around $7500.00 (including this new Frank). So that leaves me out and I guess a few of you too.

So what's an art-loving bibliophile to do? Or even more to the point, what are you as a photographer to do, if you've got a book to publish and you're not a Robert Frank, with eccentric foreign publishers willing to stake a fortune on an extremely limited edition art runs of sybaritic proportions?

Well we've got several photographers near and dear to us that have come up with their own real-life examples of what they have done, are doing, as they challenge this new publishing paradigm shift. And all of that will be revealed in Part II, coming later this week.

Haruki Murakami running

Haruki Murakami runs a 10K and swims 1500 meters a day when he's in novel-writing mode. Alan Greenspan takes a long, hot soak every morning at 6 a.m. to get the gears turning—those gears that have turned the financial world for the past decade. Franz Kafka took lots of naps. Colette and Simone de Beauvoir surrounded themselves with a coterie of friends (and Colette got blood transfusions on top of that). It would appear that there as many strategies for keeping creativity flowing as there are artists and approaches to art itself.

Earlier this week with the release of Chad Hagen's 20x200 edition, Nonsensical Infographic No. 3 and No. 4, we mentioned briefly about his contribution to a nice piece of writing that's been making its way around the internet on overcoming creative block. Hagen was one of 25 creative professionals queried by Scott Hansen on what to do when you're not doin'.

Hagen's advice was among my favorite. He wrote:

I used to think I would eventually, if I worked hard enough, master art like a math equation and then I could relax and just make great stuff and let everything else follow. That time definitely never came, and I know now I never want it to, because the most important thing that keeps me creative is my wanting to be good. So if I’m ever in a rut, the best things to get me out of them is to put myself in places that engage that desire to be good...In my opinion, there is no better way to trigger your own creativity, than to see what great things others have made or are making. Going to museums, galleries, shows, etc. always inspires my mind in a way that make me want to get back into my own work and make good things.

Other good advice proffered in Hansen's essay: British designer Michael C. Place suggests that you cook something (and even offers a quick and tasty recipe to boot); Brooklyn-based artist Mike Perry tells you to get lost somewhere, literally (he recommends an Amtrak ride to nowhere specific); Justin Krietemeyer from the California think-tank National Forest wisely opines that good old sweat will keep the good ideas coming with the endorphins, writing: "Good ideas are stored in fat so if I burn some off I can free them up and use em" and perhaps my favorite (fantasy for many of us?) advice came from NYC-based graphic designer Nicholas Felton, who suggests filling up one's life with alternating kinds of experiences on odd-numbered and even-numbered years, thus "alternate the tenor of my years, like crop-rotations." In odd-numbered years Felton travels more often and works on personal projects, and in even-numbered years he stays closer to the home fires and concentrates on drumming up business and profit.

Two posters by Mike Perry

For my part, I am horribly susceptible to infinite web distractions, taking too long to finish something due to some imagined need for that thing to be an even more imaginary qualifier of "perfect," and to mentally self-flagellate for only crossing off half of my to-do list on any given day. When I really need to reign myself in and focus, I tend to the Platonic advice of "Know Thyself." I know I work best in the mornings and late evenings, so I make sure to tackle the things that take the most flexible mental energy in those time blocks. When I need to empty my mind so that it can be free to later explore undeterred by all the crap I've filled it up with, I'll make like Alan Greenspan and take a hot soak.

While I don't think I actively do this to get out of a rut, I often find that looking or researching the work of artists I am engaged with will push my mind out of a place it might have never even known it was in, sort of like the blissful feeling of a receding killer headache. My most recent artistic aspirin has come in the form of an early Duane Michals tome, Real Dreams, which was suggested to me through another inspiring source, the blog Little Brown Mushroom. Photographer Charlie B. Ward has been asking other photographers and art world aficionados about the first photobook that they remember affecting them in a powerful way. Recently he asked this of gallerist Bill Hunt, and the Michals book Real Dreams was his answer. My copy arrived last week, and I've been lingering over Michals' thoughts and handwriting with the kind of delicious relish that only comes when I encounter a true sympatico. I'll leave you with some of what's been nourishing me the last little while:

The history of photography has not been written. You will write it. No one has photographed a nude until you have. No one has photographed a sequence of green peppers until you have. Nothing has been done till you do it.

There are no answers anymore.

Get Weston off your back, forget Arbus, Frank, Adams, White, don't look at photographs. Kill the Buddha.

I am my own hero.

-Real Dreams, 1976 by Duane Michals

We invite you in the comments to offer your own favorite tried-and-true rut-busting techniques, or your favorite stories of thinkers and makers that have found ways out of the morass of the mind. Knowledge is power, and sometimes it's a very useful and crowd-sourced power!

When I was in college in Tennessee I worked for one of the (then) three outpost stores for the J. Peterman Company. This was in the mid-90's, and at the time everyone who walked into the store already knew something about the ethos of the brand because they were part of the bazillion people who watched Seinfeld. This gave the enterprise the biggest boost of free advertising it could ever ask for by writing in the president of the company as a character in the show and having Elaine work as his underling, writing fluid and fictional copy for his catalog. When customers walked into my workplace in Chattanooga, Tennessee, they felt that they already knew something about the kind of thing the company was trying to achieve, that it was a different kind of retail experience—quirky, for-the-people, but somehow exotic at the same time. Folks also seemed really comfortable with the fact that they were already familiar with the store before ever walking into it, through the magic of teevee (admittedly some even confused which came first, Seinfeld or J. Peterman).

All of this preamble is to say that word-of-mouth works. When people really get what it is you're doing, and when what is you're doing is something really appealing and unique in its approach, quality or efforts, then these people will tell other people about this great new thing they've found. They'll share it on their blogs, on their twitter feeds, sometimes even in the way they style and comport themselves. It is the highest praise if you're in any kind of business, and it is on the winds of the words of others that we at 20x200 have been finding ourselves in the past month.

Firstly, the design blogs. We found ourselves flatteringly featured in the design section of rentedspaces, in a post on how to begin to deck one's walls in a fashion that will not make your digs look like a page out of a Pottery Barn or IKEA ad. Eva Hagberg totally gets us, writing:

Bekman's cause un-celebre is to get people interested in collecting art, and each of her editions arrives with a perfectly-designed tag that say "Congratulations! You bought art." And with everything from contributions from young photographers like Youngna Park, drawings by established graphic designer Kate Bingaman-Burt to brilliant text-based pieces from Mike Monteiro, browsing the archives of 20x200 is both more pleasant, and more personal, than getting lost in the online version of the uncategorized library that is the online poster world.

See? She gets us. We love it when people get us.

Then the good people at Make gave us a shout-out, citing our edition by Clifton Burt, a "Maker haiku art print." (I've always loved this print too, and thought how great a culture-jamming project it would be if some business or church marquis were switched around in the dead of night to be replaced with such resplendent pondering).

think-make-think by Clifton Burt

Then a few other places started chiming in, like Maryann Devine showing us off as a stack-of-prints (and listing the artists that she's collected!) awaiting framing, or like Anna at The Quilted Giraffe showcasing selected prints already graciously adorning the walls whilst promoting us to her readership.

Perhaps our favorite most recent declaration of love and devotion came during the art fairs of the past week, when artist Michelle Vaughan dyed her hair the same vintage blue as our ravishing art totes before hitting the Armory show:

(I love that blue too...but my hair would never ever do that)

In the past week we've also seen our name splashed tongue-and-cheek across the likes of the ridiculously clever Hyperallergic labs site, and then discussed in that unabashedly populist way that MetaFilter seems to exceed at in this recent feed about the same Powhida edition.

Why You Should Buy Art by William Powhida

When Andy once said, "Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches," we think he'd be fascinated and obsessed with the data metrics and usage stats that have replaced the smeary printed page. Now you know that we are, and that we appreciate the free love and the free press. Thanks for all your support and keep it coming!

So while it's true that we're happy Noah Kalina is getting residuals from that Dodge Charger Superbowl ad that we posted about a while back, not all of us were exactly thrilled with the tone and spirit of the spot. This advertisement in particular had me considering other ad campaigns in recent memory whose tone, implied/projected value set and general, well, meanness, had become desired notes-to-be-hit in delivering a product message. It made me wonder, in the realms of corporate branding and vision, how does one measure the success of pointedly targeting one half of the population while openly disparaging the other half?

De Beers Diamonds ad campaign, Fall 2009

One of the most blatant proponents of this ethos has got to be De Beers, the famous diamond proprietor that in the 1940s completely made up the now "common knowledge" claim that the socially acceptable amount of money to be spent on an engagement ring equals exactly two months' worth of any eager groom's salary.

Two Months Salary by Lee Gainer

Riffing off the witty cynicism and look-and-feel of the de-motivational posters from despair.com, the De Beers print campaigns have become the go-to sentiment for the new Male Maudlin Mystique, in which the purchasing power of diamonds can garner you drinking time with your buddies, Saturday tee times, unprintable sexual favors, and an end to endless nagging and complaining. Just like the kinds of people who might have the kinds of jobs that find themselves identifying with the "demotivational" pithy adages, the same pool of men will likely find themselves one day having to buy engagement rings for women that they will marry and start families with, and then later have to buy more diamonds for in order to negotiate and barter for what they really want to be doing with their free time.

Fast forward to Superbowl XLIV and that Dodge Charger commercial. Within days of its airing, a response piece showed up on YouTube. Filmmaker MacKenzie Fegan made it, after getting into a fight with her boyfriend over it:

The next day I was iChatting with the boyfriend, and I asked him what he thought of the Dodge Charger commercial. He freakin' loved it, and bam, now we're in a chat fight. He made the point that he was sure there were, say, chocolate commercials that were basically the same thing except from a woman's perspective, and I shot back with a couple lines of hypothetical dialogue: 'I will do the majority of the housework while maintaining a career. I will make 75 cents for every dollar you make.' He said, 'That would be a pretty compelling commercial.'

Part of what astounds me in the tone and logic of the De Beers and subsequent Dodge Charger ads is not the cynical wish-fulfillment dream of dysfunctional relationships, but the eagerness to render such cynicism so transparent. It's a measure of success for these ad execs that men are walking by these ads in subways or plazas, or leaning back in their couches during a football game and shaking their heads in wonder saying, "It's SO TRUE!"

So it's refreshing and somewhat redemptive when a savvy woman can take that cynicism, invert it, and play it back at both sides of the divide at the rate of nearly a quarter million views in less than two weeks. MacKenzie Fegan, you have our respect.

20x200 on The Dad List featuring Many Mountains by Ky Anderson

20x200 is all about living with art, and that includes kids too. The Dad List was kind to mention us yesterday in their piece, "Life in Living Color," where they wrote:

Well, besides being nicer to look at than peeling wallpaper, it produces all sorts of benefits: art boosts kids’ imagination, improves their sense of craftsmanship, and even helps with problem-solving. And one of the easiest ways to inspire an early love of art in your kids is by surrounding them with colorful and vivid imagery.

We've got lots of picks that are great for kids' rooms. See them here!

Goldfish by Rachel Hulin

Galleries, artists and designers have been coming together to help support disaster relief efforts in Haiti and we wanted to share those resources with you:

Rafael Soldi of Bonni Benrubi Gallery dropped us a note over the weekend about the Haiti Relief Benefit Print Sale he has swiftly put together. Emerging photographers, including Spring 2005 Hot Shot and 20x200 Edition-Maker Rachel Hulin and Winter 2007 Hot Shot Molly Landreth have donated prints which will be sold for $50, with all proceeds going to Yele Haiti, the grassroots organization established by Wyclef Jean to bring global awareness to the country. The selection of prints is currently available for viewing online.

He wrote:

We don't have a lot of money but our talent and creativity we got for free, and together we can raise up to $8,000" writes Rafael. This is a great way to collect art, support emerging photographers, and help Haiti in one fell swoop, so we hope you'll consider it.

A few other artists and designers giving a portion of their proceeds to Haiti:
+ Gallery Hanahou: 20% off sales from the upcoming 20/10 Vision show will be donated to support Haiti.
+ Illustrator Claudia Pearson will donate 25% of sales from her two new valentine prints to Yele Haiti.
+ Textile designer company Proud Mary will donate 50% off each online sale to the Red Cross through the end of the day today.
+ Wonder Wonder Designs will donate 30% of all sales from January 15th - 24th to Doctors Without Borders.

Here are also few really good photographic sources of information reflecting on photographers' experiences in Haiti and ongoing events: interview with Damon Winter in The New York Times, photoessay by Jeff Antebi on NPR, and an update from Doctors Without Borders on Boing Boing.

A side note about text donations:
A few days ago I frantically texted in a small donation to Haiti through Red Cross and Yele, the two organizations employing this viral new form of philanthropy. Since then there has been some confusion about which organizations will use donations most effectively. Yesterday, blogger Felix Salmon posted an entry worth reading encouraging donors to think twice about how and where they are donating.

Subports, a text-to-buy company which pairs with independent designers and businesses, also brought to light that many of the donations made via text messages that are automatically billed to your cell phone will not be delivered until that bill is paid. In some cases, this could take several months. Subports' text donations (the text codes for donations ranging from $10 - $150 are listed here) are billed directly to your credit card, so the donation reaches Doctors Without Borders with greater expediency.

Whatever form of donation you choose: purchasing art, texting-in, or buying goods from one of the designers above, make sure to research how the company or organization plans to direct donations to Haiti so the aid provided can be used most effectively.

When Coudal talks, we listen. And today this Chicago-based group of designers (who run one of the most wonderfully eclectic link blogs on the web) are talking about our mutual friend and 20x200 edition-maker Clifton Burt. Their large-and-in-charge header graphic is currently beaming Clifton's take on one of John Maeda's creative haikus.

Clifton writes,

I have fond memories of my wife, Kate, Will Byrant and I digging through a Mississippi junk store in an old railroad warehouse on the rumor that there were arrow-sign letters in there... somewhere, if we could find them. Well, we did find them and I'm happy to have the opportunity to share think-make-think as a 20x200 edition.

Think-make-think completely sold out on it's first time around, but we re-released it in an edition of 500 so that those who missed out can have a second chance to collect this snippet of inspiration.

think-make-think (second edition) by Clifton Burt

There are still plenty o' prints to go around but supplies are dwindling so collect yours today!