posted by: CK Anderson  |  category: architecture staff the design life  |  make a comment

Okay, fine. We’ll do one more SPOMa post. (Why? Because we can.) Here’s a story about the exhibit from Steve Jackson over at KPBX. Steve’s a real pro—and the missus tells me I don’t sound like a complete idiot, so there’s that.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: architecture the design life the writing life  |  make a comment

Van Cliburn died yesterday. A reluctant cold warrior, the pianist beat the commies at their own game, winning first place at the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958. And the best part? He was a Texan. Above, Cliburn and his mother at a performance in Gorkiy in 1962. Photograph by Leonid Bergoltsev.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  comments(1)

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Modern architecture exhibit we’re guest curating at the MAC. No? Well, then. You can read all about it here. In the meantime, to illustrate the lengths to which we’ll go to ensure your museum experience is all that and a bowl of gravy, here’s CK Anderson assuming the mantis position while the boys from Designer Decal survey his technique.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

Yesterday afternoon, CK Anderson, John Mraz, and the MAC‘s Ryan Hardesty (above) installed the first display shelf and case for the upcoming SPOMa exhibit. Both shelving and hardware were designed by helveticka and fabricated by Hydrafab Northwest; the custom Plexiglas case was built by Perception Plastics. SPOMa opens March 2 and runs for eight months.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the design life  |  make a comment

Visitors to the upcoming SPOMa exhibit are in for a special treat: a 40′ x 18′ mural, adapted from a 2012 Harold Balazs painting entitled Swimming By. Volunteers, led by Whitworth University associate professor of art Gordon Wilson and with the full participation of Balazs himself, are currently about a third of the way through the project, and should have it completed by Friday.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the design life  |  comments(1)

There’s more to a museum exhibit than hanging a few pretty pictures on a wall. First, you need some walls. CK snapped this photo last week as workers at the MAC began construction in preparation for SPOMa, which opens March 2. Painting will be done tomorrow and Wednesday, then display cases installed, then…well, you’ll just have to come see for yourself.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the design life  |  comments(3)

Yet more evidence that Truman Capote fictionalized parts of In Cold Blood—his celebrated 1966 “nonfiction novel.” But does it really matter?

Unless there’s a larger discrepancy than what’s reported here by the Wall Street Journal, then, well…no. Capote was well-known for his belief that “the taking of notes, much less the use of a tape recorder, creates artifice and distorts or even destroys any naturalness that might exist between the observer and the observed, the nervous hummingbird and its would-be captor.” He committed everything to memory; as soon as an interview was over, he quickly wrote down everything he’d been told. Quite honestly, I’m astonished he got as much right as he did.

Maybe that’s why it doesn’t bother me that, nearly 50 years after In Cold Blood was published, people are still getting their panties in a bunch over its author’s “journalistic sins.” Of course, the fact that the book is an absolute feast of finely tuned prose doesn’t hurt, either.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment