It’s visual inspiration time:
Enough with getting depressed about culture and the future. I’m convinced we’re on the brink of a new Renaissance, and thanks to the power of the Web, you don’t just have to go to one place (Florence, Paris, New York) — you begin to realize the multi-talented visionaries are everywhere you look. For starters, while I resort to digital visuals for the same sort of reason (I’m not good with paints and clay) that I went into composing and electronic music (I don’t have to be limited by how nimble my piano fingers are), it turns out plenty of people are closeted artists. I’ve been enjoying looking through the visual art of two editors I’ve gotten to work for at Make, Mark Frauenfelder (of Boing Boing and Wired fame, and chief of Make) and Philip Torrone (of the Make blog, among many other things).
Mark’s work is all over the Roq La Rue Gallery, if you missed the plug on Boing Boing. His paintings have a fantastic, retro-style graphics with a sometimes-whimsical, sometimes-disturbing (sometimes-both) edge. I just wish I could see them in person:
Retrorama Show at Roq La Rue (other artists in the show are great fun, too)
Hidden on Philip’s site are Da Vinci-esque sketchbooks of illustrations of various forms. I’m fairly certain I spend more time sleeping than Philip does. (Not that I’m complaining.)
And that only covers two staff at Make Magazine, for crying out loud. It’s funny, because I think a lot of us give up on various pursuits because we worry about whether they’re worthwhile or not, yet it’s always a pleasure to see other people’s work. You start to see how valuable people’s sideline and moonlighting lives can be just as worthy of pursuit, just as worthy of sharing. And maybe we should all spend a little more time drawing.