Red Chuck

YouTube Layman's Diagram

Even though it's not quite as exciting as their usual content, I think this YouTube layman's service diagram is pretty damn great.

Happy 4th

Flaming Marshmallow

-Just to say we are back online again.

Thank you to the incredible Minor brothers for all the troubleshooting and repairs!

New Banners + Pepe Exegesis

With Easter upon us, I thought it'd make some updates here at Red Chuck, so I dumped a bunch of new photos into my roating image directory. (Don't worry I'll put the pictures of the kids back up soon.) For this new look, I chose a very special collection of photos. These new banner images are all close ups from placemats. You might remember that Katherine used these amazing placemats as backgrounds in last year's highly successful, 2 part, Flikr-bound children's story, "Pepe's Easter Adventure."

Hello Pepe.

Revisiting Pepe's story yesterday, I realized that there was one thing that was missing - a proper introduction to Pepe. So take a hard look because here he is. Pepe is an easter chick. Pepe is on a quest. Pepe is searching for a home. Pepe's quest takes him through many exotic landscapes. OK, so many of these landscapes are placemats but some are extra special locales - like the cabbage leaves in the scene where Pepe meets a marshmallow peep or the inside of the basket where Pepe meets the Virgin Mary. Anyway, through the magic of digital photography and the power of Flikr image hosting, here, once again, is the coyly amatuerish yet heartwarming tale of Pepe's Easter Adventure:

Pepe's Easter Adventure - Part I
Pepe's Easter Adventure - Part II

View As Slideshow:

Part I
Part II

Happy Easter Pepe! It's good to see you again!

Google Calendar

Google Calendar launched yesterday with some very cool AJAX-ish features. Dig it. Plus it imports from iCal. One problem, it doesn't play well with Safari. Oh well. I should be hanging out with Firefox more anyway.

Suck-o-tron

Though it sounds like a robot, Suck-o-tron is actually an alien (named Suck-o-tron because of all the suckers on its purple tentacles).

Aliens are the new subject matter for art work around here these days.

Ergo, aliens are the new robots.

Rocket

I really like this rocket Harrison drew last weekend.

Omnivisu

Check out Omnivisu, a design project in which people's eye movements are recorded and projected onto the side of a building in Berlin.

I heart conceptual art.

It Makes For My Billionaire Status

Phoebe's other exhibit, "It Makes For My Billionaire Status," opens today in the Kantor / Feuer Gallery in Los Angeles. How does she do it? 2 exhibits in the same month! I can barely get 2 shoes tied in the morning. Anyway, they've posted a nice picture gallery on their website of recent work from 2005. When you have a chance, check out the shots from "Heavy as Debt."

Walter Anderson Museum

Thankfully the Walter Anderson Museum survived Hurricane Katrina with only minor damages.

From their website:

September 12 - The Museum sustained no major structural damage and there was no water intrusion. While we have not yet done a full assessment of the building and grounds, things look good overall. In preparation for the storm, the staff moved the entire collection into the Museum's interior vault and there was no damage to the art. Some small roof leaks and air conditioning system problems are being investigated. Despite damage to their own homes, museum staff members have been on the job and working with the family of Walter Anderson to preserve family-owned works that were damaged during the storm. Conservation work is also being done on the Museum's collection of linoleum blocks that were stored in a remote facility that was flooded.

We will resume normal operations as soon as possible, perhaps within one month...

45 Robots

Saturday, Harrison drew 45 Robots. He said he wanted to design machines to help with things around the house. So for example, he drew Mowy who mows the lawn and Sweeper who sweeps the roof. But after drawing several of these helpful robots, he then started drawing more fanciful automotans. There's Spike who's purpose is self preservation, Claw who "controls stuff" with lightbulbs and eyestalks, and (and this is my favorite drawing of the bunch) Smarty who builds other robots.

Part of the fun for both of us was naming each robot and then talking about what each robot could do. I took photographs of each of the drawings and then imported them into iPhoto. After that, Harrison told me what to name each robot and what to write about each robot. I typed his descriptions into iPhoto's comment field, trying to stick as closely as possible to his words and diction. Export as "Web Page" and voila — instant robot web archive. We are both extremely pleased with the result. I am very glad that we took the time to sit down and name all these guys, because, to me, the descriptions and names are as imaginative and colorful as the drawing themselves.

So without further ado, here's 45 Robots.

Magnetic Hill

Just a reminder that this is also the last weekend to see Kathy's show:

May, 28 - July 19th, • Magnetic Hill, recent works by Katherine Strause • One Person Show • Gallery 26 • Little Rock, AR

Katherine Strause Artist's Statement and Bio:

Who will look at our photos when we are gone?

A box full of photographs, mostly portraits dating from the 1920s, through the 1950s, came to me by way of my Aunt Renee. She lives in Muscatine Iowa and acquired these images from a woman’s estate. The woman's heirs, not knowing or easily recognizing the sitters discarded the photographs. These once precious objects, had lost their value.

The idea that these images had to be attached to a memory to be important fascinates me.

Sorting through hundreds of photos, I realized that this was the woman’s personal collection representing all of her friends and family throughout her lifetime. People’s faces appeared over and over again at different stages in their lives and I began to take ownership of what I could discover from these pictures alone.

Captured by their universal beauty, I approach these images as subject matter and create my own relationship with these individuals. These portraits possess a look of determination and hope. They represent us all.

Katherine Strause exhibits nationally and is currently the Artist in Residence in Painting at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from Southern Illinois University.

You can visit her website at: www.katherinestrause.com

Early Warning

Get a sitter!

Random Image Rotator

Here's where I got my banner image rotator. I can't tell you how happy I was to find someone who wrote this script in php instead of java. Thank you Automatic Labs.

Abandon Normal Instruments

Check out Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies.