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Chatting with Tomi Ungerer about Creativity

The first distinction that Tomi Ungerer made when I met with him was, “I am not an illustrator.” Then he clarified, “Well, sometimes I am an illustrator.” He prefers the French term Dessinateur which translates roughly to Draw-er, or a person who uses drawing as his or her fundamental medium. Tomi Ungerer, who is 80 years old, still understands and explains the world through making drawings, and I was given the opportunity to sit with him and talk about his creative process.

Tomi Ungerer: Humor Put to Pen and Ink and Watercolor

In 1968 the children’s book illustrator and author Tomi Ungerer donated over 4,500 of his drawings and book dummies to the Free Library of Philadelphia. It’s taken over forty years for those items to be properly catalogued and made available to the outside world. He is appearing at the Free Library’s Montgomery Auditorium (1901 Vine Street) on Tuesday, June 14th at 7:30PM to celebrate this and to be interviewed by Tony Auth.

John Lurie from another perspective

From 2004-mid 2005 I was John Lurie’s Personal Assistant. He lived on a street in SoHo that competes with the chaos and spectacle of any medieval city, and like various reclusive characters from literature he rarely left his sixth floor walk-up, having been diagnosed with what some doctors tentatively called Chronic or Advanced Lyme’s Disease. Flickering light would send his body into paralytic shock and his muscles along the left side of his body constantly (visibly) spasmed. He spent the majority of his time either drawing or sleeping, and he used the top of his washing machine as a workstation, ...

Your Breasts Are Like Two Young Deer That Are Twin: Fraktur In the Free Library’s Rare Book Dept.

The title of this article ends an inscription in a fraktur love letter (liebesbrief) written to Barbara Muller around 1800 by a now-anonymous doter. It is preceded by, in elaborate handwriting, “The heart of mine shall be devoted to you. See, my girlfriend, you are beautiful… Your eyes are like the eyes of doves between your braids. Your hair is like the flock of goats that was shorn unto the mountain Gilead.” I imagine the author penning the message, overwhelmed by the rush of passion and then quickly regretting what he wrote. The fraktur exhibit in the Free Library’s Rare ...

One Book, One Artist Talk: Marjane Satrapi at the Free Library

Wednesday was a long night if you were one of the eight hundred people who waited to hear Marjane Satrapi speak about the Complete Persepolis (Pantheon, $24.95), chosen for this year’s One Book, One Philadelphia. The night was also emotional. Mayor Nutter confessed that passing bill 1828 was “the most emotionally challenging” situation he ever undertook in his 25-year political career. Applause was loud and long for the library staff who prepared for Satrapi’s talk, even though a week ago they did not know whether or not they’d still have a job come Oct 2nd. As Marjane Satrapi walked onstage, ...

No, It’s Not a Real Wii™ Game, It’s John Karel Making Macaroni and Cheese

I have been a fan of John Karel’s work ever since I met him in 2007. His animations, drawings, and paintings are literally and metaphorically reflections of him, his friends, and the vloggs/vloggers (video blogs/bloggers) he finds on the internet. John infuses his artwork with horizontal-lipped humor and a fantastic sense of color and drawing. Clearly he has grown up “studying” Sunday comics. What I find most interesting is how John’s artwork pulls you aside and whispers a critical gesture at avatar culture, that exhibitionist style of interacting with the world that was solely bred of the internet. In his show ...

Homelessness in a Discrete Living Simulation

Released in 2000, The Sims was the first computer game in its genre to engage players in the everyday activities of virtual people, or “Sims.” It is like a microcosmic version of SimCity (the urban planning/management computer game) but instead of a municipality you create and manage individual persons. The ultimate goal is to steer your Sim towards happiness via a rather traditional real-world route: hobbies, love (The Sims 3 is LGB marriage-inclusive), a family, a fulfilling career with accumulated skills, socialization, money, and good hygiene.

The Phenomenology of the Craft Craze

The soft strums of an inoffensive acoustic guitar hovered over the booths at the Art Star Craft Bazaar on a correspondingly pleasant day at Penn’s landing.  I have noticed, for a few years now, an upsurge in crafting as a popular cultural phenomenon. Its pervasiveness has resulted in communities of both male and female crafters all over the country who unabashedly enjoy and, more importantly, make a living off of the goods that they create. I came to the Art Star Craft Bazaar (it does have the word “Art” in it, after all) to see how individuals are harnessing their ...

To Mumbai and Back–Philadelphia’s International Design Clinic and its guerilla design project

Mumbai in the past twenty years has gone through a prodigious economic boom, bringing an influx of migrant workers from the rest of the country to perform labor and service-industry work. It is India’s largest city at 13.5 million, and it suffers from the usual developing-city problems like poverty, lack of social services and clean water, etc. Mumbai Mobile Crèches has been the only NGO specifically supporting the health, education and safety of children of construction laborers.  And now for the Philadelphia/Mumbia connection:   — a “guerilla design” project of the Philadelphia non-profit International Design Clinic, headed by Scott Shall of Temple ...

The Human Scale of Recycling in India

Enrico Fabian is a German-born, Delhi-based photographer whose work is on display at the India Habitat Center. Fabian spent three months in 2008 working alongside the NGO Chintan documenting the daily life of the Kabari, a general term used for people in India who collect and sell recyclable materials. Fabian’s show consists of about two dozen 44 inch x 32 inch framed photographs, each with an explanatory printed caption underneath. You walk clockwise around the space, each photograph leading you into the next, like a photoessay. It is an eye-opening show on the topic of waste recycling and how it ...