Tango Echo

Portraits of Quyen Dinh

Tue, 06 Jul 2010 22:50:46 +0000

Quyen Dinh, 32, doesn’t want you to analyze her art. She doesn’t want you to look at it and think about what kind of statement she is making concerning the role of women in society or the immigrant experience in America or The Way We Live Today. That’s not to say that she doesn’t want to you to think about anything when you view her art. She does. Mostly she wants you to think about her. In her artist statement Dinh, who sculpts and paints her acrylic-on-canvas pieces when she isn’t working 40 hours a week as a parking-control officer in Orange County, California, writes, “Making art for me has always been pure catharsis … The characters in my paintings are, for the most part, self-portraits of my inner self. So when people see my work, rather than wanting them to think about them, I’d like for them to just feel the very things that bring me nostalgia from what could be memories from past lives, things that give me peace, and also the things that make me melancholy.” Viewing Dinh’s art is like viewing a visual autobiography of her triumphs and her losses, of her frustrations and her joys, of her very real human emotions, which she inevitably shares with our own. But she didn’t start telling her story until 2004, when a birthday gift she made for a friend inspired her to transition from black-and-white “hyperrealistic portraits” to acrylic paints. Those now-trademark vivid acrylic colors paired with universal themes like loss, lust and spirituality characterize most of Dinh’s paintings, but it’s the broader theme of innocence – and the subsequent lack of it – that encompasses her work and makes it unique. In one of her paintings, you might see a child delivering a eulogy for a dead goldfish to a circle of stuffed animals, while in the next, you’ll see a woman with smoky eyes and a ‘20s hairdo staring out at you with a withering expression—almost as if she is daring you to say something―as another woman clad only in a bustier grasps her from behind. However different they might seem, both those paintings’ characters are representations of Dinh herself. “I’ve dealt with so many losses of pets, at young ages, too. And the strong female characters show another side of me, as a lesbian,” she says (Dinh’s been out since the age of 16). “I love the way flappers look; they’re so beautiful and elegant and stylish. There’s an innocence and something very sexy about them.” Like the characters she paints, Dinh exudes her own paradoxical sense of innocence. “When I meet people I always say I’m so innocent, and I do feel very innocent. People always say ‘Oh yeah, look at all your tattoos,’ but you can’t judge a book by its cover. When you look at these tattoos – it’s art. It’s just me using art to express who I am.” She uses tattoos in her paintings just like she uses them on her body. In one, a porcelain woman stares solemnly from the center of the canvas while her body acts as a subsequent one, with a tattoo of a heart with wings centered on her chest and a broken heart and the words “R.I.P.” on her arms. You don’t have to read the title of the painting – which happens to be “Memorial” – to know that this woman is grieving. In another painting, “The Adventurer,” a boy clad in nautical gear and surrounded by tentacles stands next to a giant pelican as a ship approaches in the background. Fully clothed, he has just one tattoo visible – a ship anchor. Dinh’s upcoming projects include a second collection of paintings focused on “tattoo art.” “It’s going to be called ‘The Second Coming,’ a collection of people and children with tattoos that tells messages and stories through them – mainly about spirituality and making you think beyond this life,” she says. As a recent University of Southern California film grad, she’s also tossing around the idea of making a documentary – if she can find a good subject. “Everything’s kind of been covered… nothing’s original anymore. I really want to do something that’s socially powerful and something that’s worth watching.” Until she figures out what that is, we’ll have to be content with her paintings: each one like a mini-documentary in itself, one that is decidedly worth watching. Check out more of Quyen Dinh’s art on her website at Quyen-Dinh.com.

Detroit Craft Revival

Mon, 10 May 2010 21:14:40 +0000

Handmade Detroit hosted the first craft fair of the Metro Detroit season with the Craft Revival on Saturday April 17th 2010. This wasn't a polyester pant suit wearing community center craft show with handmade holiday themed dresses for your fake plastic lawn goose to wear. Handmade Detroit's Craft Revival, like all of its events, has been dubbed an "alternative" craft show with vendors selling things like hand grenade soap and paper action figures. Handmade Detroit is a crafter collective that puts together craft shows, events, and an online community with a blog, DIY calendar, how-to videos, and a resource list of all the best craft places in Metro Detroit. The Detroit art scene has been blossoming for the past few years with artists taking advantage of the cheap real-estate. Many of the artists at the show described the blossoming scene as having an independent, DIY approach and aesthetic. Though most of the artists are eclectic in their styles, it is a close knit community. Some artists feel, however it may be a little too close knit. Saying; "There can be a hater element as well. A lot of artists respond negatively to artists that achieve outside success." Almost all of the vendors at the Craft Revival were local. Many have lived in Metro Detroit their whole lives while others had left for a few years but had recently come back. Tanya Andren of ttishbite lived briefly in San Francisco but came back and vowed never to leave again. She told me of the city, "I think people from Detroit like the feeling of dirt under their fingernails. We work hard and know that nothing comes easy." Cara S. Rosaen of Sweet Plum Vintage, recently returned to Ann Arbor with her husband, after living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She said she feels, "blessed that we have found a great community of dreamers with an eye for business who are looking to bring new life and a new vision to this area. It's an exciting time." Cara and her husband were surprised to find, as she puts it, that Michigan, "while economically depressed, are full of residents steeped in homeland pride and hope and belief in the area's reinvention of itself. There are countless organizations and individuals working to re-imagine and redefine what this area will become: artists buying up abandoned lots and turning them into works of art, young farmers buying city property to try out urban farming, entrepreneurs taking advantage of the great universities and low cost of living to support them trying to build their companies." Here are some of my favorite artists from the Detroit Craft Revival. !http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4024/4596617208_2ded808ab6.jpg!

Courtney Burgam

ampersans.etsy.com ampersans.com Courtney describes her work as, "stuff people can use! I love using organic materials and recycling old ones. The jewelry I make is made from old pieces I have found and the yarn I sell has been unraveled from old sweaters."

!http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3172/4596001407_06a8679e56.jpg!

Ornj Bag by David Shock

http://www.ornjbags.com/ David makes these awesome orange mesh bags that are perfect for lugging large, odd shaped objects from art supplies to laundry. What makes these bags unique is what they are made of; the plastic construction fencing. "There was construction fencing going up everywhere. Much of it quickly started falling down and creating serious blight. Orange being my favorite color I was naturally drawn to it and took a roll home to construct a simple bag to carry my laundry down the 3 flights of stairs at my apartment. I then started making a few tote bags and the rest kinda snowballed."

!http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3393/4596001569_86eeafab07_m.jpg!

Tanya Andren

www.ttishbite.etsy.com www.ttishbite.blogspot.com Tanya uses vintage metal enamel and Lucite plastic to create one of a kind hair accessories and jewelry. Her supplies come from resale shops, Eastern Europe and her Grandmother's attic. She jokes with customers that her pieces must have been created by an alter-ego. "My wardrobe consists of black, grey and navy blue; somehow my pieces are pink, white, purple and even bright orange."

!http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1285/4596001531_7422515c4e_m.jpg!

Sweet Plum Vintage by Cara S. Rosaen

http://www.etsy.com/shop/sweetplumvintage "The heart of my work is working with families to design heirloom button jewelry collections from a person's own family buttons. I love this whole process. I get to design pieces that connect people to one another (often to family members who have passed), educate people about buttons, and talk personal style at the time!" Cara creates unique pieces of jewelry from vintage and antique buttons and other pieces of vintage ephemera. " I'll use almost anything "old" and "cool" that I can find: ribbons and trims, buckles, old chains, old watch parts, game pieces, even mini dollhouse furniture, but every piece has to include some of my obsession; buttons."

!http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1289/4596000621_73afaa29dc.jpg!

NICE by Caitlin Holcomb

http://www.nice-etc.com http://www.nice.etsy.com Caitlin's family is from the Detroit area, but moved to Illinois when she was 10. She's been a part of the Chicago Renegade Craft Show since 2006. The Detroit Craft Revival was her first show in Metro Detroit. When asked what inspires her art she said "Fun! I am inspired by all sorts of vintage things as well as current trends and I find great joy in meshing the two. I like making something that will make you smile and want to have it in your home. It really is a great honor to have something you've made in someone's home!" Caitlin is drawn to materials that may have a reputation as tacky or passé, finding ways to make them fresh and fun such as, "the bright and shiny trims that I use for my banners, doilies that I collect for my light shades, the puffy paint and 90s fabric that I've been using for mini banners, and the idea of a deer head in your home."

How Bad is the BP Oil Spill?

Mon, 03 May 2010 21:41:46 +0000

Up from initial claims of "No Oil is Spilling", the Coast Guard now reports that 210,000 gallons of oil are spewing into the Gulf of Mexico each day from the destroyed BP oil rig Deepwater Horizon - and presumably have been since the rig exploded on April 20. With the total amount of oil spilled during the 1969 oil rig blowout off the coast of Santa Barbara, CA being surpassed _every single day_, it is difficult to fully comprehend the sheer quantity of oil - and destruction - involved in this disaster. This is the first of several infographics we'll be posting to convey the amount of damage BP, Transocean, and Halliburton have done to America. Download the full sized version: "[pdf]":http://www.tango-echo.com/files/bp-spill-in-valdezes.pdf "[jpg]":http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinmarshall/4574125985/ Stay tuned to Tango Echo for more on the spill - news items in the Twitter "feed":http://www.twitter.com/TangoEchoZine and infographics and commentary in the articles.

Q&A with
"Interaction Designer"
Matt Brown

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 14:39:10 +0000

In a recent project created by designer Matt Brown -- a former expat, trained at Sweden’s Umea Institute of Design and currently based in Boston -- he created a futuristic world in which we’d print our own food from our home printers, marinate beef from the inside out and grow fruit that would look like an ordinary apple but, when chopped, would reveal an alien core of strawberries, grapes and cherries. He wrote the booklet for this visionary project on a crappy old typewriter that lacked both a working space bar and an @ symbol. There’s a saying that goes, “If you’ve got one foot in the past and one foot in the future, then you’re pissing on the present.” But I wouldn’t really call what Matt Brown is doing “pissing.” Hell, I’d call it art. I always like to understand the evolution of artists and their work. With that in mind, when did you first become interested in what you call “interaction design” in particular, as opposed to other forms of design, and what were some of your first projects? I'm not sure if what I try to do is really interaction design, or industrial design or something else. I still can't really give a straight answer. When I was a kid I could draw pretty well, but I remember being 16 and rejecting it because it seemed like that's all people knew me for- the kid who drew the nice poster for the “Santa Parade” or whatever. I started getting really interested in people's stories when I moved to East Lansing, Michigan and spent all day riding the bus and talking to strangers or walking on the railroad tracks and finding stuff. My first projects were crude comic books written about the people I saw- and those books would sort of have product ideas in there. I really wish I still had some of those.
!http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2710/4538568439_d1f84fe597_o.jpg!
What is your process for creating your artwork, and do you have a favorite type of material and/or medium that you work with? I just usually work with what I have. At school we had a laser-cutter and I used that thing all of the time. For a while after graduating I stayed in my friend's basement and they had a screen-printing business, so I tried doing some shirts. Sometimes you just have an inkjet printer, you know? But my favorite material is probably acrylic. What inspires your work the most? Stills from ‘70s and ‘80s movies really do the trick for me. You watch these lame sci-fi films and hit “Print Screen” when something inspires you. A lot of inspiration comes from the fact that I never do anything right, so I have to figure out other ways to do things. Honestly I think spending junior high watching Seinfeld influenced a lot of people my age, too. My advice for ideas is to make sure you have a notepad/pen by your bed, or a cassette recorder. There's a lot of good ideas floating around there while you're almost asleep. I know from reading over your site that you have moved around quite a bit -- from Michigan to Sweden to Italy, and now to Boston. How has place affected your work, if it has? I know that place affects my work but I'm not sure how. I know that there have been some people that have really opened my mind in all of those places. When I first met my girlfriend, she told me that I was free to be as strange as I wanted to be and it was a simple thing to say that really helped me out. I will say that living in northern Sweden for a year was great because of the daylight shifts. It would be so dark for so long in the winter and then it would never get dark in the summer. Extremes are always inspiring to me.
!http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4070/4539200148_d5bff69a14_o.jpg!
I think it's really interesting that you say you like design fiction, and that with a lot of your projects, you assert that they probably won't work: for example, a group project that you did at the Umea Institute in Sweden called the "Peasley Society," in which you and two other artists, Roberto Christen and Chao Wang, created a fictional society named after Jamie Peasley, the society's "founder." And basically this Society produced design projects that could, as you say, "help people think about their energy use." But right after that on your site you make it clear that "Peasley's energy awareness products aren't functional and many of them were failures, but it was our hope that people remember the fiction."
!http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4015/4538568349_89978af186_o.jpg!
To me, that really sums up the meaning of a lot of your work: that you don't really know the solution to creating a better world or how to design for the future -- that's maybe the job of your viewers, while your job is to provide them with a medium for inspiration, a little spark of fire. I'll be the first one to say that I'm not the smartest guy in the world. I like to do experiments, explorations, and let people interpret them how they will. Every once and a while, I get an email from another student, or some random person that got an idea or something else from one of my projects, and then instantly my day is made. Right now I'm doing a column for core77 about fictional designers and their stories. It's a lot of fun because hey- it's not me designing the stuff it's “Carlo Heckman” or “Kurt Manchild,” so there's no fear with coming up with questionable ideas because you can talk about why they failed. Hopefully someone sees some of these sort of half-baked ideas and comes up with something truly beneficial to humans.
!http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2791/4539252232_9c06ca773a_o.jpg!
Your project “Night Horses” is one of my favorites; I like how you found these horses in a thrift store with no idea of where they came from and you basically took them and rewrote their history, saying they were from an “ill-received toyline from 1989.” This is one of my favorites too. I like it because it happened so fast; I found the horses at a thrift store, came up with the names on the bus ride back to school, and then did the packaging in a couple of hours. It's those types of situations that really keep me going, knowing that a cool project can just happen. You go through a lot of dry spells, you know -- and it's good to know that everything can change in a few hours.
!http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2745/4538623581_18bf3abd77_o.jpg!
Unlike a lot of other designers and artists, you seem to want to create things for everyday people. For example, your project "33 Robins" is labeled as a game for lonely kids, and you chose the robins for Michigan, so this is something lonely, maybe latchkey kids growing up in suburban Michigan could play with. You have the "Forkplate," designed for people who have trouble with their motor skills. And you have the "Money Pizza," created to "help eliminate the shame people feel when they pay for something all in change." And I get the sense that there is absolutely no irony - you're identifying ways to improve people's lives.
!http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2748/4539199942_57ac128ba9_m.jpg!

!http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4002/4539199900_8c11aea286_m.jpg!
Yes! I mean a lot of this stuff is sort of funny, but I've spent my life as an awkward derelict and I keep thinking that there's got to be other people out there like me. All you have is quarters and nickels and you're hungry, but you still have to rev yourself up to spend them on a pizza- and you need that pizza. I'm happy that you mentioned the 33 Robins project- it's an old one and no one ever seems to really like it.
!http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4059/4538567947_a4f73f06d8.jpg!
Your most recent work, "Food and the Future of it," is a compilation of food and food-related products that you think humans could use in the future, specifically the year 2040. Can you tell me a little bit about why you chose food as the theme and what general ideas you had about food in the future that you had in mind when creating this exhibit?
!http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4013/4539200088_39a3892cb8_o.jpg!
I wanted as many people to get in on this project as possible, so food was the choice because we all are experts on it in some way. Some are experts in cooking, and some in microwaved burritos -- but experts all the same. For the project, I wanted to create things that would sort of disgust/entertain people, and get them thinking about what could happen. Jack Schultze did a project on lab-grown meat that was really inspirational to me.
!http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2692/4539199830_267c4b3a88_o.jpg!
Not to get too political, but I'm curious to hear how you feel about the corporate food industry, because it's very present in this exhibit and you reference it quite a bit. For example, you talk about how, in 2040, Burger King will drop the "BU" and just become URGE King because they'll feel that their former name is too "limiting." And you talk about how Kraft and Unilever will have "a great time" with printed food and its respective cartridges. I don't know. I mean I'm sort of on the edge. I want to eat the good local stuff, and I wish that all of the crap towns out there had their own types of food- but at the same time I was raised on Pop Tarts and stuff like that. I was always obsessed with trying the new type of soda. Crystal Pepsi, Surge, all of that stuff. When I was in junior high we had Slush Puppies and Domino’s Pizza in the cafeteria. When I was living in Italy I tried to stay away from the familiar and found some great regional stuff, especially some of the cheese over there. So anyway, I'm not sure where I stand. My official response is that I'm against all of these processed foods, but to be honest, that's not how I always live my life. Again, going back to the idea of helping people's lives: the way you see food in the future is that people will be able to print out and grow their own food, which would be a great convenience for a lot of people, cutting down on time they'd spend driving to the grocery store and time they'd have to spend cooking family meals. Also, you say it would encourage more people to eat at home. But of course, you say that you had a lot of mixed reactions to your exhibit -- which you wanted -- so clearly not everyone interpreted your exhibit in this way. Well for one, I'm just glad that some people got upset and took my work seriously. Better than just laughing at it, you know? The thing is I didn't make it clear enough that my project wasn't really about solutions, like I wasn't introducing the ape food meat creator as a real project. I still don't really know how to talk about it. Lab-grown meat could be really good for us humans, but how can you talk about it in a way that's not trying to tell people what to do? I mean I'm not sure if I would be into it myself.
!http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2725/4539199796_6909b38875_o.jpg! Any ideas for future projects?
I'm working on a lot of stuff right now. Scanning 30-year-old cutting boards to make new boards with the tried-and-true wear patterns of the old, doing more fake toy lines, trying to sew some pants for parents...I have a real design job now, so I don't have as much time as I did a few months ago, but I'm feeling pretty good and I'm hoping to get a lot done. It's been a sort of dry spell for the last month with moving and everything, but now I'm starting to take in the new city and ideas are starting to come back. To check out more of Matt's work, visit skrov.com.

News Feed: Week of April 12

Sat, 17 Apr 2010 12:14:44 +0000

I use our "@TangoEchoZine":http://twitter.com/TangoEchoZine feed for the news items and oddities that we come across in our travels. Since our focus is on original content, we don't republish posts about these finds. Instead, they go on our Twitter Newswire. This was the week of April 12, 2010, in the Tango Echo News:

Transparent VW Factory

Death Metal Louis Armstrong

Peter Steele

Peter Steele dies and Volcano erupts in Iceland. Does anyone else see a connection?

Stay up to date by following us on Twitter: "@TangoEchoZine":http://twitter.com/TangoEchoZine