Your (Un)Happy Place

Heaven or hell?

A few months ago I posted a link to a blog that cracks me up: Unhappy Hipsters. The writer captions images from Dwell Magazine with emotionally bleak expositions of the underlying mental states of the inhabitants of these artful homes.

I’ve been searching (so far mostly fruitlessly) for real research on the impact of your home’s layout and general state of tidiness or lack thereof on stress and peace of mind. But I did come across a fun little article in Psychology Today that touches on the topic I want to learn more about in light of these poor unhappy hipsters. Thought it was worth sharing: Does Modern Architecture Make Us Gloomy?

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Beautiful short film

(Reposted from The Improvised Life)

Joaquin Baldwin‘s beautiful little animated film is a reminder of how the creative process often works – in completely unexpected ways. We also love Baldwin’s story about how the film came to be:

This film was inspired while driving back from a trip to Palm Springs, when my partner said that it must take them forever to plant and grow so many windmills. I wrote down the title The Windmill Farmer for an idea to explore later, and about a year later I started developing it into a character and story. This film took 4 months to complete from the first boards until the final mix.”

You never know where a simple idea might lead…

(Watching with the sound off is a completely different experience, which we recommend.)

Via The Improvised Life, Via BoingBoing

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What Banksy and I have in common, and a brief film review

I didn’t know that I had something in common with the street artist and cultural icon known as Banksy until tonight. Banksy and I both love rats. It really makes me happy to know someone else loves rats. He even made this rat holding a camera – when I found this as I searched the internet for images of Banksy’s rats, I knew Banksy meant this one for me:

Banksy's gift to me: Rat with camera

Below is a much better photo from flickr of another of Banksy’s works.

Photograph of Banksy's artwork (c) Maya Newman, via Flickr

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Seeing the connections

Life is full of connections, patterns, rhythms – markers that trigger responses in us, often without us even being aware of them. As an improviser, I know a good scene happens when players make the most use of these connections. Which, of course, requires us to learn to become aware of them.

Yesterday, while waiting for an improv show to begin, I checked out the work hanging at DC Arts Center – it’s a really great exhibit at the moment, perhaps the best I’ve ever seen there – I admired the work of Roberto Piriz (for whom I could find no helpful links to share with you), delightful little wooden boxes meticulously packed with various wooden pieces of different shapes and colors, each forming its own picture and allowing the viewer to determine what that picture was. If I were rich I’d have bought a whole wall of them.

I loved them immediately because they looked to me like a wooden version of a bento box. There’s the connection you were waiting for. Here are my pictures, for proof. (Please forgive image quality – they were all shot with an iPhone.)

Roberto Piriz's boxes.

Katie Walls' bento boxes. Each his own art.

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