Not far from where I used to live in Venice is an eclectic antique store and gallery named Obsolete. What a great name for an antique store. But don't go looking for old pictures of sailboats or a fifties dish set, your grandmother would probably not recognized anything on display here. Seemingly from an undetermined era, the carefully curated collection of unique objects, art, and furnishings on display are so cool and offbeat I would say they lean more towards trendsetting than obsolete! The store also doubles as a gallery and regularly features equally unusual artists. Each new artist is always a pleasant discovery but the one showing this month really hit home for me, since I love miniature installations. The artist reception for Tom Haney's mechanical sculptures, Undaunted, was Saturday November 13. I went the next morning and had the chance to take several pictures while the store was quiet and the sculptures were resting after an undoubtedly busy opening night.

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Here's another ahem, not-so-weekly mini: a project I made last summer which I'm only now getting around to sharing, but speaking of crazy little characters made with wire, it felt to me like the perfect time to slip it in. These guys are not drinking coffee like the running man in my last post, but mixing their own drinks from self-serving pods, which I imagined would be the way to go if you were in a bar functioning like the internet.

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RGTV Tiny Inventions Trailer by Red Giant Software Last month I saw posted on motiongrapher a cool short feature animation called Something Left, Something Taken. Twelve minutes of creative bliss. The story is original and so is the animation process developed by the duo Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter from Tiny Inventions. The characters and the sets are all made by hand with found materials, then photographed and taken into the computer for compositing and animation. As if the film itself was not enough, the authors are very open to sharing their unique process and techniques. Above is a trailer for the making of video produced by Red Giant Software. See the full video just released on their website and vimeo. I think I said before how much I love making of's...

RGTV Tiny Inventions Trailer by Red Giant Software

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I would have never thought of plasticine as a tool for illustrations or how beautiful the results could be. But look at these incredible images from the spanish artist Irma Gruenholz. I just love the poetry of her work. It's a gem I found buried in an article from smashing magazine. Makes me want to run to the closest art store and grab some clay!

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The Small House exhibit by Czech architects A1Architects, 1:1 installation for one concept Isn't there a maxim that says "the best things come in small packages ?" I think it's true most of the time. Small things are more manageable, we can manipulate them, we can observe every sides and corners, it brings out the kid inside. Imagine if the mini cooper was the size of an SUV, would it be this much fun, huh? Since mini things are so great, I've decided to make a weekly post about something mini. This week, I want to share a cool article I saw in this month's issue of dwell, big ideas for... small spaces, about an exhibit called The Small House by Czech architects A1Architects.

Exhibit The Small House by A1Architects, installation 1:1 for one of the  concepts

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I made a few of these miniature bars inside emptied out TVs and radio. I like how creative you can be with this type of decor, especially at this small scale. The shell is a starting point for my design and I use all sorts of found materials to get further inspiration.

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I found this site, pencil rebel, through newwebpick.com. There is a quite a blend of styles on that showcase, but I was immediately drawn to click on this intriguing clay character. Wow, what an amazing site. It's animated with Flash, that's the digital part, but all the backgrounds, objects, characters are made by hand with cardboard and various other materials, very analogue.

Bert grabs the rope. (stop motion animation) on Flickr by Model No.:1

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When the first TV I ever owned gave its last breath I could not bring myself to just throw it out. How could I put such a big piece of trash on the street, how long would it sit in the landfill? So I decided to give it a second life. I had seen an installation in the window of a café that had TVs turned into aquariums, which I thought was a pretty cool idea. But I didn’t really want to deal with the water, so I had to think of something else.

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If you were the number pi, 3.14159..., where would you live? I asked myself that question when given an assignment to design a dwelling for an imaginary creature, any creature. Since I have spent a few years playing with numbers in graduate school, the thing that stuck in my mind was imaginary numbers. Wouldn't it be cool if numbers had homes. Anyway, pi being one of the most famous numbers out there, I picked that one.

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A little while back I took a furniture class at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. We were asked to design a concept for a resting space, without necessarily thinking originally about a piece of furniture. The first thing that came to my mind is how I wished I could stop time for a while, that would be a great way to rest.

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