Engineer's Daughter

inspiration input x

Holy cow I can't believe it's September already.  The autumn equinox fast approaches, and soon the Bay Area will get a couple solid weeks of summer weather just as everyone else is moving into fall.  To celebrate, let's swap some inspiration!  Please leave something that is currently making you happy in this post's comments, then we will all enjoy.

I'll get things started:

• Anouk Aimée, my favorite part of Fellini's 8½
• Gun-slinging cats in cowboy hats
• The Criterion edition of The Last Days of Disco

Last month's items:

• Power to the Poster
• Web Web Boy
• Charo on Hollywood Palace, 1968
• Jen Hui Liao's Self-Portrait Machine
• Mike Bouchet's Watershed
• Barrel artist

inspiration input ix

Today is Lammas Day, so in between baking your loaves from the first wheat harvest why not post some inspiration to share!  Please leave something that is currently making you happy in this post's comments, then we will all enjoy.

I'll get things started:

• The new Timber Timbre album
• Picasso lawn gnome
• Please book me a trip to NYC and a room at the new Ace Hotel pronto

Last month's items:

• Deth P. Sun's Please Be Brave zine, particularly this page
• A paean to amateur astronomy
• Brooklyn Art Project

inspiration input viii

Today is Canada Day, and you know what else it is?  Time to post some inspiration!  Please leave something that is currently making you happy in the comments here, then we will all share and enjoy together.

I'll get things started:

• Booty call personal ads from the nineteenth century
• HP iPhone apps featuring vintage calculator designs (for these I might actually consider getting an iPhone)
• Astronaut press clippings and a Criterion special edition of For All Mankind, one of the best space docs ever

Last month's items:

• We Love You So, the Spike Jonze Where the Wild Things Are inspiration blog
• Traffic art by Maider López
• Ninjabi, a video game in which you play a woman in a Muslim country openly defying the Morality Police
• Jeff Barnett-Winsby's Safe Harbor photo project, capturing convicts and the unadoptable shelter dogs they work with to rehabilitate them

inspiration input vii

In honor of yesterday's excellent Union Design Festival in Hayes Valley the inspirations I'm posting this month are some of the local designers I found at the fair whose work is particularly lustworthy.  Leave your own current inspirations in the comments, but don't feel as if they have to be confined to shopping.  I will take inspiration in any form right now.

I'll get things started:

• Quick Brown Fox makes awesome tees, and best of all they're printed on Alternative instead of the hateful American Apparel
• At lunch I saw a woman wearing Colleen Mauer's rectangle earrings and instantly needed them
• Both Molly M Designs and Orange Slice make amazing wood jewelry, and also check out Orange Slice's adorable stuffed birds
• Where's Romeo?! will stamp the message of your choice on a metal disc for a bad-ass necklace, and she also does ready-to-wear
• Though Artefacture does print their tees on American, it's hard to beat slogans like "I Will Pay For Good Design" and "I Heart Typography"

Last month's item:

• A heartbreakingly beautiful video of Peggy Seeger singing with her autoharp

inspiration input vi

I need some inspiration today here on this rainy first day of May.  How about you?  I think you already know the drill: Post something cool/funny/inspiring in the comments here, and we'll all take a look.

I'll get things started:

• A few gorgeous stamps
• The new album from Balky Mule, one of my current faves
• Portland's Jupiter Hotel

Last month's items:

• Porcelain by Tricia Cline
• Cy Twombly at the Gagosian in London
• Antony Gormley's project for Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth
• Fischli & Weiss put a rat and a bear in Milan's Palazzo Litta
• Reconnaisance art installation in Poland
• Jan Svankmejer, the master of surrealist animation
• Games with names like "Scrap Collector" and "Punishment: The Punishing"
• Drop-dead awesome Czech film posters

inspiration input v

Happy St. Stupid's Day!  If you're going to the parade send pictures back, as I'm stuck in meetings all day today.  Which I think also makes it a perfect Inspiration Input day.  Post something cool/funny/inspiring in the comments here, and we'll all take a look.

I'll get things started:

• A glimpse of Marcel Dzama's gorgeous Drawings for Dante
• Tim Gunn as travel guide?  Yes, please!
• Mike Monteiro's paintings rock my world.  He's also in the awesome group show My Certain Fate curated by Timothy Buckwalter that's opening in LA next month (Full disclosure: I'm contributing an essay to the catalog).

Last month's items:

• More Dzama, and also his artwork in the video for the N.A.S.A. track "The People Tree" (featuring David Byrne)
• Animated short Madame Tutli-Putli, with more info about it here

inspiration input iv

It might be a short work week this week, but if you're like me you're still dragging a bit here in the middle of it.  So leave a comment on this post with something fun or that is currently inspiring you, and then we'll all share the awesomeness.

I'll get things started:

• I'm rooting for Herzog this Sunday
• Local band Scissors for Lefty
• John Vanderslice talks shop

January's items:

• Korean artist Osang Gwon
• Kim Joon's NSFW painted bodies
• Typography blog Type Off
• Brooklyn Diorama Club
• Erika Moen's 2008 wrap-up
• Fair-trade shopping at Pacha World
• Best weirdest owl ever
• Shadow puppets in the video for Little Dragon's "Twice"

inspiration input iii

I think the timing is right for another one of these posts, don't you?  Most miserable day of the year, work totally sucked today, it's freakin' cold out blah blah blah fishcakes.  In case you missed it last time, here's the deal: You post something that is currently inspiring you or making you happy in the comments field here (no you don't have to register to post) and then everyone who sees it feels a little bit better. 

I'll get things started:

• Animal Collective listening party tomorrow night.  Yes, I'm totally going to be there.
• Bring Your Own Big Wheel now only three months away.
• Steven Meisel's Persona-inspired photos, paired with Susan Sontag's commentary about Bergman.

December's items:

• A wonderful photo by Julia Fullerton-Batten
• The new Berkeley Art Museum.  Hopefully.

inspiration input

I had such excellent responses to my first call for inspiration last month that I'm going to do it again today.  Just leave a link to something awesome in the comments section for this post, and then we'll all go look and everyone's day will be that much better for it.

Here, I'll get things started:

• Serious manual typewriter lust
• The Dutch turn an abandoned coal mine into a source of geothermal energy
• My obsession with assembling IKEA furniture possibly linked to my gender

November's items:

• A mood-lifting song as performed by Stevie Wonder
• Nifty animated films from PES
• Immersive media art created by Brian Joseph Davis
• A funny cat video
• Esperanza Spalding

inspiration input

Being the first in an occasional series in which I ask you, my readers, to show me something good. 

Please leave a comment on this post with the URL for a cool photo (especially if it's one you took!), a must-read blog, a YouTube video or a song you can't get out of your head.  Or just tell me a story.  Even with the hundreds of items I read in my RSS feed every day, so much slips past me.  And I want to see what's been turning you on.