Blog
Posting every Wednesday, with some bonuses
- A carousel carver in West Virginia sent in the best leaf story yet
Patrick Wentzel picked leaves off the red maple in his yard in Parkersburg, West Virginia, and gave them to his wife Brenda on Friday, October 2. Fifty-six years earlier, to the day, the two…
- Leaf with hole predicts future art project
This magic leaf knows what I'm planning.
- Remember me on Division Street in 2011
Turning the “Remember me” checkbox from websites into 2-inch magnets and placing them around Chicago.
- Remember M…
Why I duct-taped a postcard to my shoe and mailed it to my alma mater for an art exhibit.
- Pick up a leaf and put it into a book with…
When pressing leaves in a book, write a caption about the leaf on an envelope. Then put the leaf inside the envelope into the book. You'll press a story with the leaf.
- We carry more than we know
Last Wednesday I celebrated 25 years of spudart.org. Today, on the actual anniversary, I totally forgot. I was busy leaving a treasure chest behind the abandoned shopping carts at Jewel.
- 25th anniversary of Spudart.org blog
My first blog post on spudart.org went up on September 28, 2001. It was called "Long Live Long Tables." I proposed that long cafeteria tables are better for conversation than little round ones. This…
- 25 top sculptures since 1945 (nine of them no longer exist)
Four sculptures on the New York Times list don't work until a stranger does something. Bend the aluminum. Take a candy. Eat the pad thai. Follow the instructions on the wall.
- Jim Nollman put 60 hours of orca recordings on a shelf and didn’t listen to them
If you got one night on a boat with an underwater speaker to play music for orcas, what would you play?
- Zooming super-close into a Monet
The Art Institute of Chicago just released a beast of a Monet digital catalog with insanely high res zoom. You can see individual brushstrokes and even photomicrographs of the paint layers.
- Please write a letter on aluminum foil… it has some ties in art history
September 1 is World Letter Writing Day. Everybody gets letters on paper, so this year try aluminum foil and a Sharpie. Your friend will read your words with their own face behind them.
- Mosaic tiles are a great medium for depicting sharks
I thought someone had covered a beach rock with mosaic tiles just because. Then I learned the history behind this famous shark rock.
- The world’s tallest building will have planes going past below the top floor
Jeddah Tower is only 3½ miles from an airport runway. That might be a problem.
- The day I turned 50 and climbed my roof twenty times
It was a fun and memorable day (back on November 20th). I have some fun little stories involving Root Beer Energy drink, busting the belt on my pants, making a graphic that maps out…
- The color palette of croquet in the 1920s
Croquet has two personalities. One is pristine lawns, all-white clothes, and strict rules. The other is blasting your opponent's ball into the bushes and inventing rules like "no boundaries." Turns out The New Yorker…
- The mystery deer of Oregon
A few mystery deer sculptures showed up in an Oregon roundabout. Then more appeared. Then googly eyes. Then a pink flamingo. It reminded me of a weird little toy installation that grew inside Tribune…
- Deciphering the Matrix Digital Rain
Turns out The Matrix's code isn't really made of sushi recipes. I fed it to Google Translate and got back an industrial parts catalog, three real cultures, and one day spa.
- A simple trick for tracking your Sharpie’s age
Tired of digging through a box of dead markers? I started dating my Sharpies with a dab of white-out on the end. Now I'll know exactly how old each one is.
- Introducing the PB&J pancake sandwich
A few life lessons from leftover pancakes: • Order what you like • Enjoy it • Save some for later • Share the good stuff
- Folding the Chicago-style hot dog flag
I folded my Chicago-style hot dog flag using the same 13-fold triangular method as the American flag. Normally you end up with a field of stars. Here the protocol demands a perfect field of…
