Year: 2020

One of my favorite children’s books to read to my kids is “Snow” by Uri Shulevitz. The architecture in this book is a jumble of buildings. Shulevitz’s delightful depiction of the architecture complements the playfulness of the storyline. Whenever I…

Another Guardian Lion‽ A pair of famous lions guard the entrance to the Art Institute of Chicago. Inside the museum resides another guardian lion. This unknown distant cousin comes from Cambodia. It currently sits guard at the entrance to one…

Empty lots are fascinating. The natural growth that naturally occurs in the desolate, unattended land. Plants sprouting up, giving life. The fence sign declares no trespassing. Don’t even think about stepping foot onto this land. However, someone ignored this warning,…

While walking to the train in the light snow/rain, an empty lot with lots of rocks and plants always grabs my attention. This lot reminds me of the empty lot next to my apartment of 13 years. I have the…

Sometimes you just gotta start making stuff. Last year, when it was a state’s birthday, I would give that state a happy birthday by leaving a sticky note on their flag pole. I would research state flag for that particular…

“Pancake Robot” by Parry Gripp is such a fun song to memorize the lyrics. Anytime you have pancakes, you can bust out some lyrics from this song. Like this little verse: The pancake robot is coming to townHe’s mixing up…

Sketching artwork in person at a museum is more of an experience than I imagined it to be. The enhanced observation, the nervousness. What to sketch? The decision on what to draw. With 5,267 items on display, what would be…

Last year I was able to walk on the base of the Picasso sculpture in the snow. Only at the end did I slip a little. (Blog post, video) This morning a fresh blanket of snow covered Chicago, including the…

The light dusting of snow created wonderful canvases all over the city. One in particular I couldn’t pass up. A planter in the same plaza as the Chicago Picasso sculpture had a beautiful layer of cotton snow. The combination of…

Imagine drawing everything in the Museum of Modern Art. And then doing it again a second time. That’s what artist Jason Polan did. Unfortunately, Jason, a 37-year-old, passed away last week. Only last week did I discover his artwork (due…

In the footer of my site is a list of blog archives by year. I’ve never listed the total for the current year. Why? Because it takes a little bit more of server processes to do the count. Plus, I…

When I’m grocery shopping, I like to see what product is in the very furthest corner of the store. Here is Mariano’s most remote product: THE EXTREME BEAN: Pickled Beans (Hot & Spicy) made by “Matt & Steve’s” That’s right,…

Where do you spend more time? Instagram or Twitter? Just now I realized, I spend a lot more time on Twitter (specifically Tweetdeck) than Instagram. The cause of my realization came from a photo on twitter from someone I know…

Imagine every time you open a new Chrome tab, you get a new work of art. The Art Institute of Chicago’s Google extension, Art Tab, places a random image from their giant collection into every new Chrome browser tab. Very…

I’d like to stand outside an art museum with a xerox machine, offering pedestrians the opportunity to make their own xerox selfie. All day long, visitors look at art behind glass. Give these visitors a chance to have a memorable,…

I love the tagline on @readTedium’s Twitter profile, “Hunting for the end of the long tail”. Oh, the long tail. It’s all the things that aren’t super-popular. The head is all the hits. The long tail is the rest—the obscure…

Spam text has to be one of most annoying forms of online communication. It feels like an invasion of privacy. HOW DID YOU GET MY NUMBER?! But today I got a spam message that was rather nice. Well, if you…

I almost xeroxed my socks yesterday, but then I thought that was going too far putting my foot on the copier. Perhaps I need a mannequin foot. If i had a mannequin foot… I would walk around with three feet.…

Most origami starts with a square sheet of paper. The corners of the square are integral to shapes and folding lines. Would it be possible to fold a ROUND sheet of paper into a SQUARE box? And not just any…

This is so cool of Spotify to do! A family mix. Last year, we signed up for the family plan on Spotify. When we were all on my plan, the love of Disney soundtracks by my three-year-old daughter was screwing…

This is a good replacement for a cell phone right? I’ve been carrying this clock around in my pocket all day. I love pulling it out to tell the time. Why have I been using this old school LCD clock?…

I’m brainstorming ways of describing art museum guards.  Art museum security guard Art protector Gallery attendant Law enforcement Museum access control Museum patrol Museum protector Observer of visitors Parcel inspector Policy enforcer Preventer of suspicious actions Preventer of touching Proper…

Ever come across a fun or interesting security guard at an art museum? Here’s my encounter with a security guard at the Art Institute of Chicago sharing her love of tiny details of paintings, encouraging visitors to get closer to…

I have a long-standing goal of whenever I see a xerox machine in a public place, to scan my face. My wife and I did one on our honeymoon in France. The copy machine was tucked away in the back…

A few days ago I xeroxed my face on our copier at work. The scanning bed was left open, and was just begging for something fun to be done. I did one copy of my face, then I grabbed a…

All those tweets in the world with no reply. People putting their thoughts and observations out into the world. But then left hanging. Is anybody reading? Or do most people on Twitter post tweets, and not read tweets? What if…

My brother uses Flipboard to share links, so I’m going back onto this platform again. (My username on Flipboard is mattmaldre) A user’s “flips” page is sorted chronologically. One of my most recent flips is from five days ago, and…

I’m thinking about giving up tweeting for one week, and instead write out all my thoughts and reactions on my blog. So far this year, I’ve been having a lot of fun blogging more. In the past decade when I…

The Impressionist painters are known for their atmospheric treatment of scenes, loose brushwork that takes precedence over lines and contours. Yet in the midst of the Impressionism galleries in the Art Institute of Chicago stands a painting with strong lines…

I’m sorry everyone, I should be stuffing my Christmas cards into envelopes to get them mailed, but I’m writing a blog post instead! Soon I’ll publish a fun blog post about a wonderful (and relatively unknown) artist I discovered at…

I’m thinking about what the domain would be for my photo website. And then an idea struck me. What if someone made an app that looked JUST like Instagram. But all the photos came from RSS feeds from individual photographer…