Author: Matt Maldre

The first item on this list is mysteriously covered up by the other sheet. What could it be saying? “Find stuff to s_______” This is a fun game: how would you complete that phrase? Here’s a few ideas: Find stuff to…

You might follow some of the top Chicago art museums on Twitter, like The @artinstitutechi or @mcachicago. But what about the other visual art organizations? I compiled a Twitter list of 49 visual art organizations in Chicago. Please feel free…

Ever run out of ideas for what to write about? My cousin Peter was experiencing writers block for his blog. Here’s how to build up a list of ideas to write about. 1. Keep ALL your blog drafts in one…

Ben Katchor has such unique views of urban life. Here he draws the parallel of how the durability of prison construction is eventually adopted by the outside world. Tamper-proof toilets and sinks. Detention grade mattresses with welded seams. My favorite…

How do you check the weather? Mobile app? Watch the tv news? How about twitter? I normally ask Siri what the weather will be for the day. While that is the most direct route, it’s not the most fun. To…

Every week I check a bookmarked Flickr search for street art Chicago. Even though I try to make the search exclude graffiti, I still end up with mostly graffiti images. Every now and then there might be something remotely interesting…

If you could invent a country, what would you come up with? How about a country on another planet or another moon? The Saturn moon Enceladus has been in the news lately, as NASA is flying the Cassini probe over…

Help my class assignments to be exhibited in New York. Please like any (or all) of these three drawings. The drawings with the most likes on the Art of the MOOC Facebook Page, will be shown at the Creative Time Summit…

Asking questions and more questions might help you to brainstorm better. Instead of brainstorming answers, brainexplore questions. Tanner Christenson writes in Focus on brainexploring, not brainstorming, to have ideas: So I recently began experimenting with a new exercise for creative thinking,…

What if our culture made it a tradition that you always took your paper receipt and folded it into an origami? Forget that it would be pointless. Forget the time involved to do with with every transaction. This would simply…

It’s been a while since I’ve submitted a word definition to Urban Dictionary. I’m digging way back to a word I learned as a child, skelbow. Ten years ago, I was shocked to find out that nobody else has heard…

Searching for “a new hope” on flickr yields an interesting contrast of flowers and Star Wars photos.

In the coming weeks, a redesigned spudart.org will be launched. All 25,000 comments will be back on the site–including all the comments from Facebook. I’m also hoping that all the blog posts will be categorized and tagged. Although that feature…

Have a some webcomics you enjoy? How you read these comics? Perhaps you visit each webcomic’s website. Or maybe you rely on the voodoo of Facebook to show (or not show) you the comic. Maybe some webcomics have an email…

Printouts of moon rocks are being found across downtown Chicago. On the back of each printout reads: You Found a Moon Rock! This printout is the exact same size of an actual lunar sample brought back from the surface of…

While going through my photos, this particular photo of July 4th fireworks reminded me of constellations in the sky. Here’s an animated gif of several photos together. Here the constellation twinkles.

OMG. I thought there would be zero results on instagram #gentlemansquirrel but there is this wonderful photo! Enjoying the view from my lady ships window. #snowday #gentlemansquirrel A photo posted by Montery Ephram Darvill (@mrmontydarvill) on Apr 15, 2013 at…

Since I’ve been working with constellations in my art, I did some research to see what other people are doing. Here are 16 photos tagged with constellation.

The textures of the nebulas play very nicely with the urban textures. The rust texture on a garbage can looks just like a nebula cloud. What is so large in outer space is mimic’ed on something so small as a…

I had a feeling something was going to happen while I was carrying around a eight-foot long print of the Carina Nebula.

When you Google a color’s hexvalue, the entire browser should turn that color. A couple other thoughts related to hexvalues: What are the most popular hexvalues used on websites? Certainly search engines that crawl billions of websites would have stats…

photo by marissandrew What would you write in wet cement? Guerrilla artist Uncustomary asks this question. (She answers with “you are beautiful” in her cement) A fun phrase to write in wet cement would be, “Carve your dreams on the…

What is the perfect snack to enjoy while watching the moon turns red and slowly disappears? I found myself pondering this question while sitting on my back porch watching this rare celestial event. Digging through the pantry, M&M’s became the…

How is it possible that the hashtag #awesomemonkeypower does not exist on Instagram? Only seven results on Google. “Awesome monkey power” hasn’t been used on Twitter since 2013—and just once during that year. And one time for 2012 and 2011.…

How much is the domain spudart.com worth? Just the domain name itself, not the website. 1,610 domains are listed on Godaddy auctions that are four letters + art.com. The median selling price is $2,195. The list of 4letter+art.com domains selling…

(comic courtsey gocomics.com) The mom has some of Calvin’s style of humor in today’s Calvin & Hobbes. It’s nice that the parents aren’t always prototypical boring stiff parents. Here we see where Calvin potentially gets his wits from.

What would this musical score sound like? The Museum of Contemporary Art posted a photo of a score by John Cage and asked people what it would sound like. See that circular part of the score? Here’s what it could…

The most popular highlight made by Kindle users in the Oxford Dictionary of English is “think deeply about something that makes one unhappy, angry, or worried: she had brooded over the subject a thousand times.” That’s rather bizarre. That is…

Here’s a few fun tweets about Paris and ewoks. It's fun saying the phrase "Paris Ewok" — Spudart Matt Maldre (@spudart) August 27, 2015 I want to meet an ewok from Paris. — Ewok Lumat (@EwokLumat) August 27, 2015 On…

Chicago’s Picasso sculpture isn’t just for looking—it’s for sliding! Kids do it all the time, but today, I joined them. In my tie and work clothes, I climbed up and slid down. And then did it three more times. Every…

If you ask “Where is the sun?” to Wolfram Alpha, you get a cool astronomy diagram! In my case, I had to add on “in Chicago”, because Wolfram Alpha thought I was in Florida, based on our internet provider at…