Author: Matt Maldre

Snapity is now submitted to urbandictionary.com. Here’s what I wrote: definition: The interjective response to shocking sad news. A combination of “snap” and “pity.” Snap! is your first reaction of surprise, closely followed by pity for the bad news. Snapity!…

An army of caterpillars somehow got onto the median of a busy tourist street in Chicago. How was such an unusual sight discovered? Why through origami butterflies, of course! Being freshly married two weeks ago, we have about four hundred…

With the Stanley Cup in the news again as Chicago won its third Stanley Cup in six years, Chicago’s Adler Planetarium made an infographic revealing that 429,305,338 Stanley Cups stacked on top of one another would reach the Moon. What…

The Muppets comic book (2009-2012) is EXCELLENT! If you like the Muppets, go to your nearest comic book store and pick up the compilation, “The Muppets Omnibus.” (or get it from Amazon) It’s seriously one of the best comics to…

Crowd control gates lined the streets of Michigan Avenue outside Tribune Tower. The kickoff to the NFL Draft in Chicago was supposed to be huge. Such a large crowd was expected that people were going to be spilling over into…

The Tribune Tower has many locked doors leading to secret closets. Walk down any hallway, and you are sure to encounter a locked door that leads to a mysterious place. One of these such doors is on the 14th floor…

What would celebrated architect Renzo Piano be saying in this photo? He clearly looks excited to be sharing something.

“You’re the dreadlock cactus,” says Jason DeVoll the photographer of this image, “I don’t care about ‘official names'” I say, “It’s alive!–oh wait, of course it’s alive. It’s a plant. ha. The sign looks so tiny next to this cactus…

Parked and waiting was the infamous Puppet Bike. Strips of the Carina Nebula in my hand, I was looking for poles and other items to wrap the Nebula around. What great felicity to run into one of Chicago’s most famous…

Every artist has their go-to methods when creativity runs dry. Tools like sketchpads. Working in locations like coffee shops. For me one of my methods is to make artwork to place on the front of Tribune Tower. 149 rocks from…

Scull Chapel, Czermna, Poland / Kaplica Czaszek w Czermnej by PolandMFA, on Flickr Untitled Forms / Dumbo Arts Center: Art Under the Bridge Festival 2009 / 20090926.10D.54894.P1.L1.C23 / SML by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML, on Flickr Angel Christmas cookies by…

An impressive show was put on by this year’s batch of BFA students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The expansive seventh floor of the Louis Sullivan Building on the State Street housed more than 300 artists’…

The fine art of napkins. Art that you can wipe your mouth with. The Art Institute currently has 11 napkins in their permanent collection. The height of the napkin collecting craze occured from 1983 to 1996. Nine of the eleven…

Ever want to get inside the artwork at an art museum? Now you can! Several people on Instagram and Flickr have demonstrate how they interact with artworks in museums. These seven methods are collected under the hashtag, #GetInsideTheArtInstituteofChicago. A clever…

Every year my company, Tribune Media Services, used to have award ceremonies. One of the awards was Rookie of the Year with the trophy/plaque thing being an actual Louisville Slugger baseball bat customized with the recipient’s name and his/her first…

Honeymoon is such an interesting word. The Japanese have a fun way of translating the word (as covered on my wedding blog). The French literally translates it as “moon of honey,” as seen on Etymonline.com: 1540s, hony moone, but probably…

The croquet twitter account @HammerTimeCroqu started following me today on Twitter. That is, they are following my croquet-dedicated Twitter account, @mightymauler. Yes, I have a Twitter account dedicated to croquet. Not just croquet, but my superhero alter-ego persona on the…

I am looking for a resident that lives on the planet Mercury. How do I search for this? Do I do a search on Twitter for “Mercury alien”? or perhaps “Mercury resident”? However on Twitter, you cannot search the location…

Time is short. People are watching you. Will you have the guts to draw something fun on a foggy window on the bus or train? These questions faced me this morning as with below zero degree temperatures in Chicago. Commuters…

A great reason to use the free service last.fm is that it tracks your music listening habits across many platforms like Spotify, Pandora, and iTunes. With this database of records the site then gives you insightful analysis to your listening…

Unique styrofoam constructions hand-crafted by artists to support the safe transit of art. A delicate sculptural bust is transformed from a bronze head to a rectangular box. All the space around the head is extended out to conform to cube.…

Two years ago the Art Institute of Chicago had 3,976 artworks on display. Now they have 4,715 on display. The Art Institute has a great website that shows their entire collection. You can even search for which artworks are on…

Next to my quote about understanding is this awesome quote by Dr. Seuss I’m very proud that this Dr. Seuss quote is considered “related” to mine.

How would you react to discovering that an indoor basketball court is inside a 9,500 square foot house in the heart of one of Chicago’s most expensive neighborhoods? RT @curbedchicago: This huge 9500 sq. ft. Lincoln Park home has an…

What if you found a masterpiece painting laying on a busy sidewalk? Certainly you would look at it. Maybe you might even pick it up, or photograph it. During autumn we have millions of such masterpieces laying on our sidewalks.…

Transform the fun of tourist postcards into something beyond their normal function. Buy a tourist postcard and then fold it into a paper origami and leave it at the same postcard rack in the store. Make sure to leave the…

Someone on the train is using a phone with a cracked screen. I ask the person to pull up a photo on flickr or instagram. Then I take a photo of the person’s cracked screen showing the photo. People using…

Three wooden mansions floating on the Chicago River to be torched. Fire! Fire! Fire! For entertainment, everyone loves a good fire. A week before the festival, the wooden mansions sat by three Chicago bridges with a sign saying, “watch me…

Yeah! Take more photos! Taking photos makes you more observant of your surroundings. Pausing and considering things around you gives you perspective. Often I can get too wrapped up inside my head about life and worrying. To get outside of…

The bright orange pumpkins have arrived just in time for October. Rows and rows of fresh pumpkins sit happily behind a glossy black fence. Soft morning sunlight illuminates the contrast of orange against green. While photographing this scene, I wanted…

Every day Flickr ranks the top 500 photos posted to popular photo sharing service. 1.4 million photos are posted to the service every day, so to be ranked in the top 500 is quite an achievement. In 2014 alone, I…