Tag: Art projects

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 of them went on their first…

This magic leaf knows what I'm planning.

I went to McDonald’s for Monopoly. I ended up sitting outside, chair-dancing to INXS, folding a McDouble wrapper into an origami crane, watching the wind make the crane look alive, and biking home with a cup of hot tea in…

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.

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.

Virtuosity was the NY Times Word of the Day recently. It’s always fun searching abstract words in Google Photos. You’ll often come up with some surprising results. This image came up in my Google Photos. When you first see the…

You can build this in your backyard! 104 landscape stakes + string = your own Sol LeWitt croquet course. Takes conceptual art from museum walls to playable outdoor experience. Instructions included

NASA is willing to pay $25,000 to any company to bring back samples of the Moon. Dust or rocks. Only $25,000? NASA is expecting some private company to go to the Moon, get some rocks, bring it safely back to…

Transform your fast food paper bag into an origami creation that will change the way you eat food, and how you view your time. While sitting in the McDonalds next to the Trump Tower, I folded my McDonalds bag into…

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…

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.

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…

A package of Buckyballs sits in the 1400 Gallery (my desk at the Tribune Tower). The gallery was showing an exhibit of 10 puddle jumpers curated from a list of 56 puddle jumpers from Flickr. One of the sales people walks over and…

Today Gapers Block featured a photo from my "Alley Giveaway" series.

Walking around the museum trying to find artworks to match the autographs, the art on the walls felt like they belonged in a cardboard box in my apartment.

A curly pier swirls off Montrose Harbor. Along the spiral is a wire fence; great to hang a swing. A spiral pier just begs you to walk all the way to the end. It also begs you to hang a…

Placing swings in unexpected places—parks, train stations, street signs—because everyone (even tiny wire people) deserves a moment to swing.

Can you yell at a Hall of Famer from the upper deck and have him wave back at you? How much info can you fit onto a scorecard? Do worms celebrate National Gummi Worm Appreciation Day? What does the world’s…

For years I have been leaving plastic treasure chests around Chicago with a message inside that says “What is your treasure?” Only recently did I realize that the photos would have more impact if I shot the treasure chest with…

The season of “I like notes” has started! While waiting for the train, there was a giant block of cheese standing behind me. These cheese was so big, it was way bigger than my head. It was bigger than a…

What discoveries happen when you throw a paper airplane from an elevated CTA train platform? I had so many fun surprises that they couldn’t fit into one story! The one story ended up making little baby stories. Eight of ’em!…

Every day I’ll print something colorful, make a paper airplane, and throw it off a Chicago elevated train platform. I wanted something quick to print out, so I went to my photo archives and pulled this colorful HDR shot Chicago…

Counting down time until the next train? Make paper airplanes and launch it in flight! Is it littering? I don’t think so, it’s a paper airplane! Who doesn’t like finding a paper airplane on the ground? Plus, if you found…

Leave bouncy balls in public areas for people to have fun. Really push the message across by attaching a note. Here’s some ideas what the note could say: — Have some fun today — — Carry this ball around with…

New feature on spudart.org Today starts a new feature on spudart.org called “New Art Monday.” Once a week I will feature what I’ve been working on. Every monday you’ll see a new piece of art or how a particular series…

About Parking Meter Talk Parking meters around the city have little word bubbles attached to show what they would say if they could talk. Their message is about the future. Parking meters are all about time and letting you know…

About Call to God I write a prayer on a sticky note and place it on a public pay phone. By placing the sticky note on a phone, I hope to make the connection to the viewer that saying a…

I’ve started a new art series where I write a prayer on a sticky note and place it on a public pay phone. Read more about it in the art section of spudart.org at: https://www.spudart.org/blog/call-god-prayers-sticky-notes-left-public-pay-phones/

I like to keep very detailed scorecards. I’ll jot down lots of extra information. View the series in high-res in my flickr “Baseball Scorecard” set (or just click each image below to see the hi-res version). You can also hear…

In addition to tracking the typical stats from a baseball game on a scorecard, why not add some fun stuff too.