Tag: Art

Instead of being called Wal-Mart, it’s now Walmart. No more dash—but wait—that’s not a dash! It’s a hyphen. Grammarly explains: A hyphen (-) is a punctuation mark that’s used to join words or parts of words. It’s not interchangeable with…

My four years as an art major at Illinois Wesleyan University were some of the best years of my life. The students and professors taught me how to think critically as an artist. We weren’t just technical drones producing work,…

Velcro. Wouldn’t that be a great name for your child? Velcro, I’m stuck on you! I like to joke around with my wife that our 18-month-old daughter’s name is Velcro. Sometimes I’ll tell my daughter we almost named her Velcro.…

Most of us are familiar with Google’s reverse image search. Pick any photo online, and Google can find a photo that is similar (or identical). It’s a very fun tool to play around with. I’ve used it to: Search for…

All the 4×6 prints you can imagine for free! All you have to do is order your prints through the Shutterfly app. Sounds great, right? Almost unbelievable. What would you do with unlimited prints? Here’s a few ideas: Mural: Take…

Every time you join a group on meetup.com, you get asked a set of questions for your profile. The Glen Ellyn Clay meetup has some fun questions, so I had fun answering them. What are the top 3 things you would…

Of the 18,4888 photos archived in the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection, are there any you’d like to see displayed in the museum? This one by Jeff Mermelstein would be a good one: “Book in Mouth, New York City” Photographed in…

Tucked away in the Art Institute’s archives are thousands of wonderful photos. 18,488 to be exact. Whoa! You can explore these 18,488 photos on the Art Institute’s online collection. Are there any photos you’d like to see displayed at the…

It’s kinda funny to type in the url bar: art.art Art dot art. So arty, you have to type art twice! That should become a word. Art-art. Or simply Artart. In the art world, there’s high Art, and then the…

Want a .art domain? It’ll cost you. Depending on the simplicity of the domain name, the price will adjust accordingly. The domain spud.art will cost €1,466.44 ($1883.94) OUCH! The high price kind of makes sense. Price the domain according to…

The story of my quest to get a domain that ends with .art Ever want your domain to end with “.art” instead of “.com”? Now’s your chance! The domains ending with .art are available now. In fact, some sites are already…

The shapes of a Calder sculpture are so bold and graphic. They make for a great canvas to write upon. A loyal long-time fan of Spudart is the super Tom Saaristo. He’s been a wonderful encouragement all the way since the…

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…

ACEO on eBay Artist sketch cards are so much fun to collect. Tiny little sketches done on 3.5-inch by 2.5-inch cards. Search “ACEO” on eBay. ACEO stands for Artists Cards Editions and Originals. You’ll find thousands of such cards. Usually these…

Arriving at my desk this morning, these stored printouts had fallen out of their envelope. They are printouts of the surface of Pluto. Last year I printed these strips with the intention of wrapping them around objects in public spaces.…

Tree mulchers are crunching all the Christmas trees on curbs and in alleys. The plethora of trees will soon be a handful of wood. How much mulch does one Christmas tree produce? I’m guessing about six handfuls of mulch. What’s your…

Now is the perfect time to start making art. It’s the new year! Let’s make a resolution to make more art this year. Once a month, I’ll make a post asking people to leave a comment about whatever project everyone…

Have you ever thought about sending a postal package to someone, and wished you could send it for free? The hassle of having to go to a post office, wait in line, and pay x-amount of money. Blerg. I want…

What’s up with dudes and hot chocolate? write Mary Fons. “Dudes like hot chocolate. It’s a thing.” She gives four examples of guys liking hot chocolate in her Choco Case Studies. Well, make me the 5th!–actually the first–since 2008 I…

I put my 1997 geocities site back up! (Click HERE to visit) All in its animated gif, ugly design glory, this is my first website I made. It wouldn’t be a Geocities site if there wasn’t a “under construction” icon…

Do you ever feel like creating personas for your favorite buildings? In this podcast, I explore a couple art project ideas to give fun identities to architecture. I have 18 podcasts recorded in 2009. Every week, I will post one…

The giant magenta mural stood out in the corner of my eye while crossing the street. I thought, “isn’t that László Moholy-Nagy?” I had been walking away from the mural, but I re-crossed the street to get a closer look.…

The most expensive ACEO artworks sold on eBay reveals a wonderful fantasy world. (ACEO stands for Artists Cards Editions and Originals, which are baseball card sized artist cards). Star Filled Sky, aka Bridget Voth, is one of the top artists. In the…

The jewelry world got rocked as the Oppenheimer Blue became the world’s most expensive diamond ever auctioned. A telephone bidder won the Christie’s auction with a sparking $57.7 million dollar bid. But what about replicas? There are no Oppenheimer Blue…

Northeast bridgetower at sunset A fog crawls over the Chicago River. Fog can create amazing scenes. Get close enough to the subject, and it really pops as the background is covered in a blanket of fog. Couple that with a…

While walking along the Chicago Riverwalk with my wife, the river had just been dyed green hours earlier for the annual St. Patrick’s Day festival. The river has a surreal green glow that could be seen in the metal under…

Endless fun A photo posted by Shannon Finnegan (@shanfinnegan) on Jun 24, 2015 at 11:59pm PDT (This artwork on Instagram is created by pattern artist, Shannon Finnegan) Such a simple small cross-stitch, but it works on many various levels. From…

When you are shooting a panoramic with your camera, do you ever wonder when you should stop sweeping across? When I was photographing this scene of the Chicago River, Initially, I was drawn to frozen Chicago River, and how part…

If you are in the market for a DSLR camera, here’s the best combination to get. I did two months of research looking at all the various DSLR cameras. My 7-year-old Nikon D80 died after 32,000 cycles. It was time…

Two monumental cultural events are about to happen in the same week: Star Wars is releasing episode VII: The Force Awakens The Art Institute is about to exhibit their largest donation of artwork ever. 44 monumental modern artworks were donated…

Where do you go to find inspiration online? Twitter? Facebook? Instagram? Flickr? Websites? Possibly a combination of some of those? I’m going through all the artwork and artists that I’ve faved the past year. That means re-looking at all my…