Cool Hunting
| 19 April 2007view entries from: this week | this month | view previous day | view next day |
The Roasting Plant
by Ami Kealoha
House-roasted coffee in Manhattan is a rarity due to the tiny square-footage of most coffee shops, but The Roasting Plant, a new spot in the Lower East Side with computer-controlled roasters, is taking it a step further. Opened last week, their roasting system is fully automated, programmed to roast each type of bean differently. When a customer orders, overhead pipes deliver freshly roasted beans through a shuttle system into a custom Egro espresso maker. The result is a smooth, flavorful cup of coffee that doesn't get much fresher.
via Grub Street
Kelli Connell: Double Life
by Jonah Samson
Kelli Connell’s first solo show in New York opens tonight at Yossi Milo Gallery. The show, called "Double Life," appears to document an evolving relationship between two women. However, the photographs are actually completely staged and constructed. While digitally creating the photographs, Connell used the same model to portray both women and then composited multiple negatives into one picture.
The result is a series of intimate scenes from relationships that Connell either experienced or witnessed. Because one woman enacts multiple roles within the same relationship, Connell’s photographs hope to make the viewer question sexuality and gender, and also try to reveal something about our personal notions of identity and social constructs. Double Life is about the duality of self—the interior and exterior, the masculine and feminine, the rational and irrational.
Her work was recently published by Aperture in collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Photography as part of a beautiful three-volume set (previously featured on Cool Hunting) called MP3: Midwest Photographers Publication Project.
Kelli Connell: Double Life
Opening Reception: 19 April 2007, 6-8pm
19 April-2 June 2007
525 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001 map
tel. +1 212 414 0370
Hotdoll
by Ami Kealoha
For all those overly-frisky pups, Hotdoll is a leg and furniture stand in relieving owners of annoyance and dogs of their urges. A much more humane treatment than medications or castration, as French designer Clement Eloy points out, the toy also saves guests from embarrassment but still is funny to watch.
via Gizmodo
Weather Report
by Leonora Oppenheim
Weather Report, the second eco-themed show at The Gallery @ Adventure Ecology in London, looks at the environment and the threats of climate change. A slight departure from the disposable themes in the first show Waste & the Natural World that we wrote about earlier this year, Weather Report is about the ephemeral, focusing on the sky, and more specifically, the clouds floating through it. The show features the work of two London-based artists Dawn Shorten and Kate Williams.
Inspired by the traditional landscape paintings of Constable, Turner and the Dutch Masters, Shorten makes beautiful monochromatic illustrations. Using gouache on drafting film, she tries to capture the transient and infinitely varying forms of clouds as they move across the sky. She says that, “it is an irresistible challenge for an artist to explore something which is so elusive and visually ambiguous to portray.”
Kate Williams' work is more conceptual in form, using glass and light to "capture the fragility and movement of falling rain." Her glass raindrops hold distilled water and pulsing light, invoking impression of clouds, rain, and lightning storms. She says, "I attempt through the medium of glass, using my breath and gentle manipulation, to capture nature's elements."
Weather Report
25 April–24 May 2007
The Gallery @ Adventure Ecology HQ, 1
25 Charing Cross Road
London WC2H OEW
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7758 4717
Agelio Batle: Graphite Sculptures
by Evan Orensten
Agelio Battle is an artist living in San Francisco. His sculpture tries to "find epiphany in mundane materials" such as maps, newspaper, dictionaries and pencil lead.
The latter has found its way into an expanding series of accessible sculptures that are not only works of art, but also functional drawing tools.
The objects he chooses are often organic and geometric shapes and are inspired by his background in biology and passion for the outdoors. They are then cast using carbonaceous graphite, which sets smudge-free. The entire sculpture can be used like a pencil, as its entire surface is graphite.
Each sculpture is produced in a limited series. Prices start around $45 and are available at Agelio Batle's ABS Workshop.
