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Art + Culture

Contribute to to the Reno Bike Project‘s We HeART Bikes art show, held at the Village at Northstar on May 14 and 15 during the Amgen Tour of California.

Any medium accepted, 50 percent of sale price goes to the Reno Bike Project nonprofit. Submit by Wednesday May 11 at 5pm: Reno Bike Project, 541 East 4th Street, Reno, NV 89512, or Northstar-at-Tahoe Events Office (located above Northstar Security in the Village).

Can’t wait for this show! My latest DiStill Life column for Moonshine Ink is on bike art so stay tuned for the story.

How beautiful is this concept/video by potente di fuoco from Modo infoshop? I’d love to round up all my childhood drawings and recreate them, but I don’t think the juxtaposition would be as dramatic. My skills haven’t progressed much beyond middle school.

Speaking of drawing, I played the best game at a friend’s house the other night. Don’t judge it by its name: Eat Poop You Cat. It’s awesome, like “telephone” but with drawing. See for yourself:

If you haven’t checked out the new Moonshine Ink that’s on stands around Tahoe/Truckee, do it! My latest DiStill Life column is on the new grant-funded Arts For the Schools programming, and it is quite exciting stuff. Project Bandaloop is the first performer on the playbill, and I can’t wait for the show next weekend… they’re dancing in the air, off the side of the Resort at Squaw Creek building. yowza!

Well, I’m back from my trip to Boulder. Such a different world there: street performers, crowded restaurants, jam-packed yoga classes, flat residential neighborhoods with blocks and blocks of houses, bike-friendly everything, and flowers!

While it was fun, I’m happy to be home to my simple, quiet life in Tahoe Pines and thus finished this simple Lake Tahoe stamp today. You can’t tell in the photo, but the lake is printed in a pearlescent blue so it shimmers. I plan to get these in some tourist spots for visitors to have a homemade postcard souvenir option. Note: lake is not to scale!

Yippe! I’ve been following typographer and illustrator Jessica Hische’s Daily Drop Cap blog for some time now, just waiting for the perfect specimen to scream “blog me!” That day has finally come.

I’m a big drop cap fan… not surprising since I work in the print world. I love their functionality, yet the seemingly endless creative ways designers work within the constraints of only 26 letters. Wired magazine, for one, does a good job of mixing it up… even taking a drop cap to more than a fourth the page size (see examples from the Jan 2010 issue below). But are drop caps another breed dying alongside print? It seems most online sources, even wired.com, drop the beloved drop cap for plain-old bolded text, or nothing at all. Perhaps I need to start a Save the Drop Cap campaign. Who’s with me?

I think I’m in love with quilts. Like big modern canvases, they are geometric, and not afraid of color. But better than a painting or sculpture, they have a function. Thus, I am thrilled to see some highly renowned examples of the craft at the Nevada Museum of Art this month.

Opening tomorrow (and showing through April 11), A Survey of Gee’s Bend Quilts takes a look at the quilts and traditions of the women from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. The New York Times called them “some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.” Now if only I could snuggle up in one.

Nettie Young, Sampler Quilt, early 1970s. Corduroy, 84 x 77 inches. Courtesy of Tinwood Alliance

Mary Lee Bendolph, Blocks and Strips, 2006. Denim, cotton/polyester twill, polyester, 79 x 72 inches. Courtesy of Tinwood Alliance