The Artic (no, that's not a typo...)

Talking with Sophie about Chagall's America Windows

It was one of those very special moments that I wanted to bottle up and preserve forever. Sophie will likely not have any memory of it when she grows up but I always will. And I will remind her of it as she gets older, that we once stood together in front of Chagall's America Windows at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Ever since I saw it in person in 2004, America Windows has been one of my favorite pieces of (public) art ever. I've always been a Chagall fan and have seen a few of his original artwork, but nothing quite prepares you for the stunning magnificence that is America Windows. Calling it stained glass is like calling the Taj Mahal a house- it's so much more than that. I only managed to see it twice before it was removed for restoration in 2005. It took 5 years of intensive conservation treatment and archival research before the windows returned in 2010 as the stunning centerpiece of a new presentation at the east end of the museum’s new wing. And the moment we walked into the Art Institute yesterday, I made a beeline straight to it with Sophie in tow.

And it took my breath away. Again. Sparkling, shimmering, glowing. I asked Sophie what she saw in the windows, which sections she liked, and I told her why it's one of my favorite pieces of art. It wasn't like I gave her a crash course in art history or anything- we just talked about the windows like we would talk about a picture in one of her storybooks- the colors, the "characters", what we thought was going on, how the images made us feel, etc.

In fact, that's how we spent the next hour or so at the Art Institute. Visiting the Art Institute was one of the first things we've done with Sophie that was more for Jude and I than it was for her. Usually, on our vacations, we'd stick to things Sophie enjoys-- the children's museum, the aquarium, parks, etc. But this time, we wanted to go to the Art Institute and we took it as an opportunity to share with her something we love.

And it turned out to be really fun. And funny. Trust almost-three year olds to be the harshest art critics. The Art Institute was having a Roy Lichtenstein retrospective which was great- we thought Sophie might enjoy Pop Art a little more than say, the Impressionists. Sophie had very honest-- and VOCAL-- opinions about several of the pieces that caught her eye. "Why is the lady not wearing a diaper?", she asked, as we stood in front of Frolic (which prompted the woman next to us to say, "You must write this down in her baby book- how precious!"); "Oooh... I like hotdog. But I like it with ketchup, not mustard." (Hot Dog with Mustard); "I like some spaghetti too!" (Ball of Twine); and my favorite, "Why is the lady crying? Maybe she's in the shower. I think she has shampoo in her eyes." (Drowning Girl). Like I said, it was loud and hilarious :)

We had a wonderful time even though we obviously didn't visit all the exhibits. We're actually looking forward to some local and regional art when we move back to Singapore. Jude and I really enjoyed the National Museum of Singapore after it reopened a while back and I have a feeling Sophie might too. Here's to more museums to discover and explore together!

What are you thankful for this year?

City of the Big Shoulders

1. Hard Rock Hotel, the Elvis floor, 2. Menu @ one sixtyblue, 3. Frank Gehry's Jay Pritzker Pavilion, 4. Reunion!, 5. View of Chicago from Evanston, 6. The Threadless retail store, 7. Billy Goat Tavern, 8. Line outside the Art Institute of Chicago, 9. Entrance to the Seminary Co-Op

Every year we tell ourselves we need to go somewhere warmer than Ann Arbor for winter break, and every year, we end up going somewhere as cold, if not colder- New York, Boston, Chicago. We should be going to Cancun, Aruba, the Bahamas!... But no, always somewhere where we have to lug out winter boots and coats with us. Not that we ever not have fun of course, but it's just that much harder to enjoy the sights and sounds of a city when you can't feel your fingers...

But as always, Chicago was a blast! We do love the place :) Every time we visit, we find one more thing about it that makes us fall in love more- the people, the buzz, the architecture, the diversity, the food, the history- just how very rich and vibrant it is without being completely overwhelming and claustrophobic.

Highlights of our trip:
1. Note to Hard Rock Hotel Chicago: I get the whole rock-and-roll aesthetic you're aiming for in your rooms, but your monochromatic color scheme is just not inviting and having Robert Plant stare at me as I get ready in the morning is weird. Also, I've got two words for you: more lights.

2. Chicago Restaurant Week rocks! We had a most lovely meal at one sixtyblue- the food was delicious- interesting without being pretentious, and the service was thoughtful, not ingratiating. It's been a while since Jude and I indulged in a decadently long, slow meal without thinking about work so we both appreciated the whole wine-and-dine experience very much.

3. Meeting up with my friend, Diane after 15 years! Now husbands in tow, no less... :) We had a wonderful time catching up and filling each other in on 15 years worth of not being on the same continent. We've both matured since that teary goodbye at the airport those many years ago of course, but I think seeing each other again brought out the giggly schoolgirls in us that we thankfully never fully outgrow :)

4. Our friend, Eytan was most kind to take us around Evanston and the Northwestern campus. Jude and I have seen most of downtown Chicago, so it was nice to explore something different. Evanston reminds me a little of Ann Arbor, although maybe a little less organic-foods-only and soy-latte drinking, but the same students-everywhere with interesting coffeeshops vibe.

5. Speaking of college campuses, we discovered our bookstore mecca- the Seminary Co-Op Bookstore at the University of Chicago. Touted as one of the best academic bookstores in the country, it did not disappoint. Thank goodness we got there with only two hours left to closing or someone might have had to physically remove us from the premises. We walked in, saw the awesome labyrinth of shelves after shelves of glorious books and said to ourselves, "Ok, maybe this might not have been such a good idea... What's our credit limit again?" Whittling down the dozen or more books we had picked out to a manageable (and affordable) few was an excruciating process of existential proportions...

6. Having a double cheeseburger at the Billy Goat Tavern. Made famous by the classic "Cheezeborger! Cheezeborger!" SNL skit, this legendary hole-in-the-wall serves a straightforward cheeseburger, Coke- not Pepsi, and chips- no fries. There is absolutely nothing fancy at all about this place, Jude and I were easily the youngest people in there that night, and the cheeseburgers, while very good, weren't the best I've had- or will have- in my lifetime. But there was something strangely comforting about a place like that- unpretentious, homegrown and very real, especially for something smack in the middle of glitzy touristy Chicago. Biting into that simple cheeseburger conjured up the memory of my first hamburger those many, many years ago- it was an almost visceral, elemental experience. The Billy Goat is that kind of a place :)

7. Popping by the Threadless retail store in Lincoln Park. It's surprisingly small actually and not a huge collection of tees. But just the set-up was interesting, and the fact that they showcase each t-shirt using a swanky computer monitor. I was particularly happy with the one I bought- it's hot off the press so if you're an eighties/John Cusack fan, you must get it!

[click to compare with original]

8. Visiting the Art Institute of Chicago. We never tire of this grand dame- there's always some interesting exhibition or visiting collection that's being featured and even if there isn't, the permanent collection is always worth that repeated viewing. Luckily for us, they were hosting a special Edward Hopper exhibition and that itself was worth the trip. It's always both humbling and inspiring to be in the presence of great art, and it was hard in that two hours to not be caught up in the rapture of all that is stunning about Hopper's quiet vision. A bonus was catching a lecture by photographer-artist, Ed Ruscha. I hadn't heard of him until then, but it turned out to be a real joy to hear him speak- he was funny, irreverent, and sparklingly intelligent. Apart from wanting to buy his prints, Jude has now put him on his list of "People I'd Love to Have Dinner With." :)

New York is one of the capitals of the world and Los Angeles is a constellation of plastic, San Francisco is a lady, Boston has become Urban Renewal, Philadelphia and Baltimore and Washington wink like dull diamonds in the smog of Eastern Megalopolis, and New Orleans is unremarkable past the French Quarter. Detroit is a one-trade town, Pittsburgh has lost its golden triangle, St. Louis has become the golden arch of the corporation, and nights in Kansas City close early. The oil depletion allowance makes Houston and Dallas naught but checkerboards for this sort of game. But Chicago is a great American city. Perhaps it is the last of the great American cities.
-Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege of Chicago (1968)

Our house is a cornucopia of earthly delights

When we first came across the art of Linzie Hunter on BoingBoing, we immediately fell in love with its humorous and whimsical nature. She recontextualizes the subject headings of SPAM emails into colorful and cheeky statements. You can view more of her pieces on her flickr account.

The piece pictured in the photo is titled "Boundless" (after the text it illustrates) and we love its hand-drawn style and retro aesthetic. At $20 (we ordered ours from 20X200), this piece fits right in to our growing wall of silkscreened poster art. Have I mentioned our fascination with silk-screened prints? Someday we will have to get something from Hatch Showprints... Well, that is another blogpost in the making...

Adieu Marcel...

I am sad I never got to see you perform live...

Others have whitened their faces, blacked their lips and eyes, and leaned into a nonexistent wind. Others have plucked petals from invisible flowers, struggled to win a ropeless tug-of-war, and chased after butterflies only they can see.

But no one has ever done this sort of clowning with more absolute belief than Marcel Marceau. His lithe and expressive body and his gestures — so liquid, his hands sometimes appeared to have no bones at all — are only part of it.

The mechanics of his craft — the boiling down of gesture to its essence — can be learned. But not his ability to "mine" mime for the veins of emotion and pathos he found in it. Wistfulness, yes. Street mimes can manage that. But anguish, hope, innocence. These are harder...
-Bob Mondello, All Things Considered

To hear/ read the rest of this remembrance, click here.

New personal avatars - advice sought

We have been meaning to improve on our avatars for a while now. The existing avatars were created using a web application and did their jobs well until now. As the both of us are back in Singapore at the same time, we thought that we would ask our very talented friend Dominic Chang, who's a brilliant animator to help us with creating improved versions of our online identities and image. The result of his work can be seen in the image above. And below shows you how much work Dominic put into this through his process sketches.



What we were going to do with the final icons are to digitize them and then load them onto either Photoshop or Illustrator and fill in the colors. I'd appreciate anyone's advice on how I should go about doing this as this is the first time we are actually doing something like this. Hope to hear from someone soon.

The Saturn

I really, really like this photo. It captures a mood and aesthetic that I only wished I could replicate in my photos. Additionally, the photo's artfully staged, impeccably timed, interestingly lighted and beautifully shot. It sort of reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting somehow ... except that this is Hopper in celluloid film (I am assuming here, you never know everything's digitally shot now.)

Summer resolution #2

Spend more time at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival.

We've been here close to 4 years and I don't think we do enough at the Festival. So this year, we've decided to make more of a conscious effort to go to the shows and special events. It's rare enough to get good acts in Michigan, and even more rare that they're right in town and a mere bus-ride away. Last week was great coz we managed to catch a double-bill of Cesaria Evora and Seu Jorge- Latin/Brazilian/Portuguese samba jazz vocals. Awesome!... Cesaria has a truly spellbinding voice and Seu Jorge was really fun to watch too! You may remember him as the Portuguese-speaking David Bowie-singing crewmember in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Needless to say, by the end of the night, the crowd was all up and dancing :) The promo site for their performance has some really good sound clips you can listen to.

Then last night, Jude, Rachael and I met for dinner before walking to Top of the Park to watch Happy Feet. By chance, we managed to catch the last 15 minutes of Strange Fruit, an Australian-based troupe that performs on 4-meter tall stilts. The lighting wasn't very good but Jude managed to snap some pictures of them here. They were delightfully elegant and whimsical. It was part dance, part circus, part Cirque du Soleil, all art.... :) The best thing was how they were performing right amidst the crowd rather than on stage or somewhere removed from the audience. It wasn't participatory or anything, but I think their proximity to everyone lent a certain carnivalesque feel to the whole thing which was really nice.

Happy Feet was a wonderful treat for me :) It's definitely not Finding Nemo, and by no means a kid movie; but it had a real soul to it that I wasn't expecting at all. The soundtrack is amazing, the narrative strong and thoughtful, and some of the underwater sequences are nothing short of breathtaking. Everyone was grooving, tapping their feet and there was clapping all around by the time it was over. Sitting out in the open watching a movie was really fun- kinda like how I'd imagine a drive-in movie would be like. I think we're going to try to catch Dreamgirls next week.

So there- Ann Arbor's just lovely in the summer, and having the Summer Festival right downtown reminds us of that just a tad more :)

"Creature Comforts" comes to America!

Jude had posted here last year about the British series, "Creature Comforts" and its humorous yet incisive take on current social and political affairs. Good news for all Aardman Animation fans- the U.S. has produced its own version and it's starting Monday at 8pm on CBS!

Hailed as a cross between "Wallace and Gromit" and This American Life, "Creature Comforts" uses Nick Park's trademark stop-motion animation to give voice to real-person interviews of everyday Americans all across the country. Topics range from drunk driving to health care to dating. Some of the sneak peaks I've seen have been downright hilarious, but also sweet, charming and always wonderfully insightful. I'll be glued to my couch come Monday night, and I hope you will too :)

Some sneak peeks:

SOME of the best comic acting you'll see all summer will come from the animated clay animals starring in "Creature Comforts." An American version of a British series based in turn on a short film by Nick Park (the creator of Wallace & Gromit), it puts the unrehearsed words of ordinary people into the mouths of Plasticine dogs, cats, horses, pigs, porcupines, monkeys, pandas, crabs, sharks, roaches and whatever other animals seem appropriate or appropriately ironic to the subject or voice.

Topics are as varied as health, lying and sex, and the result is something both witty and complex — a kind of heightened reality television that, beyond letting you laugh at the funny juxtapositions and marvel at the animation, focuses your attention on the voices themselves, and what people have to say, and how they say it. A reminder that we're all at once individuals and types, and animals under our clothes.
-L.A. Times

Battle at Ham's Deep

Link from Boing Boing

Check out this rendition of the battle at Helm's Deep, featuring Jim Henson's Muppets!! My favorites are Kermit as Aragon (complete with flowing, war-greased hair!) and Miss Piggy as Eowyn, I'm assuming :)

Helvetica: The documentary

You have to admit that the title above got your attention didn't it? Who would have thought that an entire documentary could be filmed on the subject of a font type. And as a tribute to this movie, this post is published in ... what else ... Helvetica :)

The Helvetica font has long been associated in my mind with cool, crisp & clean modernity. It stands out from the background and conveys its message clearly and efficiently. Celebrating its 50th birthday, the Helvetica type was developed by Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann in 1957 for the Haas Type Foundry in Münchenstein, Switzerland. The name Helvetica itself is Latin for Switzerland.

I've long been fascinated with this font type since I was a teenager grasping my grubby hands on my first New Order album.


Peter Saville created a consistent image across all the bands managed by the then Manchester-based Factory Records.

The ubiquity of Helvetica in contemporary visual culture is further perpetuated by the inclusion of the font in the Apple Macintosh in 1984. Today, as the documentary will assert, the use of this type face surrounds us and affects us a variety of ways.

Check out the clip from the Helvetica movie below; it depicts scenes from Berlin and has a nice interview with Erik Spiekermann, the man famous for his design of informational displays on the Berlin Transit.
And I particularly like this clip from the movie where the psychological impact and communication that is conveyed through the use of Helvetica type faces is discussed.

Tastespotting update

Instead of spending the day more fruitfully, a.k.a watching less Top Chef, tweaking my prelim paper more, and not taking that afternoon nap, what do I do? Submit more of our food porn onto Tastespotting. And believe it or not, four of them made it in (including the one of the monks on the cream puff)!

This is so cool. Our camera is so cool... :)

Tastespotting

So we get an email from Billie yesterday suggesting that we look at a website, Tastespotting in light of our food pornography tendencies. I go there and am sucked in for a good hour admiring all these delectable shots of food and food-related things people contribute to this online picturebook, or so it's conceived.

An offshoot of notcot.com, a design site, Tastespotting allows it's readers to submit pictures of their food finds, all of which are subject to the approval of their editorial team. As you can see, they are a little snooty about the kinds of photos they accept, and it does seem that many of them are taken professionally. I went through our Food Pornography set on Flickr, and believe it or not, out of 158 photos, only found two which I might potentially submit onto Tastespotting. I guess this means our pornographic proclivities are unabashedly of the more consumptive, rather than visual variety... ;)

[Update: I submitted one of the photos I mentioned in this post on edible items being used as photographic landscapes, and Tastespotting put it up! We didn't take the photo of course, but I'm enjoying the whole user-contribution vibe... :)]

Home?

We've been home just over 24 hours and things are back to normal, I think (with the exception of maybe our sleep schedule and the living room). We've been in school since 10am this morning so yes, thrust right into the thick of things. It's good I guess- takes my mind off missing home a little and it gives my system less of a chance to succumb to the lure of sleeping some more.

Waiting for the bus today was an odd experience- I was literally the only person outdoors- only, single, alone. In the entire month in Singapore, except when I was at my parents' by myself in my room, I don't thinking I can remember ever being the only person anywhere. There were always people walking purposefully about, milling in the malls, scurrying here and there, packed up together in the trains... So yes, I definitely appreciated the stillness and silence of the cool morning today. It was nice.

Speaking of home, Jude and I will be at a play tonight- Singapore theatre director Ong Keng Sen is directing a musical/ opera composed by Bright Sheng- The Silver River- and it's playing at the Power Center. For $12, you also get a pizza/ meet-the-director session at the Alumni Center. It'll be an interesting experience in light of our recent excursion through the University Cultural Center back home. Ong Keng Sen is the Artistic Director of TheatreWorks (where Jude was supposed to do his undergrad internship) and is best known for his re-imagination of Shakespeare's tragedies. In particular, his kabuki-inspired King Lear has been performed all over the world. Let's see, between fending off jetlag and mouthfuls of pizza, we'll try to sneak a chat with the man, or better still, take a photo to add to Jude's collection of pictures of himself with random famous people.. ;)

Tiger, tiger burning bright

My happy new desktop picture- all pink and orange :) Thanks to Julianne!


According to Dan, she had initially said, "Well, I kinda want to keep it..." Then she graciously let me use it after he explained that she didn't technically have to give it away... :)

Wall art

Wall of posters I
Originally uploaded by jyew.

We finally got round to putting up all the posters we've been accumulating over the past few years. For the last month or so, we've been tripping over frames and mounting boards sticking out from every corner of the living room and having our wall filled up in various degrees of completeness.

Jude and I are envisioning an organic process of just building on on what we have now, slowly adding more pieces as and when we buy a new one. The whole idea is to fill up the entire wall. As impoverished grad students, this is about the closest thing to collecting art I guess. :) We like how it looks now- gives the living area an eclectic feel of some sort. It's nice!

Creature comforts and the war on terror

Like Serene, I always knew there was more to Nick Park and Aardman Animations than a bucktooth Englishman man, his tea-making canine, overgrown vegetables, and a larcenous penguin.

This is priceless!...

Art Fair isn't fair...

I actually enjoy summer in Ann Arbor- it's usually mild (though not for the past week or so), there are few undergrads around to jostle with for parking space, retail attention and coffee, we can bike instead of drive, and if you discount the heat, the place is really quite pretty. But for 4 days in the summer, the heart of Ann Arbor is close to unbearable. Not entirely, but close. Yes people, the insanity of the Art Fair has descended upon us. Oh, the horror...

First of all, tell me this, how do the following items qualify as art?
1) Pyjamas (Liberty St.)
2) Shampoo (South U.)
3) Pressure cooker (???!!!) (Liberty St.)
4) Socks (Maynard St.)
5) Camping equipment (State St.) (although the fact that Bivouac offers anything at more than 30% discount is a miracle I will never complain about...)

Secondly, is it really humanly justifiable to charge $5 for a funnel cake or elephant ear (and this is regardless of whether or not you choose any topping...)- I've never had them before and have been dying to have either one of those ever since I saw my first ones at the Art Fair two years ago. But I shudder at the thought of spending that kind of money on something that not only requires very little skill to make, but is also at the end of the day nothing more than deep fried flour, eggs and sugar. And despite annual vows to never do so, what do we do again this year? Have a meal at the Art Fair. What do I get for $10? A sad attempt at what was advertised as Greek seafood pilaf served to me precariously on a plastic plate by a woman with a Southern accent. She called me "honey". How sweet, and authentically Mediterranean... And at 10 bucks- I should have just gotten myself 8 cups of Grande coffe from Starbucks and be almost half my way towards a caffeine-induced suicide. That would have been less painful that trying to ingest that wannabe seafood pilaf...

Ok, so I'm complaining too much... I concede that there were noteworthy items at the Art Fair (and I don't mean the $1 and $5 bins at Urban Outfitters). Some of the ceramic tiles were really pretty, a couple of mural artists had gorgeous stuff on sale, and there were some pieces of handmade jewellery that I would have gotten had they not cost more that everything I was wearing that day put together. Oooh, and a floppy woven boatsman hat that I really wanted but figured I'd look silly in. We did buy stuff though- two corn dogs and a Snickers Swirl frozen custard to be exact. See, who said the Art Fair wasn't affordable?? And Jude got himself a hat for $5.99 from Sam's that he's been wearing IN the house for the past two days. Don't ask... go figure. If you ask me, he looks like Gilligan. In fact, he's wearing it now, and it's 1am on a Saturday morning...

[I have to say that I really like the official poster this year though. It's so incredibly sweet and whimsical. We bought last year's poster and I think we might go back tomorrow and get this too.]

Ypsi Shadow Art Fair finds

We've been looking forward to attending the Shadow Art Fair @ Ypsi for a while now, more so than the Ann Arbor one next week. We had tons of fun at the event and here are some of the highlights:
- We got to have lunch at Haab's on Mich. Ave. in Ypsi. The place is definitely a throwback to an earlier time and the fried chicken's really all that it's cracked up to be!
- It was our first time at The Corner Brewery in Ypsi and it was the venue for the Shadow Art Fair. It was kind of crowded because of the event, but we'd definitely come back to investigate the place some more :)
- I got to meet Mark Maynard, head guru of the art fair and of the zine Crimewave USA!!!
- We also managed to catch up with Diana, Chrispy, Aiko, Jonathan and Rachel over beer.
- And we found a copy of Bantam Rooster's Watch Me Burn 7-inch! I had to get it, being the groupie that I am :) Just know this Eric, this is the first piece of vinyl I've bought in 5 years! Now I have to get that turntable dammit!!! ;)

[Front cover]

[Back cover]

Some regrets from the Shadow Art Fair:

- not getting the "Iggy was from Ypsilanti" T-shirt :)
- not being able to afford any of the silk-screened posters that were on display.

Sing that iTune!

Ok, so this is going to be a little convoluted, so bear with me: I was looking for a new screen saver for the Mac I inherited from Jude and came across an option that displays all the artwork of the albums in my iTunes. Cool... Then I realize that it will only show the artwork of songs which I've bought from iTunes and not others I either ripped from my CDs or downloaded from elsewhere. Which means basically, my screen saver isn't going to show very many different album covers... (because who REALLY buys anything from iTunes right?)

So I do what any sane person does when confronted with a potentially life-threatening crisis- I go online. I find this widget for the Mac dashboard- Sing That iTune- that not only finds and downloads the album artwork into your iTunes, it retrives the lyrics for the song you're currently playing and displays it on your dashboard. Amazing! Ok, it's a very precise program which means that you need to spend time going through your iTunes and making sure that all your songs and albums are labelled correctly (it won't be able to find the lyrics or artwork if it doesn't match how the iTunes Store has categorized it). And it doesn't seem to work with soundtracks. The only sountrack it managed to retrieve artwork for was the Six Feet Under one which I bought from iTunes.

Now, once you have all the artwork for all the albums in your library (this took me almost two hours- so you can imagine how little work I got done last night...), you will not only have a smashingly awesome screen saver (which is making me even less productive since I end up NOT wanting to type just so I can watch the screen saver come on...), you also discover some of the gorgeous album covers of the music you have that you otherwise would have not known about. I think that's one of the saddest drawbacks of digital music- since it's only about the tracks, fewer and fewer people get to appreciate the thought and creativity that goes into packaging the album. Jude's friends, The Observatory, is a great case in point. Their album came in a booklet which looks handmade, complete with hand-torn pages and strategically placed paper-clips. It was literally a labor of love. Granted it was a special edition packaging, but still, the amount of work that went into it was phenomenal.

So anyway, here are some of my favorite album covers that now grace my screen saver. Some I've loved for a long time, others I only discovered with my new little snazzy program.

Modest Mouse (Good News For People Who Love Bad News)

I'm not sure if you can see, but the walls are bleeding a milkshake-pink from the arrows. Reason enough for me...

The Shins (Chutes Too Narrow)

I love this one because it reminds me of one of our favorite digital artists, J. Otto Seibold. He and his wife wrote a whole series of really whimiscal and heartwarming graphic books that we used to collect.

Belle & Sebastian (Tigermilk)

There's just something very elemental about this cover that fascinates me. Maybe it's a maternal thing.

Mazzy Star (So Tonight That I Might See)

This is one of those that I just came across. I like it coz of its texturedness. And the whole thing looks kind of ethereal... like her voice.

Neil Finn (Try Whistling This)

Come on, doesn't this album cover just make you want to smile? :)

Six Feet Under (Original Soundtrack)

Nothing beats a well-composed, well-captured photo. And gotta love that car, ok, hearse...

Ian Love (Ian Love)

I like the almost child-like and kinda vintage quality of the art here. And the slightly kooky way that the girl and the tigers are placed on the globe. And you can just barely make out a travelling bag in the corner. Oh, and those look like bowling shoes...

Iron and Wine & Calexico (In The Reins)

Love the boldness of the colors, and the semi-fantastical quality of the picture. Reminds me of Chagall.