light trails
By his own account London-based photographer Joel James Devlin has spent enormous amounts of time over the past few years examining and perfecting the effects of moving light through long exposure photographs. In the amazing photos above Devlin has experimented with lights on various bodies of water in a series called Light Waves and Dark Currents. See much more on his website.
(via colossal)
royal college of art
This video was produced at the Royal College of Art Architecture graduate show featuring projects including a high-rise hotel growing tropical fruit and an insect-powered office tower.
(via dezeen)
moxie java design update
For more than 20 years, Moxie Java has been serving up locally roasted coffee. Born out of a passion and desire for high quality coffee, Moxie Java opened its first Café in 1988. Not only dedicated to an excellent cup of coffee, Moxie has kept a steady focus on enhancing their brand as well as the community in which it exists.
This project started out as a request to redesign their cup to highlight the sizes
(12 oz, 16 oz, etc…), but it really morphed into a visual redesign that would celebrate Boise and its trees, its biking community, its beautiful hot air balloons, and of course its Moxie Java coffee. So after several designs were developed, the client chose to go forward with a deep, espresso-hued cup coupled with Moxie’s iconic yellow, teal, and red colors, and whimsical illustrations that highlight Boise’s joie de vivre!
Before:
After:
Have you spotted these beautiful cups at any Moxie locations yet?!
the high line
The High Line is a public park built on an historic freight rail line elevated above the streets on Manhattan’s West Side. It is owned by the City of New York, and maintained and operated by Friends of the High Line. Founded in 1999 by community residents, Friends of the High Line fought for the High Line’s preservation and transformation at a time when the historic structure was under the threat of demolition. It is now the non-profit conservancy working with the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation to make sure the High Line is maintained as an extraordinary public space for all visitors to enjoy.
holsteiner stairs
The Holsteiner Stairs
created by artist Horst Glaesker.
panera bread: pay-what-you-can
The idea of running a pay-what-you-can organization is generally laughed at as a business model, but Panera is proving skeptics wrong. So far, the St. Louis-based company has three such eateries and they are turning a profit, according to the Chicago Tribune.
This week Panera opened its fourth pay-what-you-can Panera Cares location, in Chicago. Founder and co-CEO Ron Shaich tells the Trib that the neighborhood that it’s in is the perfect community for such a business because it has “million-dollar townhomes and people on the street.”
“When you walk in, it’s the full Panera experience,” Shaich, who hopes to open a new Panera Cares cafe each quarter, told the Trib. “When you go into a soup kitchen, the energy is so negative and the food is institutional and the experience is institutional.”
The idea is simple: consumers who can pay more will do so while those who can’t pay at all can work for an hour in exchange for food. The pay-what-you-can stores all work under the Panera Bread Foundation umbrella, which allows it to not worry about turning a profit.
The proceeds, the Trib reports, don’t go back into the company’s coffers. Instead, the foundation “gives the money to social service organizations that provide job training for at-risk youth,” who Panera then hire.
Back in February, one year after the first Panera Cares cafe opened in Clayton, MO, Shaich said in a Sustainable Brands presentation that about 20% of customers leave more money than the suggested donation with no pressure, while 20% pay less:
2012 Food and Farm Bill
Last week, Washington D.C. became the food capital of the country as the Senate debated the 2012 Food and Farm Bill, culminating in the passage of the Agriculture Reform, Food and Jobs Act of 2012. If you’re asking yourself “What does this mean for me?” you’re not the only one.
What it means is that our country is one step closer to the approval of the single biggest piece of legislation that governs what we grow and eat. It is a 5-year, $969 billion bill that touches every single person’s life in America. Every farmer, parent, cook, eater, student, and activist is impacted by the policies addressed by this bill that only comes around once every five years. Now that the Senate has passed their version, it is up to the House of Representatives to pass their own before the bill can officially become law.
Now that you’ve got a little bit better idea of what it is, you may now be asking yourself, is the Senate Bill a good thing or a bad thing? The answer to that question depends on what your priorities are. Earlier this year, our friends at Slow Food USA wrote a letter to the leaders of both the Senate and House Agriculture committees outlining their priorities for the upcoming Food and Farm Bill. The three biggest points from Slow Foods’ letter were:
1. A health focused food system, an end to hunger and access to healthy food.
2. A level ‘plowing’ field for family farmers and vibrant regional farm and food economies.
3. Good environmental stewardship
With these requests in mind, Slow Food has broken down the top 5 wins and bottom 3 losses following the Senate’s voting on a bill involving over 300 amendment requests.
Wins:
1. The Senate passed and amendment sponsored by Senate Sherrod Brown (D-OH) that provides critical funding for rural jobs and new farming opportunities. This means, among other things, that a young person who wants to start a new farm, but lacks access to the kind of credit that would allow them to do so could now qualify for funding through the Rural Micro-entrepreneur Assistance Program.
2. The Senate passed an amendment sponsored by Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) that makes sure that farms receiving subsidized crop insurance will be required to follow basic conservation guidelines. This means that if a large conventional farm in Ohio receives insurance payments to cover against their losses for the year, they will need to follow the same conservation laws that were previously applied to farms receiving direct subsidies.
3. The Senate passed an amendment sponsored by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) which makes it much easier for organic farmers to gain access to crop insurance. Right now, if an organic farmer in wishes to receive crop insurance, they will have to pay a much higher premium than their conventional farming neighbor, despite being reimbursed at the same rate. This would change that and set the reimbursements to more appropriate levels.
4. The Senate rejected amendments by Senators Rand Paul (R-KY) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) that would have further weakened the already weakened SNAP program. These amendments would have made it harder for states to provide food assistance to their most vulnerable citizens.
5. The Senate Agriculture committee’s bill puts an end to costly, direct subsidy programs that do nothing to support healthy farming practices. Currently, if you own farm land in New Mexico that qualifies for a direct subsidy, you will receive payments from the government even if you don’t plant a single crop. This bill would end that practice.
Losses:
1. The Senate did not consider an amendment sponsored by Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) that would have made it unlawful for meat packers to own or feed livestock intended for slaughter. The current practice among meat packers is to slaughter their own livestock when prices are too high and buy from farmers when prices are low. This amendment would have created a fair marketplace for family farms raising livestock, not disproportionately favoring large slaughterhouses.
2. The Senate rejected an amendment by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) that would have re-directed some crop insurance funding to eliminate the cuts to the SNAP program. Without this amendment, an estimated 500,000 households across the country will lose $90 per month in SNAP benefits.
3. The Senate did not consider an amendment by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that would have enabled schools to purchase from local and regional producers. This amendment would have allowed school districts to continue participating in the Department of Defense Fresh Program while making their own fresh produce purchases.
Leading up to the official casting of votes, Senate Agriculture Ranking member, Senator Pat Roberts described the bill by saying, “Is it the best possible bill? No. It is the best bill possible.”
left brain/right brain
left brain
I am the left brain.
I am a scientist. A mathematician.
I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear.
Analytical. Strategic. I am practical.
Always in control. A master of words and language.
Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers.
I am order. I am logic.
I know exactly who I am.
right brain
I am the right brain.
I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion.
Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter.
I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feet.
I am movement. Vivid colors.
I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas.
I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel.
I am everything I wanted to be.
digitally assembled
Today’s post comes from the director of our creative team and Italian export, Claudia Button who had this to say about the art of Russ Mills:
From time to time, my role here at Foerstel gets to expand to the realm of illustration. Since my other love is fashion design, I found these digital illustrations by artist Russ Mills just fascinating, in a raw, almost violent sort of way. It is almost as if he could hear what these women were thinking and was able to bring their inner selves out in the open.
About the artist:
Artist Russ Mills creates these astonishing images using a wide variety of traditional methods including painting and drawing with ink and pencil, but also utilizing scanned textures including splotches of paint (or “painting disasters” as he calls them) as well as photography. The resulting paintings are sparse in color but seem to contain explosive amounts of energy as displayed in the rough brushes of paint and the almost perfectly manic pencil strokes. Of his work Mills says:
“My work dwells in a netherworld between urban fine art and contemporary graphics, a collision of real and digital media it is primarily illustration based with a firm foundation in drawing, I focus mainly on the human form particularly the face, interweaving elements from the animal kingdom often reflecting the absurdity of human nature.”
(via colossal)
discarded bottles become beautiful fish
As part of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, an enormous outdoor installation of fish was constructed using discarded plastic bottles on Botafogo beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The sculptures are illuminated from the inside at night creating a pretty spectacular light show.
(via this is colossal)
