Who Needs Windows?

November 23, 2021

Design

...rticle on moving to a new facility, “Our current building was state of the art when the IBM Selectric was state of the art, for people who still remember what the IBM Selectric typewriter was like,” says Carmicheal. “And you know in a modern digital age, it just fights us all the time. It’s about 17 stories tall, depending on how you count the floors, and so it takes a long time to go up and down and grab records and bring them down. When people c...

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Relax and Enjoy the Soft Caress of the Fun Fur

Mr. Homegrown

July 22, 2019

Design

12 Comments

...1970s equivalent of today’s ubiquitous live edge river table. Driftwood was mandatory prior to 1980. At the very least you had a driftwood coffee table. Only the upper crust had a driftwood throne like this one. Who knew you could make a kid burrito with 70s fiber art? I do like the idea of sleepable art. This kid, however, looks terrified and/or trapped in her 70s sculptural play environment. Someone please suggest the right prog rock concept al...

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Mulch Volcanoes: Another Bad Gardening Idea

Mr. Homegrown

May 2, 2014

Gardening

11 Comments

...ist Herbert Bayer’s EarthMound, 1955. Image: GardenHistoryGirl. How strange gardening practices, such as mulch volcanoes, get started is really interesting to me. Mulch volcanoes remind me of miniature versions of minimalist art earthworks or Native American mounds. Is the mulch volcano a kind of outsider landscape art? Is the mulch volcano a misguided attempt at putting a human imprint on nature, what landscape architects call “clues to care?”...

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Garden Design: Quantity vs. Quality

Mr. Homegrown

January 11, 2013

Design, Garden Design, Gardening

5 Comments

...wings we saved, but we certainly could have done more–I’d say 20 minimum. Part of what we learn by focusing on quantity is about making mistakes and learning from them. But I think there’s more to it than that. A gifted high school English teacher of mined likened our creativity to a tank of water. Sometimes you have to drain off the not so great ideas at the top in order to get to the good stuff that lies deep in our unconscious. Letting go of st...

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A viewing suggestion from the media arm of Root Simple

Mrs. Homegrown

February 11, 2014

Domesticus, Food, Gardening, Preparedness, Resources, Thoughtstylings

34 Comments

...ee is in art history, one thing that really struck me was how much everyone in this show looked like characters out of a Bruegel painting. If you know Pieter Bruegel’s work, you might remember how all his people have this particular stocky, stuffed, oddly jointed, funny-footed sort of look. I thought this was an artistic affectation. Turns out it’s just the way the clothes fit. Pieter, I did you wrong. You were just painting what you saw....

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