Musical Monitor (LA)

Los Angeles, CA. LAX airport. Singapore airlines presents a beautiful multiscreen installation based on their main destinations. Inbetween each destination, birds fly slowely across a blue sky, very soothing. Each destination is based on music of the country, slow, gentle, subtle and haunting. The best one is Dubai (and Madrid) using the neck of stringed instruments. The strings vibrate on various monitor towers, following the notes of the music. Hard to tell if the resonance pattern is actually true to the notes played (?) if so, that is bonus!

National Geo Logo (Laguna Beach)

Laguna Beach, California. This photo gallery for National Geographic, shows one example of how their logo has evolved. From the gold outline of the magazine cover, to a yellow "window" that lives on it's own. In this case as a door handle and a street sign.

Street Font (Zaachila)

Zaachila, Mexico.  "Zaachila Extended".

Espuma (Oaxaca)

Oaxaca, Mexico. Espuma: Bebidas de Cacao de Oaxaca. An exhibition about the rich and varied tradition of special drinks made all over Oaxaca; regional ingredients, intricate processes and rituals in various communities. Visitors are very interested in the map, and spend quite a bit of time there before looking at anything else.

An interactive loteria game

Ingredients in open bins to touch.

Meaningful photography

Interesting video stand, grounds the video so it isn't "floating" on the wall

Street Art 2 (Oaxaca)

Zaachila, Mexico

Biblioteca Infantil (Oaxaca)

Oaxaca, Mexico. This library provides a lot of programming for children and the whole community. The building scale is kid friendly, and sensitive to nature, curving, narrowing, reducing in height, as it slopes down a terraced site. The way the building works around the trees suggests a Japanese aesthetic. The ceiling is papered with children's drawings. Architect: Juan Jose Santibanez Garcia.

Museo Textil (Oaxaca)

Oaxaca, Mexico. Just past the simple entry desk of this small museum, the central courtyard is built out of triangular terra cotta panels, at different depths. The opening to the sky is a changing venue for museum textile projects, at the moment the "Bandhani" project, catching the sun, and fluttering in the breeze.

Gallery names are on shaped clay panels

The temporary exhibition "Hilar el Viento" is about the Mexican tradition of weaving with feathers. Visitors pass through a (double) curtained doorway. The gallery is absolutely hushed and light, and the most powerful element is the sound of birds singing, airy and haunting. 

Gauze veils make the space seem larger, and gradually reveals each piece. 

A simple interactive shows how feathers can be "spun". The whole exhibition reflects the impossibly light and soft feeling of the material.

The "portable museum" is a showcase of small models of monumental feather sculpture ideas

The restrooms uses traditional Oaxacan dress to distinguish men and women.

Museum workshop space

Ghost Typography

Evidence of typography past, or missing, or dying, dismantled, or buried. They speak for themselves, poignantly.

Fruit Typography (Oaxaca)

Carved into a watermelon

Hand Painted Typography (Oaxaca)

Oaxaca, Mexico. The tradition of hand painted typography continues, to some extent. The chisel and script calligraphic tradition, appears in street art with fresh energy.

The more humble DIY practice of hand painted signage is everywhere in Oaxaca. Here the artist decided to move the whole thing down.

On corrugated doors and roll up gates the letters are spaced to "undulate", so they will appear flat from a straight on view. The artist also compensates for curved surfaces, such as roll up doors.

Fonts are freely interpreted or invented in the process of painting words to fit the space.

With the use of vertical doorways and windows, all official (stacked) typography rules disappear.

Sadly, maybe because hand painted letters and logos are hard to paint around (?) this humanist hand painted tradition is being replaced everywhere by ugly generic vinyl banners, like this, with heavily outlined caps.

Typographic Shadows (Oaxaca)

Oaxaca, Mexico. Most of the signage in the city is flat to the street walls. Typography cut out or carved deeply into the walls gives a welcome dimentionality, casting shadows. The H works both ways.

This message, deeply and perfectly engraved, in outline, into a mud wall, is really subtle. The message: "Ya nunca volveras a enmudecer de emocion" (You will never repress emotions again).

CASA (Oaxaca)

San Agustin Etla, Mexico. Centro de las Artes, in the renovated La Soledad textile factory.  The current temporary exhibition is "Contemporary Art of Shibori and Ikat". CASA is a center for "Ecological Arts" with workshops and residencies focused on non-toxic processes.

The exhibition is split between CASA and the Museo de Textil in Oaxaca, The textiles themselves are amazing...

And the building is extraordinary, using reflecting pools and other waterways, all working by gravity.

A stone wall inside the restrooms under the reflecting pool is planted to grow up above the waterline

The center is a sensitive, inspirational mix of grand old building and cutting edge environmental thinking, aesthetically breathtaking, set in the foothills of the Sierra Madre.

One of the workshops.

Amusement Park (Oaxaca)

Oaxaca, Mexico. Whimsical amusement ride typography. This is even better when it's lit up.

You could win a What's App or Youtube pillow.

MUFI (Oaxaca)

Oaxaca, Mexico. Museo de Felatelia de Oaxaca. OK, it's a STAMP museum. But almost a "perfect" museum, in terms of every criteria of museum design. It's the right size, too, with perfect pacing between active gallery and beautiful resting spaces. And it's a major accomplishment to make this content interesting (!) They focus on stamps through the art of writing, stamping, sending, exchanging...

It's a stretch to try to make postage stamps personal and interactive. Magnifying glasses and a world map in a little teaser room by the front door is a conversation starter. The greeter at the welcoming desk gives out a nicely designed booklet. The museum is free! The view of the first little patio is enticing because it's broken by the shapes of old mailboxes and hanging text panels. 

Graphic design uses the dotted line in reference to the perfed stamp edge, without overdoing it. A small wall monitor and event bulletin board are discretely placed just past the desk, to the side. The first little patio has seating! Lockers! Bike rack! Espresso machine!

The 1st Gallery features an exhibition of Surrealist correspondence. Hooray! We are gratefully spared having to looking at stamps, all by themselves. The large window doubles as title entry from patio and back lighting for the translucent intro panel. The well designed wall rack has alternating handle heights and big angled wooden stops. Vitrines are perfect height and angle.

The (actual) archive is in an accessible vault, with amusing multilingual interactive text on the side doors. This is where the serious stamp devotee can explore for themselves. Wavey lines reference the postal cancellation pattern.

The view from each gallery section to each adjoining patio is alluring. The second patio is a breathtaking spot to write your own postcard.

A playful gravel transition leads to the 3rd, minimalist, open patio, a few steps down.

The second exhibition is woven or textile art postcards. Doors are slatted. Title treatment is created with thread and nails, the floor barriers are gravel or bold blue patterns

There is a slight ramp down to the last little patio, surrounded by last 2 galleries, a workshop space and staff office. There are 2 postage stamp "your face here" photo ops.

The third gallery is another exhibition of mail art, using a mix of stand off boxes, black frames and postcards mounted direct on the background imagery. Busy but appropriate.

At the back of this patio is the last, required "history of stamps" gallery, where the visitor can feel free to take it or leave it. The "Children's Club" workshop schedule uses blackboard for the monthly calendar, with liquid chalk and thick black foam panels for the bulletin board section.

It appears that the museum originates many of the projects for the galleries. Even their private staff office is inspiring...

Graphic Arts (Oaxaca)

Oaxaca, Mexico. "Graphic Arts" in Mexico refers to artists using print, which has a long, & often political history, not "graphic design" in the more global, modern sense of layout, typography, etc.
The "Leopoldo Mendez" exhibition, in the Museo Cultural in Oaxaca features his remarkable "carved" art, of wood and linoleum graphic arts. It's astonishing to see an actual carved plate.

The Intsituto de Artes Graficas de Oaxaca (AIGO) exhibition "El Ultimo Grito" presents a combination of French and Mexican graphic artists. "Chingona" has a cluster of meanings-cool, to mess with people, smart, really good... The intro panel appears to be bilingual by splitting each sentence between French and Spanish. The "Ultimo Grito" title is cut into the papel picado. Interesting that this Mexican + French combined effort is focused on co-themes of death and sex.

Also at AIGO, another tribute to the "disappeared" people of Mexico, in the forms of kites, above the entry. Also a series of posters concerned about genetically modified food.

More Death (Oaxaca)

Mexico has the most art and design about death, anywhere. My favorite skulls ever. Floor tiles and street stencils.

Museum As Escape (Oaxaca)

Museums can be lonely, melancholy places. A subdued retreat from the world outside. The Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, Santo Domingo, is built onto the cathedral, with beautiful openings looking out over the regal botanical garden and the city streets below. Sometimes a moody building is more captivating than a collection.

Mexican Street Art 1 (Oaxaca)

Oaxaca, Mexico. Just a few examples of the wealth of bold, graphic street art, not all but mostly in Oaxaca. Some Parts are painted, some parts are printed and pasted on the wall

Much of the street art is overtly political. The serious struggle with the teachers continues in Oaxaca. References to the 43 missing persons continue to be prominent. ASARO is an activist artists group, that's been around for 10 years. Mostly pasted but some stencil.

Bicycle Billboard (CDMX)

Mexico City. It's wonderful to see that people still wheel around the streets with moving (theater) posters

Outdoor Theater (Cuernivaca)

Cuernivaca, Mexico. This one is built on a rectangular lake in Jardin Borda and has a walkway out into the "moat" between the stage and the audience.