If you like art, and you like people, you’ll love Craftstravaganza - a rogue art and craft fair for handmade art. My wife and I attended last year and were really impressed with the talent and variety of artists – some really great stuff. Great gift buying opportunities at affordable prices.

At that time our baby clothing project was still in the design phase, so one of our goals for this year was to apply to become a vendor - and am pleased to announce we were accepted. Vendors are judged and a limited number are accepted so we were very excited. Come and say hi, and support our local artists. In fact, I will even offer $5 off any onesie or t-shirt if you mention this post! Preview our wares, http://orangerhinokids.etsy.com

Craftstravaganza takes place this weekend, complete information on the website: http://www.craftstravaganza.com/2008/home.html

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Saturday April 26th, 9am - 6pm
Minnesota State Fairgrounds - Fine Arts Building
Complete directions here

Our booth will be directly across from the band (yes there is music too!), our business name is Orange Rhino
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For those of you who read my recent article on High Dynamic Range images, you’re already aware of the power of HDR in creating images that trample the boundaries of traditional photography. When pushed to the max, it’s quite easy to create eerie, surreal or just plain fake looking photos.

I recently did some night photography at the old train yard outside of downtown St. Paul, near Shepard Rd. The photo opportunities were endless. Surprisingly, both times I was approached by someone with a blaring walkie-talkie on their belt, I didn’t get kicked out - they only stopped to chat photography. And trains.

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This weekend I spent some quality time in front of a scanner archiving important documents (yes, in Wonderfile). Our office scanner rarely gets any use these days. With PDFs, vector art, high quality stock art, and the growth of digital photography, using a scanner is becoming a dying art.

A few people however, have found new uses for these once proud members of a digital artists arsenal. After all, a scanner is essentially a giant digital camera with a ridiculously slow shutter.

Check out Mike Golembewski’s website for some really cool scanner based photography. The motion of the environment coupled with the scanners movement creates truly unique and incredible imagery, and at very high resolutions.

Having a cluttered desktop doesn’t just look unattractive, it seriously hampers your productivity. It always starts the same way: You receive an important email attachment and you think, “Hey, I’ll put this on my desktop so I can find it easily” or “I need to use this file right away–I will drop it on my desktop and file it away later.”

Twenty attachments, downloads, and new files later, your desktop is like a pig on roller skates: unwieldy and bloated. But don’t fear gentle readers, I have five tips to help you reclaim this valuable real estate and impress anyone who happens to glance at your screen.

Tip #1 - Pick A Nice Desktop Background
If you have a great image on your desktop, one that you actually want to look at, it provides a bit of subtle, subconscious motivation not to cover it up with file icons.
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A pretty interesting view of of our culture and environmental issues through art. Artist Chris Jordan is working on a series called “Running the Numbers : An American self portrait” - where statistics are converted to images in the form of large format art works. As the description states, I can imagine they are even more impressive when seen in person but these works are pretty astonishing (and startling) at any scale.

Last Saturday night I attended the Artcrank Poster Show in downtown Minneapolis.

The show was at one on one bicycle studio, a place I had never been but wish I had, and will go back. And whatdya know, ran into Mr Tim Bramer! Pretty cool concept - Bike shop/Art Gallery/Coffee House/Local Hang Out for bicycling enthusiasts and activists. They also have a “bike graveyard” in the basement - hundreds and hundreds of old bikes and parts lined and stacked, interesting.

On display was a pretty impressive collection of bike inspired art and design, including this one by one of my design school classmates Adam Turman. He’s got a great style and does a lot of concert posters and album art for an impressive roster of clients. I picked up a couple of Minneapolis-ish prints for my office a couple of weeks ago - (this one and this one), just need to get them framed.

*update - Adam posted pics from the event on his blog