Hasta luego

OK gang, by the time you read this I'll be well on my way. I'll resume posting on 17 August but that certainly doesn't mean that nothing's going on here while I'm gone. I have eight guest bloggers lined up and they represent as many different walks of life as they do different locations. There's a kitchen designer from Honolulu, a biologist from Pennsylvania, an American expatriate from Buenos Aires, a professional writer from New York, a professional writer from Miami, another biologist (this one's from Gainesville, FL), a waiter from New Orleans and an art historian turned writer and soon-to-be architect from the Midwest. I'm grateful of course and thrilled at the idea that all of this is going to unfold over next nine days and I won't see any of it until I get back. Stay tuned, be supportive, leave comments and have fun!

Twitter really is worth something. Really.

I have been using Twitter for about two months now and despite my initial misgivings, I've really come to enjoy it. I've made some tremendous contacts through it and Twitter has introduced me to a whole host of people from around the world I'd have never met otherwise. It's worth exploring Twitter, really. Besides, it's not going anywhere because it's what the future looks like. In addition to meeting some folks who are up to some really cool stuff, it's also becoming a great source of topics for this blog. Here's a list, and by no means an exhaustive one, of some of the interesting Twitter folk I've come across.

• I met Jake Gevorgian recently. Jake's a cabinet maker and SketchUp aficionado based in LA and he makes some beautiful, beautiful things.
  
  
• Alex Brooks is another great Twitter find. Alex maintains a renovation and design blog, Renovation Planning, from Sydney, NSW. Alex is also a regular contributor to and blogger for The Sydney Morning Herald, among other publications. I love reading design blogs from parts of the world other than the one I call home.
  
  
• Vicente Wolf started following me last week. I nearly choked when I got the notice. Vicente Wolf? Following me? Vicente also writes a blog, Vicente Wolf Blog.
  
  
• Linda Merrill is another member of the pantheon of great American Designers I've met through Twitter. Linda is a friend of the great Joni Webb (who's also a Twitterer). I don't think either of those women are aware of the influence they've had over me and it's a treat to correspond with them.
  
  
• Marie Cole is a designer who's pioneering the new venture known as online design. She's designing remotely and she's doing it full time. I've done it a couple of times and it's a fascinating idea. I'm glad to see that there are people out there making a go of it.
  
  
• Pam Rodriguez is doing what I fantasize about, she designs kitchens and baths and sells nothing but her designs. She also puts together design presentations for other designers and builders. She's pretty funny too.
  
  
• Given Campbell is a Tampa-based wallpaper designer and artist. Her work's being hailed wildly and you need to look through her website if you want to see wallpaper realizing its full potential.

Of course, there many others I've met and even more I've yet to meet. Give it a try some time and when you do, you can find me as @saintpetepaul.

Magnetic mosaics, how cool is this?

At the end of last month, the great kitchen designer and blogger Ann Porter wrote a post about a magnetic mosaic made by an Australian company called Motifo. If you don't read Ann's blog, KitchAnn Style, you ought to. Ann's also on Twitter as @KitchAnn_Style.

Motifo sells a kit of 25mm x 25mm (a little less than an inch by an inch) tiles and there are enough tiles in the kit to cover a space 70cm wide by 190cm tall (that's about 27 and-a-half by 75-or-so inches). The kits come in two color palettes; classic (gray tones) and warm (warm, sunset colors) and any kit can make any pattern you see here. Any kit can also make any pattern they offer on their website. So when you're tired of Edvard Munch's The Scream, spend a little time and reconfigure it to be Kylie Minogue (it IS an Australian company after all).

The kits are sized to fit the front of an Australian refrigerator. US and Canadian fridges are a great deal larger, so you won't be able to cover yours completely. But why limit yourself to the front of a fridge?

This puts the P in PSA

This video was making the rounds across the wide expanse of the Internet yesterday and it hits on a topic I haven't barked about in far too long. I'll get to that in a sec, in the meantime, get a load of this:

The ad's playing on Brazilian TV right now and translated into English it reads something like this:

Pee in the shower! We want everyone to do it! Men! Women! Children! Brazilians! Or not! Nobles! Commoners! Musicians! Sports stars! People half-human, half-monster! Twilight creatures! Brazilian legends! Greek legends! Good people! Not so good people! Artistic geniuses! Scientific geniuses! Circus performers! Lovers! People from other planets! Movie stars!

To sum it up: If you pee, we want you to do it too! (when you flush you waste up to 12 liters of drinkable water / 4380 liters in one year)

Pee in the shower! Save the Atlantic Forest.

This ad was produced by Saatchi and Saatchi for the SOS Mata Atlantica Foundation, a non-profit, non-political foundation dedicated to the preservation of the Atlantic Forest. The Atlantic Forest is a unique, enormous forest that encompasses an area that includes coastal Brazil and Uruguay and then extends inland to Paraguay and northernmost Argentina. The Atlantic Forest surrounds some of Brazil's major population centers. It's a fragile, wildly productive ecosystem and Brazilians are right to be concerned about how their activities impact this region.

Like everywhere else in the developed and developing world, urban Brazil has water problems. One of the many reasons countries around the world are having water problems is the omnipresence of the flushing toilet. Wise resource use is a bit of a hot button issue of mine. Unfortunately, so much of the "greening" of the world is a marketing campaign that really doesn't accomplish a whole lot. Using less water is hard to make a lot of money from, so it tends to get overlooked. The US leads the world in household water consumption (no surprise there) and the EPA estimates that on average, 27 % of the 400 gallons of potable water consumed by an American household gets flushed down toilets.

I for one would like to applaud the the SOS Mata Altantica Foundation for making what's not a bad idea to begin with palatable to the masses. Well, the Brazilian masses at any rate. Can you imagine something like this showing up during commercial breaks for American Idol? Not bloody likely.

Peeing in the shower would save at least a flush per person per day. It doesn't sound like much but that's 1.6 gallons with a modern, efficient toilet. It's up to seven gallons on an older toilet. Those kinds of changes add up. So whattya say? Who's ready to xixi no banho?

Laura Rendlen, the painter turned mosaicist

I first saw this mosaic, Leonardo, when I was paging through the 2009 edition of Mosaic Art Now. I stopped turning pages at that point and just stared. Before I read the title of the piece, I knew exactly who the subject was. Leonardo is a gesture drawing done in smalti and marble, and Laura Rendlen succeeded in capturing the very essence of the man Leonardo Da Vinci. She reduced Da Vinci's early 1500s self-portrait to a series of shards and shadows without losing anything yet at the same time, making his likeness uniquely hers. Brava Laura, brava.

Laura Rendlen graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute with a major in sculpture. After she graduated she started painting scenery and props. At the suggestion of her partner, she started painting with smaller brushes and set about the business of transforming homes. Together, they became experts in murals and trompe l'oiel. Over the next 25 years, they were awarded commissions to do some exemplary, high-profile work. You can see some of her painting on her website under Custom Murals and Painting.

After 25 years spent doing residential and commercial work, Laura wanted to do something different. Something that would keep her off ladders for a change. As luck would have it, a client asked her to design a mosaic back splash and she agreed to do it. She threw herself into the project, researching materials and techniques, and the resulting mosaic changed the trajectory of her life. To quote from her website:

Mosaics combine the tactile construction of sculpture, the vision of painting, and the timeless permanence that I had been searching for in art.

Laura's work betrays her background as a painter. There's a knowing quality at work here and it's fantastic to see her refer to the history of art as she sets about creating an art of her own. To see more of Laura's work or to contact her about buying her art, please go to her website.

Currently, Laura's gearing up to teach a class in mosaic art at the Chicago Mosaic School, the only school of its kind in North America. Based on what I see here, I cannot imagine a better teacher.