The Arrival
Good children’s books keep children occupied and interested. Great children’s books make lifelong impressions and bring joy to the child well into adulthood. Shaun Tan’s latest picture book/graphic novel,The Arrival, about a migrant from a nameless country settling in another nameless and vast foreign culture, is a great book by any standards, despite it not having a single word. While younger children may not fully understand the themes of diaspora and cultural alienation, the soft, intricately rendered black and white illustrations are beautiful and fantastical enough to keep children of all ages staring at the pages. The haunting pictures, full of strange creatures, expressive faces, and surreal, Metropolis-like cityscapes, are as melancholic-yet-comforting as Chris Van Allsburg’s illustrations in The Mysteries of Harris Burdick and are certainly as memorable. [see also Ida Pearle]
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Also by GERRY MAK
Luke Butler’s Enterprise series
My roommate is on a big Star Trek kick, re-watching the entire original series. I forgot how amazing and progressive and ahead-of-its-time it was. Actually, Star Trek: the Next Generation is also just as good. Hopefully Luke Butler will paint images from that series next or superimpose Captain Picard’s head on a nude body of Adonis. Read more
Tom Fun Orchestra’s Bottom of the River
This video for Nova Scotian gypsy folk-punk ensemble Tom Fun Orchestra is so effectively simple, matching the imagery to the song perfectly.
Cheeming Boey’s coffee cup art
California-based artist Cheeming Boey makes super-wowza drawings on styrofoam coffee cups. He also keeps a web comic documenting his daily life that is at times hilarious at others rather touching. He reminds me of my friend Jon from high school. Read more
YOU'RE SAYING (1)
HAVE YOUR SAY
Alex Passapera’s dizzying pen and ink drawings are cascades of images melting into one another, often looking like contorting, mutating creatures spewing blood-like ink splatters. Read more
This little Greenwich Village shop is a blast from the past for me. From 1985 to 1993, I lived in West London and have always missed British candy and special foods. Low and behold, Myers of Keswick has it all. Weetabix cereal, Quality Street candy, Scotch Eggs, PG Tips tea! It’s absolutely amazing. But it’s not all just imports, they make fresh food everyday that you wouldn’t find anywhere else.
Made from 100 percent organic cotton, pesticide free, and eco-friendly, this super soft tee featuring a unique, bold design celebrates a sinister world of kaleidoscopic colours and ripples of psychedelia, of serenading Queens, of dancing flamingos, of unimaginable euphoria. It’s all the work of Sydney label, Das Monk and it’s available through the Lost At E Minor online store for just US$40. Now, there’s one hell of a Christmas present, even if we do say so ourselves Read more
The Obama campaign was one of the most visually effective in recent history, brilliantly tapping modern marketing concepts and design to get its message across. The deceptively simple logo they chose stemmed from an amalgamation of a lot of different concepts the Obama designers came up with. Logo Design Love just posted all the different looks that weren’t used.
Before MTV, MySpace, and viral marketing, album covers had the potential to make or break a band. First impressions count, and many a music geek have purchased albums on the cover artwork alone. So what these guys were thinking is simply beyond me. Although, if anyone has a spare copy of Devastating Dave the Turntable Slave then I know someone, ahem, who could take it off you. Read more
I don’t care if Jimmy Hendrix was dragged kicking and screaming from where he lies, put through a torrid round of detox, and handed an invisible guitar – a Flying V carved out of the bones of Robert Johnson. It would still pale in comparison to this. Read more
Caught The Dust Dive the other night at Glasslands. They’re a bunch of hippies, but even I have to admit, they’re atmospheric live show – consisting of violin, gently strummed guitar, a few piano and sampler twinkles here and there, and sound samples from the found footage projected behind the band – is really powerful, like the warm rush of fond memories that hits you an instant before the mushroom cloud annihilates everything. Frontman Bryan Zimmerman even plays the musical saw, and you really can’t argue with that.
Listen to their track, Claws of Light.
WE'RE RESPECTING
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
Italian-born, New York City-based photographer Paolo Ventura creates fairy-tale like pictures out of amazingly constructed, miniature dioramas that almost trick the eye into thinking he’s a tilt-shift photographer. Read more
Charlie Immer’s pastel-pallete sometimes obfuscates the gory violence in his surreal images. At other times, it heightens the gut-wrenching and visceral effect of his work. Read more
Amazing cake designs by Charm City Cakes
Baltimore company Charm City Cakes produces the most innovative wedding and party cakes on the market. Inspiration for these creative bakers comes from everywhere: art, fabric, furniture, architecture, landscapes, science, and music, and each cake is individually designed to match your personality, and the theme of the occasion you are celebrating. Don’t miss these cakey engineering masterpieces. Read more
With the recession still biting, it may be time to whip out the glue and the cardboard and make your next pair of cool kicks. Don’t know how they’d manage in the rain though? Read more
Forget battery powered vehicles. Cars made from ice are the future of transportation: no pollution, no honking horns, no painful rap music blasting out of souped up stereos. And if they melt, they melt. You just swim the rest of the way down the slipstream.
Thanks to Sony Australia, four Lost At E Minor readers will win personal audio prizes, including the new 8GB Walkman S series video MP3 player and the MDRXB500 Extra Bass headphones. Read more
Each one of these Bracelaces by Itunube is turned into an elegant drawing on the skin using different kinds of lace combined with leather, metal components and glass beads. They are just US$25 in the Lost At E Minor store. Read more
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Meg said | 3 October, 2007
I had the pleasure of attending a private presentation Shaun gave to the English Teachers Association of Western Australia in March of this year. He really is one of the most talented illustrators / artists in Australia atm. I have all of his books which are signed with little creatures by Shaun and 3 of his originally graphite sketches from various project he has worked on. They are amazing and the little bits and pieces that he adds to each drawing really add to the magic – like the red leaf in the pages of The Red Tree which you sometimes have to look hard to find. For those in or with backgrounds of illustration and graphic art like myself his attention to detail is all-the-more inspiring. Down-to-earth, good guy too. The Arrival is the sort of book you keep for your grand kids.