Also, while we’re on a gentle Friday Planet Earth kick: if you’ve missed the winners of August’s National Geographic Traveler photo contest, head over here and take a look.

- Maggie

Brooklyn’s Street Museum of Art needn’t bother with collection; the already extant street art, etched into the Brooklyn landscape, does the work itself. Instead, SMoA simply provides a walking guide to the underground urban art movement that covers the borough’s walls. From We Heart:

That’s the idea at the heart of Street Museum of Art (SMoA) – leading art lovers on a walking tour of the city, pointing out artworks that may normally be lost or ignored as people buzz about with their frantic daily lives. Signs have been placed giving information about the work, some telling the viewer where to look for the more discreet pieces. […]

So far, so great, but here’s where the project gets really interactive. SMoA also provides blank labels on their website that fans can print out, fill in and stick up to highlight work that they discover, to share with other users. Interactive, inclusive and with the potential to unearth an absolute treasure trove of obscurely-placed or previously ignored artwork, constantly expanding, and encouraging city inhabitants to look at their environment through fresh eyes, always on the lookout for new work to champion.

Pretty great idea. SMoA is now “showing” its inaugural exhibit, In Plain Sight, with works by C215, Elle, Faile, Gaia, Imminent Disaster, Sweet Toof, and more. Read a bit more about the concept on the SMoA blog.

- Maggie

Shantanu Starick is a young Australian photographer paying his way around the globe solely by use of his trade. In exchange for food, transportation, and a place to sleep, Starick offers his photography and editing skills to any subject in need of a close up. The result, then, is Pixel Trade, the lovely site where Starick catalogs the products of his photo-couch-surfing endeavor. Take a look; Starick has quite a beautiful, clever system going over there.

[Photo credit: Pixel Trade / Shantanu Starick]

- Maggie

LAW (“Lives and Works”) is a bi-annual magazine hailing from Brighton, UK. A ”portrayal of the beautiful everyday,” LAW sees style everywhere. 

Our preliminary concern is documenting the overlooked and giving people a sense of belonging and recognition that perhaps they wouldn’t normally receive but in no way, shape, or form less deserve. Style tribes who may not be at the forefront of fashion but have a very particular aesthetic in their own right. 

We are interested in making fashion accessible by challenging perceptions that it’s an elitist world and showing that it surrounds us all. We hope to appeal to butchers and builders, everyday boys who wouldn’t mind reading a fashion magazine, if only they could appreciate and relate to the content.

The second (hand-numbered) issue of LAW has just been released. Check it out here, or take a look at the very handsome blog LAW curates over at Brutus.

- Maggie

Oil on canvas, oil on loose change. Jacqueline Lou Skaggs has created several tiny masterpieces in her “Tondi Observations” collection, miniature oil paintings made on old Lincoln pennies. ‘Tondi’ refers to a classic circular form of art, though, admittedly, they’re typically much larger than the head of a coin.

From Skaggs:

Initially these coins were going to be spent- nestled with other coins in an exchange of goods. Or tossed back to the sidewalks from whence they came. Nice thoughts. However, these works remain hoarded as art rather than currency or discarded, valueless copper.

The artist uses pennies, the most common and ubiquitous coin, to explore the “binding ideologies that define our family, religious, social and political worlds.” An interesting paradox presents itself here, as Skaggs’ act of art increases the coin’s original value exponentially, while systematically destroying its technical face value as a piece of currency. 

See more of Skaggs’ work on her website, here.

- Maggie

Photographer Ulric Collette explores familial similarity in his Split Face collection, released in 2011. By combining photographs of his subjects, head-on images fused at the middle in a beautiful effort of blending, Collette has created a genetics-based series of visual portmanteaus.

It’s amazing; Collette’s photos lay out every physical likeness and dissimilarity in both the small and large scale sense of appearance, and he’s almost clinical in his exploration: against a white backdrop, his subjects exist in a vacuum with no hints as to who they may be. And even so, there’s so much personality here, a split spectral sense of it in each raised eyebrow and hesitant smile. They make me imagine a colossal web of every tiny difference in personality, choice, thought and action - all manifesting outward for two very different lives lived. 

“Genetic Portraits” will be on display at Centaur Theatre’s Seagram Art Gallery in Montreal through October, and you can see more of his work here. 

- Maggie

Last week, I brought home a dozen roses which, unbeknownst to me, had been harboring a little monarch caterpillar. On Monday, I found the little apartment-crashing butterfly in a beautiful jade chrysalis hanging from the edge of my table. It was early in the morning, and it took me a minute to process it - for a split second, it registered as some sort of jewelry that might have caught from a necklace I’d never seen. But no, it was what it was. (Which was something I had to look up online. A monarch! Some little gift from the universe.) A lardy little caterpillar inched off a vast expanse of tabletop, found her perfect enough place, and shut down from the world for the biggest change of her life - all while I was too busy bustling around to see her over there in that rarely used side of the room. 

So I made her some space in a big jar, and as per instructions gleaned online, re-hung her from some sewing string (a complimentary green) with some paper towel for her to amble about on when the time came. I’m heartbroken to say that, with my unsteady hands, I dropped the little thing to the floor during this maneuver, and I was absolutely knotted with guilt that I may have hurt her. Which meant… well, which meant that I embarrassingly started to talk to her a little, give her some gently whispered morning pep talks to let her know that I was really hoping she would make it. That I’d find some proper flowers for her, if and when she was ready. 

Four days went by, and she hung there in silence, a glorified lima bean. A gorgeous, milky jade, then a deeper, semi-transparent shade, and, suddenly, I could see her wings. She was making it! This morning, the taciturn little creature pulled herself out, hanging in a heavy daze of sleep for several hours. Stretched, dried off her big wings (how did she ever fit in there?), got the blood moving. She’s sitting next to me now, upside down and pumping her wings, practicing in place what she’s always known to do. 

I feel like I’ve been dropped into one of Barbara Kingsolver’s essays, happening upon this cold-blooded creature’s little life, learning its moods. I’ll set her off in a few hours - where will she end up? I’m excited to imagine. Maybe Mexico, maybe a fat housecat’s belly. I wish I could keep her here to make sure that second one never happens, but then that’s the risk. To maybe make it to Michoacán, to meet a mate, to make a life for the next beautiful round of butterflies. “What a stroke of luck. What a singular brute feat of outrageous fortune: to be born to citizenship in the Animal Kingdom. Jump for joy, hallelujah! Even a desert has tides.”

- Maggie

[From Barabara Kingsolver’s High Tide in Tucson] 

Update, 4pm: She’s off!