Happy colorful art that influenced me as a child

While we’re having a record warm February in Seattle with a perfectly blue sky and more sunshine than I would have dared hoping for this time of year, Europe is experiencing record cold temperatures right now. But with that comes one of my favorite changes in my hometown Basel, Switzerland. The Tiguely fountain is once again iced over and transformed into a magical winter wonderland.

The photo below is from the Basler Zeitung. Isn’t this gorgeous? For those of you not familiar with this fountain on a non icy day, you can check out this video on YouTube.

As a child, my parents and grand parents often took me to this fountain, designed by Jean Tinguely, an artist from my hometown. I still remember how mesmerized I was with this fountain and it’s may kinetic details. Years later I learned that Jean Tinguely teamed up with Niki de Saint Phalle on several projects, including this gorgeous fountain outside Centre Pompidou in Paris.

I have always been and still am in awe with Tinguely and Sain Phalle’s use of happy bright colors and their ability to make art while clearly having fun with it. Below are a few of their pieces, to highlight some of their work and hopefully put a smile on your face. Enjoy!

Tinguely:

Saint Phalle:

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Featured Artist: Isabelle Kunz

This post is way overdue. I just cleaned up my image folders and came across these picture. It needs a little explanation up front to put things into context.

When I was in Kindergarden, I had a sweetheart, his name was Daniel. Fast forward 35 years, he contacts me through facebook. He still lives in Switzerland, is now an architect, married to an architect with two children. I was happy to hear from him after all that time and thought it was fun to tell him that I, too am now married to an architect. Well, this is where the story gets interesting. I am telling him that I am a UX designer but spend a significant amount of my non work time, doing surface design and send him a link to my NadjaDesign.com website. It turns out that his wife, Isabelle, is also a surface designer on the side, so he gets me in touch with her.

This is where Isa and I become virtual friends. She in Switzerland, me in Seattle. She sends me resources on how to get our own fabric printed in small quantities (Spoonflower), webgo in together on getting breadboards printed to split the cost and just keep encouraging each other to move forward with our passion for surface design. All that happened in 2008/2009. In 2010 I am finally visiting Switzerland again and of course we meet. My husband and Daniel hit it off immediately, taking a day trip to Daniel’s construction site while geeking out over Architecture. And I feel like I’ve known Isa for years. We have so much in common with our passion for 2D patterns, color and form, architects, growing up in Switzerland… oh and did I mention that both of our dads were eye doctors! Crazy…!

I am a huge fan of Isa’s work, it’s just so heartwarming. Looking at her designs makes me happy!

You can check out her designs on her website: http://troismiettes.com
And her Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/TroisMiettes

Below is a picture of her beautiful work space that she put together in her house in Bern, Switzerland. It’s just so perfectly adorable, I want to move in!

And a picture of the two of us last August in her Kitchen (Isa on the right). She is as beautiful as her work.

Isa gave me a few of her new tea towels (literally fresh off the press) as a gift. I put them in my kitchen as art… my husband is not allowed to use them for hands or dishes! He’s okay with that, as long as I do the dishes.

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A Mexican love story

Last week, two of my favorite people got married. To celebrate their union, they invited friends and family to spend a week with them in paradise (aka Tulum, Mexico). It was a perfect week with lots of sunshine, beautiful weather, good friends and very much love!

Below are a few sketches that I drew on the beach. Happy life together Angela and Hernan!

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Yours is the earth tea towels

Weee… my new tea towels from Yours is the Earth arrived. I saw them on Fab.com a few weeks ago and couldn’t resist the cuteness, so I bought a set of 3. I am such a sucker for tea towels, and the worst part is that I don’t allow my husband to use them for dishes – we have a different set of terry cloth towels for those. Instead, I just hang them from a door handle and treat them as rotating kitchen art.

Check out the other cute things the artist duo Allie Peach and Jamie Wyckoff have to offer on their website.

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5 things I loved during the snow

Over the last few days, we had quite a bit of snow in Seattle. I always love it when the pretty snowflakes turn my neighborhood into a sugar coated winter wonderland. Fortunately my neighborhood got spared and didn’t become part of the  300,000+ homes in the Pacific Northwest that lost power. This means that for me it was just a calm time to walk in the snow, talk about the crazy weather with the baristas that lived close enough to walk to work, enjoy time with my husband, relax, read, draw and marvel at the beauty of nature.

Here are my top 5 things I loved during the snow:

1. Getting a chance to rediscover my visually changed neighborhood and post new photos to Instagram.

2. Walking to Capitol Hill with Elmo-Bandito

3. Realizing that my brand new rain boots designed by the talented Jessica Swift turned out to be perfect snow boots (with a thick pair of socks inside).

4. Walking by a bunch of freshly made snowmen, here are two of my favorites.

5. Drawing some penguins and snowflakes.

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Granny Smith and the Ginger Bear

I enjoy seeing other people doing fun things with food. Well, over the last couple of days, I came across these two images which I want to share with you.

On Instagram @joshurawr posted Granny Smith and her husband:

And just a couple of days later my friend Sumit posted this adorable Ginger Bear to facebook, explaining why he needed to be sacrificed to become part of a delicious Shehperd’s pie. To find out about Sumit’s recipe, check out the post on his blog:  ThatsGreat.org.

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Gorgeous sunset over Seattle

Last night as I walked my dog, the sky over Seattle took my breath away. It was lit up in the most amazing pink, purple, yellow and orange tones. Because I wanted everyone to see it live, I immediately posted a picture to facebook, encourating my friends to go outside and look up. As it turns out, I was not the only one with that idea. Over the next 30 minutes, sunset pictures from all over the pacific Northwest started dominating my facebook feed which I watched outside on my iPhone as the sky took me in. Below is a collage that I made from some of those amazing photos that my facebook friends posted. It was a night to remember!

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A little glimpse into my Instagram gallery

A few weeks ago I got approached by @PedroAlmeida one of my Instagram followers, asking me if I wanted to participate in a new multimedia web project on Público newspaper, a Portuguese daily news site. Never having been asked anything like this before, I felt honored to be one of the photographers they picked for this series and sent him 10 photos that best represent my style on Instagram and a brief blurb about my experience with daily social photography. Just a few weeks later, I got an email that it’s up on their site. Extra bonus points if you speak Portuguese and can actually read the description on the right.

Check out the slideshow on http://p3.publico.pt

I am @TheNadj on Instagram

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Meet TheNadj Menagerie

Say hello to two members of my menagerie. The left one is a gift from a friend from a few years ago. He reminds me that the world really is all about rainbows and unicorns! The little wand broke once, but love (or rather super glue) was stronger than that. The little duck on the right is vintage. I guess that now officially makes me vintage… ugh! I recently rediscovered it in my mom’s house. It’s a tin windup toy that I used to play with as a child. Today, these two cuties sit on my desk and make me happy on a rainy Seattle day. Check out the rest of TheNadj Menagerie.

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Ring, ring… who’s there?

In a time of text based communication it’s getting easier and easier for people to reduce phone calls to a bare minimum. I was never one to voluntarily pick up the phone to just call someone to chat. At best, I’d use it to communicate something that couldn’t wait or to arrange a time to meet someone in person, at worst, I’d simply let it ring and wait for it to go to voice mail. For me as a visual person, I like to see someone when I talk to them, or at least read them in email or text messages. With Face Time, I am slowly warming up to “phone” conversations with friends and family overseas, but it’s still not the same as talking to them in person. Last week, a friend took me to an underground art show in Basel, Switzerland where this caged phone hung as part of an installation. It immediately spoke to me; a vintage phone hanging in mid air, out of reach as an object of the past. Would you pick it up if it rang?

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