Cars in Santo Domingo can get away with some creative license plates. When I was little I used to draw pretend checks. Would that fly in the Dominican Republic?

An exhibit placard at the Henry Ford Museum, Detroit.

And big thanks to Wooster Collective for the love!

Asians are all about best value and that’s why they bring their own food to Disney World. When my family and cousins went to EPCOT and the Magic Kingdom each summer, my mom would bring a bag full of her delicious, homemade zongzi - sticky rice and meat wrapped up in bamboo leaves. One time while we took our lunch break and munched away at our Chinese snacks, a couple walked up to us and said, “That looks delicious! Did you pick that from the tree?” Oh you silly white people haha.

If I weren’t Asian I probably would have asked the same thing. It looks leafy enough and I have no idea where most of my food comes from. The most shocking thing I saw at Hearst’s billion-dollar castle in San Simeon was an orange tree (they’re so small and they hold so many!) and I couldn’t tell you the origins of my bologna sandwich (is this a dangerous road?…). I’m still learning about the larger networks that form my “food systems,” and one of my favorite lessons comes in the form of cute, educational fruit wrappers.

Art collective Free Soil (including Futurefarmers founder Amy Franceschini) created F.R.U.I.T., custom wrappers that wax poetic on the resources and transportation needed to supply the pieces of fruit they lovingly envelop. It’s the behind-the-scenes story of your food so you can better understand all the miles it’s traveled and all the energy it’s taken and all the people who have groped it before it’s landed in your hands. So let this be a reminder of what a jet-setting life your fruit has had and how much you should really wash that apple before you put it in your mouth ha…

Photo above from the F.R.U.I.T. site.

Going to the museum at night is the funnest. When I went to the opening party for MoMA’s Color Chart exhibit earlier this month, I got my buzz on and my inspiration on in one foul swoop. Channeling the minimalist color-field energy, I started a new series called Minimalist Logos. Familiar brand logos are cropped and turned into hot minimalist art. It’s Corporate America + I-Spy + Ellsworth Kelly!

Close enough?

Flying from one airport to another can often feel like quantum leaps through space and time. When I flew from New York to Johannesburg I surrendered myself to a time capsule that, ten movies and four meals later, opened its pod doors onto Africa. I’ve spent layovers in cities I wouldn’t be able to locate on a map, and I couldn’t tell you how long it would take to get to most countries. Are we there yet?

For the public art program at Koltsovo International Airport in Yekaterinburg, Russia, I submitted this work to be displayed in one of the terminal’s round light boxes. To provide a context for travelers in Russia’s fastest developing airport, this map plots major cities and the number of flight hours away they are from Yekaterinburg. As a result, travelers gain a better orientation and understanding of their current location in the world and the faraway places they can reach within hours. Click here to see a larger image!

Cross-disciplinary ideas are the best. While reading Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, I learned about this hot back-story. Joseph Paxton was a gardener and the first in England to grow the giant water lily, the biggest flowering plant in the world. His lily had leaves 6 feet long, and a photo of his daughter sitting on one of the floating lily pads became a big hit. Paxton didn’t stop there - he found he could load a leaf with a whopping five children. After taking a closer look, he discovered that the leaves’ ribs formed a cantilevered support system that made them so strong.

In 1850, Paxton designed the Crystal Palace, the ginormous iron and glass building that was the centerpiece for the Great Exhibition of 1851. Modeled on the ribbing system of the giant lily pad, it was considered an engineering marvel and the first major use of iron in architecture. Paxton was knighted and lived happily ever after. Isn’t that neat? Someday I hope to do the same and realize that the way I rubber-cement my collages could lead to a better way of crab-fishing in the Bering Sea… Wait for it, wait for it…

Photos above from moplants.com and francisfrith.com.

What?… Then why did you send it to me?… did you just kill a child?

Genoa, Italy is old, hilly, and bunched together. This makes it fun to walk through and find a smash-up of old European architecture and new things. One of the oldest parts is the Mura della città, the city walls that were built from the 9th to 17th centuries. They fold within the rest of the city and are second longest only to the Great Wall of China.

Along parts of the wall the stacked stones open up to form little cubby holes just big enough to stick your fist in. I’m not sure what their old purpose was, but they’ve been reappropriated… In a secluded section near the university these holes are now the storage places for syringes, rubber tourniquets, and used wet-naps. All this paraphernalia is tucked away into these medieval stones as if they were stashed away in private drawers. It was pretty grody. But what a creative way to modernize your old architecture… Suddenly it’s so… junkie-fresh! Bravo haha.

In the men’s section of Bloomingdale’s in Soho.