New York City
“There was only enough money for one ticket, so one of us would go in, look at the exhibits, and report back to the other. On one such occasion, we went to the relatively new Whitney Museum on the Upper East Side. It was my turn to go in, and I reluctantly entered without him. I no longer remember the exhibit, but I do recall peering through one of the museum’s unique trapezoidal windows, seeing Robert across the street, leaning against a parking meter, smoking a cigarette. He waited for me, and as we headed toward the subway he said, ‘One day we’ll go in together, and the work will be ours.’” – Patti Smith, Just Kids
I’ve never cried so hard after finishing a book. Highly recommended for all creative souls.
Feb 18th, 2012 | Notebook |
Muses parade, New Orleans
Electric floats roll by like steamships in drag. We bike and run and jump and shout for beads beads beads!
Feb 17th, 2012 | Notebook |
Arcosanti, Mayer, Arizona
At Paolo Soleri’s unfinished utopia Arcosanti, I realize I’m attracted to Modernist confidence and terrified of dusty tricycles.
Feb 16th, 2012 | Notebook |
San Miguel, Mexico
In a little gazebo in San Miguel, twenty boys breakdance to Isaac Hayes instrumentals. Cathedral bells ring. Old men polish their shoes.
Feb 15th, 2012 | Notebook |
New Orleans
“Here’s the truth: People, even regular people, are never just any one person with one set of attributes. It’s not that simple. We’re all at the mercy of the limbic system, clouds of electricity drifting through the brain. Every man is broken into twenty-four-hour fractions, and then again within those twenty-four hours. It’s a daily pantomime, one man yielding control to the next: a backstage crowded with old hacks clamoring for their turn in the spotlight. Every week, every day. The angry man hands the baton over to the sulking man, and in turn to the sex addict, the introvert, the conversationalist. Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots.
This is the tragedy of life. Because for a few minutes of every day, every man becomes a genius. Moments of clarity, insight, whatever you want to call them. The clouds part, the planets get in a neat little line, and everything becomes obvious. I should quit smoking, maybe, or here’s how I could make a fast million, or such and such is the key to eternal happiness. That’s the miserable truth. For a few moments, the secrets of the universe are opened to us. Life is a cheap parlor trick.
But then the genius, the savant, has to hand over the controls to the next guy down the pike, most likely the guy who just wants to eat potato chips, and insight and brilliance and salvation are all entrusted to a moron or a hedonist or a narcoleptic.
The only way out of this mess, of course, is to take steps to ensure that you control the idiots that you become. To take your chain gang, hand in hand, and lead them. The best way to do this is with a list.
It’s like a letter you write to yourself. A master plan, drafted by the guy who can see the light, made with steps simple enough for the rest of the idiots to understand. Follow steps one through one hundred. Repeat as necessary.” - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
Feb 13th, 2012 | Notebook |
Valparaiso, Chile
New Orleans
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts.” - Søren Kierkegaard
Feb 7th, 2012 | Notebook |
Before I Die is installed at the Southbank Centre in London Jan 19 – 29, 2012 as part of Death: Southbank Centre’s Festival for the Living! And a new project site will be up soon…
Jan 22nd, 2012 | Notebook |
Helsinki
Comfort is in the details: brush stands for snowy boots outside of buildings in Helsinki.
Dec 28th, 2011 | Notebook |
Photo by Kristina Kassem
Essays of E.B. White in the 111-year-old Gran Hotel Ciudad de Mexico in Mexico City. The beginning of a series to document one of my dreams: to hole up and read books in soulful hotels.
“So complete is each neighborhood, and so strong the sense of neighborhood, that many a New Yorker spends a lifetime within the confines of an area smaller than a country village.” - Here is New York, E.B. White
Dec 13th, 2011 | Notebook |
Santiago
Comfort is in the details: a grip for all in the subway in Santiago.
Dec 8th, 2011 | Notebook |
Dec 8th, 2011 | Notebook |
Installed by Shake Shack, Photos above by Caroline Oh
Enlightening to see my old ‘hood in a new way. Downtown Brooklyn has a hella lot to say on their new Before I Die wall at the corner of Adams Street and the Fulton Street Mall. More below…
Brooklyn, NY. “Eat mad tacos” photo by Victor Hu. All other photos by Belinda Kanpetch.
I used to live just a few blocks from the Fulton Mall so it means a lot to me to see the Before I Die project installed in this area of downtown Brooklyn (my friends made a book all about it). Located at the corner of Adams Street and the Fulton Street Mall, it’s more than twice as long as the original wall in my neighborhood in New Orleans, and it doesn’t take long for the wall to turn into a kind of collective abstract painting bursting with hand-written responses. It’s like I’m seeing my old neighbors in a new way. You walk by so many people every day and most of them remain strangers forever. This helps you see a little bit of the hopes and dreams of the people around you. It’s also a reminder to yourself of why you want to be alive in the world today.
Some responses from the wall: Before I die I want to… eat mad tacos, rally with the Occupy Wall Street movement, get an ‘A’ in math, hold her close, lose this damn weight, publish my book, experience true love, visit Libya, swim around Manhattan, see my Mom free from pain, build a school, clean out the basement, figure out women, get her back (someone else added: then go get her), have a “Huxtable” family, finish the Ironman, go on a cruise, stop smoking, help people be friends, speak English fluently, travel the world, be a gymnastic teacher, be a super hero, be financially stable, be remembered, be a creator not a destroyer, bring peace of mind to my mom.
Thank you to Theresa Mullen and the Shake Shack team for spearheading the installation on their temporary barriers while their storefront has been under construction. They used the Before I Die toolkit to turn those blank blue walls into valuable spaces made for and by the neighborhood. We’re currently working on a new project website that will better feature all the walls worldwide and provide more resources to help you make one with your community. Thank you for all your support for this growing project. Our public spaces can better reflect what’s important to us as a community and as individuals. By reimagining the ways we use our public spaces, the people around us can not only help us make better neighborhoods but they can also help us live better lives.
Oct 13th, 2011 | Notebook |
Photo by Miriam Vargas
A beautiful plaza in Querétaro, Mexico is home to the newest Before I Die wall. More here.
Oct 6th, 2011 | Notebook |
Sep 26th, 2011 | Notebook |
Carhenge, Nebraska
“A tear of petrol is in your eye. The hand brake penetrates your thigh. Quick – let’s make love before you die.” – The Normal
Sep 6th, 2011 | Notebook |
Bangalore
“The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we’re alone, thinking, feeling, lost in memory, dreamingly self-aware, the submicroscopic moments. He said this more than once, Elster did, in more than one way. His life happened, he said, when he sat staring at a blank wall, thinking about dinner…
He said we do this all the time, all of us, we become ourselves beneath the running thoughts and dim images, wondering idly when we’ll die. This is how we live and think whether we know it or not. These are the unsorted thoughts we have looking out the train window, small dull smears of meditative panic.” – Don DeLillo, Point Omega
Sep 2nd, 2011 | Notebook |
Montreal
“In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sep 2nd, 2011 | Notebook |
Turku, Finland
“If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing.” – Peggy Lee
Sep 2nd, 2011 | Notebook |
“Take great care with what you have while the world lets you have it.” – Epictetus
Aug 15th, 2011 | Notebook |
Edinburgh, Scotland
“To a greater or lesser extent there goes on in every person a struggle between two forces: the longing for privacy and the urge to go places: the introversion, interest directed within oneself toward one’s own inner life of vigorous thought and fancy; and extroversion, interest directed outward, toward the external world of people and tangible values.” – Vladimir Nabokov
Aug 9th, 2011 | Notebook |
Bywater, New Orleans
Aug 9th, 2011 | Notebook |
Almaty, Kazakhstan
“Spells of acute loneliness are an essential part of travel. Loneliness makes things happen.” – Jonathan Raban
Jul 26th, 2011 | Notebook |
Valparaiso, Chile
“The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.” – Anaïs Nin
Jul 14th, 2011 | Notebook |
Photo above by New Reporter. All other photos by Civic Center.
Thanks to local creatives and the Soros Foundation, I recently gave a talk at the Youth ArtCamp Conference in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where I enjoyed good times amidst their movie-magic mountains – green in the front and snow-capped in the back! During the conference, the Youth ArtCamp team and I also made three mini Before I Die walls in Russian, Kazakh, and English. They made free-standing chalkboards on the university campus and I brought one-column stencils (a test run for the DIY kit, ready later this summer). Favorite responses include “Before I die I want to create a typeface of my own”, ”Before I Die I want to write a novel about the history of Kazakhstan in English”, and “Before I die I want to save the last romantiс on the planet” (more translations below). Synchronized spray-painting with Aidar Marat and Ruslan Lyan, and thanks to the team for making it happen and showing me their lovely city: Ludmila Tsoy, Alexandra Tsay, Aidar Marat, Ruslan Lyan, Yekaterina Syrtsova, Sholpan Suleimenova, Mikhail Koval, Xeniya Medvedeva, Dastan Myrzabayev, and Abzal Issabekov.
In Russian (translations by Alexandra Tsay):
Before I die I want to learn how to be brave.
Before I die I want to save the last romantiс on the planet.
Before I die I want to drink.
Before I die I want to draw you.
Before I die I want to organize Central Asia Art Union.
Before I die I want to meet God.
Before I die I want to give birth.
Before I die I want to see my great-great-great-granddaughter.
Before I die I want to change the world.
Before I die I want to not die.
Before I die I want to be better.
Before I die I want to give up bad habits.
Before I die I want to see all people being kind.
Before I die I want to know what love is.
Before I die I want to organize 1000 exhibitions.
Before I die I want to make dreams come true.
Before I die I want to be happy.
Before I die I want to live.
Before I die I want to make something really meaningful.
Before I die I want to sit down on the string and visit NY.
Before I die I want to fly.
Before I die I want to see my parents and my boyfriend at the same time. It’s impossible as they live in different cities.
Before I die I want to travel around the world by foot.
In Kazakh (translations by Aidar Marat):
Before I Die I want to receive a title/rank of a “Hero mother”. (a woman who gives birth to more than 4 children)
Before I Die I want to make my parents happy.
Before I Die I want to be happy.
Before I Die I want to change a starter.
Before I Die I want to see Lady Gaga.
Before I Die I want to write a novel about the history of Kazakhstan in English.
Before I Die I want to understand myself.
Before I Die I want to go to Helsinki.
Before I Die I want to make an analogy of wordpress.com in Kazakh.
Before I Die I want to go to Brazil.
Before I Die I want to understand a meaning of another world. (means, life after death)
Before I Die I want to see Aktobe football club as champions.
Before I Die I want to live in Amsterdam and New Orleans.
Before I Die I want to fill this world with kindness and love.
Before I Die I want to make happy at least one human.
Before I Die I want to be on American Idol.
The Youth ArtCamp team
Jul 4th, 2011 | Notebook |
Taipei
“This was taken on July 18, 1968, when I waved goodbye to Father at Songshan Airport to board my very first flight and start my medical internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in Chicago. That day, on the way to the airport in a taxi, realizing I did not have a wristwatch, he took his Shiseko off his wrist and gave it to me. At the gate, he held my hand so tight it hurt.” - my Dad, about his father, who just passed away
Jun 28th, 2011 | Notebook |
New Orleans in nine quick and dirty loops while I was riding in the passenger seat down I-10, thanks to the easy, fun, and rewarding new iPhone application +loop created by old friend Stephen Baker for Trollbäck + Company. Get it for free until Friday!
Jun 26th, 2011 | Notebook |
Santiago
Santiago provides a place for every man, woman, and child to sit, pause, and enjoy the city for free, which leads to a chain of other benefits in comfort, safety, and civic engagement. Here’s another place where outdoor seating changes everything.
Jun 24th, 2011 | Notebook |
Photo by Anni Hapuoja
Finland’s summer sky keeps on giving as we spray-chalk long and hard amidst trains, highways, and big-ass bunny rabbits. I’m working on a new public art project in charming Turku as part of their European Capital of Culture programs Flux Aura and Artist as Neighbor. See more about the final installation here. And if you’re in Turku, I’m giving a talk about my meandering path towards public art as part of Summer Public Art School at Gallery Titanik on June 13 at 5pm. Mahtavaaaa!
Jun 10th, 2011 | Notebook |
Gave a talk in Kazakhstan at the Youth ArtCamp Conference thanks to local creatives and the Soros Foundation. We also got our spray-painting on, and Almaty is now home to three more mini Before I Die walls in Russian, Kazakh, and English! More soon…
Update – more on the project here.
Jun 10th, 2011 | Notebook |
The original Before I Die wall in my neighborhood in New Orleans is still alive and kicking so do stop by if you’re around. Lots of things in development, including a DIY kit, limited edition paintings, a book, more installations, and a new project site here.
We receive hundreds of messages each day and we try our best to answer them while still continuing to make projects and maintain our own well-being. If you have questions about making a Before I Die wall, please use this form on the project siteand we will keep you posted on project developments. And you can add your dreams online on the project site here. Thank you and we appreciate your support!
Jun 10th, 2011 | Notebook |
At Civic Center we channeled our love for World’s Fairs and A.M. Cassandre and designed this poster & online campaign for the Architectural League’s Urban Omnibus for the Festival of Ideas for the New City. It’s a huge event in New York City May 4-8, 2011 celebrating ways we can shape the future of our cities. The posters will pop up on fences, scaffolds, walls, and other public spaces across NYC to inspire passersby to think about how they can make their city better. See all 50 ideas here with links to further discussion — and add your ideas, too! Art direction by James Reeves with illustrations by Kristina Kassem. You can also purchase them to support Urban Omnibus’ good work.
Apr 27th, 2011 | Notebook |
While one chalkboard comes to an end, a new one rises for a different project. Thanks to the Alaska Design Forum, I’ve been invited to give talks and make a public art project in Alaska. I felt serious love rays in Anchorage amongst local creatives and other invited artists, including the great guys from Rebar. Now I’m in Fairbanks installing a project on the city’s tallest building, which has been abandoned for over a decade. It will all unfold at lookingforloveagain.org. If you’re in Fairbanks, come out to the Blue Loon Tuesday April 12th at 6pm where I’ll give a talk about my work and this project over drinks and good times. And come to the opening Friday April 15th at 5pm at the base of the Polaris Building with a reception to follow at Gambardella’s at 6pm. Big thanks to installation coordinator David Hayden for his incredible task mastering and to many others for their great help along the way. More on the final project here.
Apr 11th, 2011 | Notebook |
Time to evaporate into the light… I knew that the Before I Die project on this house in my neighborhood would come to an end at some point, and I couldn’t ask for a better way. Someone bought the house and, to comply with city regulations on blight, must begin renovations soon. For the record, they are fans of the project and have done everything they can to let it ride before turning the building into a home again after years of collecting dust. So if you’d like to see and share on the wall, I encourage you to come before Sunday April 10th. Its life is tenuous after that. But this isn’t the end. It will rise again in another place in New Orleans. Thank you for all the love for this project! I’m blown away by the responses on the wall and beyond, and the project will continue to expand to other cities and grow for years to come. We are currently working on providing a large one-column stencil that will make it much easier to reproduce. A project site is also in the works where everyone can share their hopes and dreams from all the corners of the world. And I’m very happy that this house will become a home again.
Update May 5, 2011: The wall still lives! The new owners’ renovations have been delayed. In the meanwhile, we have their permission to continue with the project. So do stop by the corner of Marigny and Burgundy if you’d like to enjoy it in person.
Upate June 29, 2011: The wall is still alive and kicking…
Apr 5th, 2011 | Notebook |
Two Guns, Arizona
“If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it.” – David Foster Wallace
Apr 2nd, 2011 | Notebook |
Johannesburg
“That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home… To envision us approaching and pounding on this door, increasingly hard, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it; we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and ramming and kicking. That, finally, the door opens… and it opens outward – we’ve been inside what we wanted all along.” – David Foster Wallace, Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness
Apr 2nd, 2011 | Notebook |
Lafitte Corridor, New Orleans
We biked through big hot piles of shields and metal. She showed us where traffic lights go to die. James says it best.
Mar 28th, 2011 | Notebook |
Goats, ballerinas, bananas, and kings! We all marched the streets to the misfit drum and turned our neighborhood into a Fellini film.
Mar 23rd, 2011 | Notebook |
Santiago
He’s the guy selling fifteen hair brushes on a blue towel on Avenida Providencia.
Mar 18th, 2011 | Notebook |
John Hunter, teacher and great human being, TED 2011
“I am a continuation of her gesture.” – John Hunter
“I looked at her face and looked so deeply that I felt I was behind her eyes and all at once I found myself saying, as tears flowed, ‘That’s Me. That’s Me!’ And those simple words brought back many thoughts that I had had before, about the fusion of our souls into one higher-level entity, about the fact that at the core of both our souls lay our identical hopes and dreams for our children, about the notion that those hopes were not separate or distinct hopes but were just one hope, one clear thing that defined us both, that wielded us into a unit, the kind of unit I had but dimly imagined before being married and having children. I realized that though Carol had died, that core piece of her had not died at all, but that it had lived on very determinedly in my brain.” – Douglas Hofstadter, I Am A Strange Loop, quoted by David Brooks
Mar 17th, 2011 | Notebook |
Things have blown up in my little corner of the world thanks to kind features from TYPO Magazine, Wired, Tulane University, Brain Pickings, Post Secret, Design Obeserver, NOLA Defender, StumbleUpon, the Twitters, and many others. I’ve received several thousand emails (!) in the last few weeks and I’ve got a number of projects-in-progress (including upcoming public art projects in Alaska and Finland), so I’m currently trying to figure out how to make many good things happen…
Mar 14th, 2011 | Notebook |
I WISH THIS WAS vinyl stickers are now available for purchase online! Check out the new project site and buy them here. We ship worldwide and accept Paypal and all major credit cards through our secure online checkout process. These vinyl stickers will ensure that future business owners can remove them without leaving a mark (vs. the gnarly residue of DIY paper stickers). Since May 2011, I’ve returned to the original stickers I began with, so they are fade-resistent high-gloss with a back slit for easy peeling on-the-go. Spread the love to your neighborhood and beyond! And let us know what you do with them. All proceeds will greatly help me to keep on keepin’ on and make more neighborhood projects in public space.
Feb 25th, 2011 | Notebook |
I feel very lucky to be a TED 2011 Senior Fellow, which means more TLC from the TED family and the privilege of attending four more conferences over the next two years. It begins in a few days when I’m headed to TED 2011 to join the giant ice cream social, give a talk about I Wish This Was, and soak in inspiration from all shades of life and love. Thanks to the program, which you can apply to right here, I’ve met a lot of remarkable people, particularly the fellows. Staying in touch with excited people in science, music, engineering, filmmaking, activism and beyond is an enlightening window and good reminder of how much we often, or can, overlap. The one and only Cesar Harada and I currently live a few blocks away from each other and share everything from coconut cupcakes to giant helium balloon-making tips. Support his oil-eating robots on Kickstarter today!
Feb 21st, 2011 | Notebook |
The kind of night where a stimulating new city falls into soft focus compared to reuniting with old friends. Stray dogs follow us down big mellow sidewalks.
Feb 18th, 2011 | Notebook |
I’m so happy to be selected as an Urban Innovation Challenge Fellow by Tulane University and the Rockefeller Foundation! The fellowship supports ideas to solve social challenges in areas of urban revitalization, public education, health, and economic development with a $45,000 stipend and generous support from Tulane University for the next year. With a mentorship from the great people at Tulane City Center, my colleagues and I will develop Neighborland which, in a nutshell, is the digital version of I Wish This Was and will help people shape future businesses and beyond in their neighborhoods. Neighborland is also very much a group effort with Head of Product Dan Parham, Chief Engineer Tee Parham, and vital help from James Reeves, Chris Palmatier, Alan Williams, and others. Years ago we played minimal techno in sweaty clubs; today we’re making a startup in sweaty neighborhoods. To an exciting year collaborating with residents, community organizations, small businesses, local government, and many other passionate people in New Orleans and beyond to help make our neighborhoods more ours. Thank you Stephanie Barksdale for leading this new annual fellowship.
Feb 15th, 2011 | Notebook |
Photos by Subtext Projects
If you’re in the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas metropolitan area, I hope you might contribute to my newest project in progress, which is featured in Subtext Projects’ FREERIDING show at East/West Galleries. I transformed a wall of the gallery into a giant chalkboard stenciled with the phrase, “Before I die I want to _____.” People can use chalk to write on the wall and remember what is important to them. This project is also about sharing and discovering the hopes and aspirations of the people around you. In addition to the gallery show, Before I Die is being installed on neglected buildings in New Orleans in hopes of improving both our physical environment and our individual well-being while understanding our neighbors in a different and enlightening way. More to come.
FREERIDING features works about exchange, and each piece reflects an act of giving or taking. The exhibit is open until February 10th, 2011. Thank you Subtext Projects curator Leslie Murrell for the kind invitation and gallery director Vance Wingate for the generous installation assistance. Before I Die will continue to expand in public spaces and through individual limited edition pieces in the coming weeks. Life is short. What is important to you?
Jan 27th, 2011 | Notebook |
I’m honored to be invited by the Alaska Design Forum to be a part of Common Space, a program that explores ideas of shared space and community engagement. It includes a symposium, an exhibit, and design labs in five Alaskan cities with an artist/designer working on-site in each location. I will be doing what I love most – developing an interactive public art project with the good people of Fairbanks in April 2011. They also sent me a package with curling shoes, firewood, a hose clamp, and a .22 caliber shell box. Someone’s got a new look for the Spring…
Jan 26th, 2011 | Notebook |
It’s Good To Be Here, stenciled with temporary spray chalk, at The Orange Couch
Jan 21st, 2011 | Notebook |
Sexy and smart, I dig it. From I Wish This Was, New Orleans.
Jan 15th, 2011 | Notebook |
Public art by Jetsonorama in the deserts of Arizona
“We recognize our own mortality, and we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this Earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.” – Barack Obama, speaking in Tucson
Jan 13th, 2011 | Notebook |
A new stencil for a new public art project coming soon…
Jan 5th, 2011 | Notebook |
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