kimmie nguyen:

California Dreaming

I'm no skater but this is pretty rad. Using a grant from Visit California, professional skateboarder Bob Burnquist built a floating skate park on the waters of Lake Tahoe.

Designed by Jerry Blohm and Jeff King, the ramp took over 300 man hours, 1,250 screws, and nearly 7,300 pounds of lumber. The team faced a variety of challenges ranging from leaks to proper weight distribution, however they were able to dial in the design to make the platform both buoyant and stable. Good enough for some real skating action by Burnquist and his buddies.

So while I'm jealous of friends on vacation for this long weekend. I'm also feeling very grateful to be living in the sunshine state, because we get awesome things like this. Happy 4th of July.

 

Art :: Michael Cina

Michael Cina is an artist working in the fields of graphic design and painting. Ghostly writes that his success is fueled by experimentation and mastering of the many aspects of design including, typography, branding, art direction, illustration, fine art, motion, web, photography and so forth. While he's explored all kinds of mediums, I'm especially drawn to his works in acrylic. The colors have depth and emotion, the shapes and forms are human and you can almost place where it come from. Limited edition prints are available for purchase on The Ghostly Store.

Better Times 1, Pigment and Acrylic on paper

SPC-104 was part of Benoit & Sergio's, Let Me Count The Ways

Draw Aside, Acrylic on Museum Board

Every Inclination of the Human, Altered Acrylic on paper

You've Got Mail

Now that I'm at a consumer facing company again, I can spend my days researching websites providing niche and fun services. A few years ago crowdfunding on the web wasn't even an industry term yet. Today there are all kinds of flavors of crowdfunding sites thanks to companies like Kickstarter. Quarterly isn't crowdfunding in the traditional sense but it plays on the notion that people want to support creators by subscribing and receiving goods.

For those in the know, this site may be old news but I feel like a kid in a candy store. In a time when social media makes direct communication with any influencer possible, here's a site that plays into the value of tangible interactions. Quarterly is a subscription service that lets you receive - that's right, quarterly packages - in the mail. You can subscribe to people you find interesting and, once every three months, they'll send a package right to your doorstep. Unique, limited subscriptions and full of surprises.

There's someone for everyone in their curated list of contributors. Who do you want to receive a package from? Here's my list:

Poketo (The husband-and-wife team of Ted Vadakan and Angie Myung bring art and design to every day goods)

Cool Hunting (The online destination for all things cool. Delivering items of form and function to your doorstep)

Sean Bonner (An entrepreneur, journalist and activist. Also a reformed collector turned minimalist object fetishist)

 

Wander (Because Keenan Cummings and Jeremy Fisher like people that go places)

 

Uprise Art (Makes art collecting for the rest of us possible. Mailings include one-of-a-kind artwork plus tools to make your own)