We have had a tough couple of days around the B-holt residence. I’m sure that I’ll eventually get to that in a later post. But we have definitely been staying busy. I shot some pretty interesting stuff (to me) on Friday and Saturday. I come from a family with a strong quilting heritage. I don’t know to what extent is has carried over to my generation. But, it seems like there was always some quilt that my mom (and usually at least one of her sisters) was working on, when I was growing up. My grandmother on my father’s side (who just turned 90 on Saturday), still makes a quilt for every new great-grandkid in the family (FYI, there are more than I can count on 50 fingers). If that’s not enough, we get it from Reagan’s side too. Both of our mom’s always run into each other at state quilt guild conventions. Yes, both of our mom’s are active members of the Utah State Quilt Guild. I personally think that is pure awesome. So, it is safe to say that I was raised to appreciate the art of quilting and the significance in American heritage and Culture. I’ll be honest though, I never thought I would be shooting or blogging about quilts. Buuuuuttttt, it just so happens that the American Folk Art Museum is currently holding an exhibition of American red and white quilts at the Park Avenue Armory. I ended up shooting it for Curated Mag. I was blown away. Not saying that these photos do it any justice, but scroll down for a couple of more looks.

Ok, if you made it this far down the post, then maybe you will be interested in what I shot on Saturday morning. HS teamed up with Nike for an editorial story featuring the new Kobe collection, at a little league soccer game in the Bronx. The game was at 11:30 and I was worried that everything would be washed out with the sun that high in the sky. I guess it is lucky (for me) that we are still in early spring, because I don’t feel like the images came out that bad. I just hope that the people whose opinion matters, feel the same. Here are a few–

This last one had nothing to do with the product, but I just like the wide shot with the green turf and blue sky.

This video has been going around since the beginning of the week. I think it is freaking amazing. I have talked about it with a few people, and apparently a lot of people still haven’t seen it. So, I’m re-posting. It was shot with a 5D MkII in 1080. So, feel free to check it out in full screen view for maximum amazement. I remember once when I was young I saw the northern lights one time when I was camping with my dad. It was amazing. We could hear them too, which was really weird. The ones that we saw were red. And although they were pretty amazing (I still remember it 20ish years later), they were nothing compared to what Terje Sorgjerd shot in this video.

Noooooo, not those walkmen (although, they are awesome). Today we are talking about these Walkmen–

The Walkmen, to me sound a lot like surf rock meets Bob Dylan. But they are from Philly, so I don’t really know how it’s possible. I guess it is the old tube amps with lots of reverb, and extended tom rolls. The Dylan aspect only comes into play with the lead vocalist. He tends to have a lot of Dylan-esque inflections when he sings (not so much in the track I’m sharing, btw). The combo works for me. I don’t love all of their songs. But I really like enough of them to keep me interested. I particularly like this track called “Woe is Me.” This track is super appropriate for waxing up surfboards and/or scoping bettys. Give it a listen.

Completely unrelated. Since I slacked on choosing/announcing the winner of giveaway #2 on Sunday. Here is the announcement. Susan, you win. Hit me up with you email, and I’ll forward the shirt. Congrats!

[Photo 1: Collage from G-images]

[Photo 2: also from G-images, but not a collage]

This week the grand ol’ prize is a t-shirt. Not just any t-shirt. It is a t-shirt with a design by the artist Wissam Shawkat. The artist it awesome. The shirt was designed in connection with Staple design. Wearing this shirt is like wearing the Mona Lisa, except tipping the charts into the “cool” spectrum rather than the wolves with moon spectrum. At least, I think so.

The contest: I received like 90 emails (4 emails and a tweet) last time telling me that my giveaway method was flawed. I guess people really wanted that turntable watch bad, or something. Anyway, this go-around the contest will be a bit more like the standard blahg giveaway crap that people are used to seeing. Happy? To win this mens size L shirt (for your husband/boyfriend), please leave a comment describing why this shirt is so much more awesome than the other t-shirts you (your husband/guy pal) have (I’m looking at you Obama). On Sunday, I will choose the comment that I like the most (or at least narrow it down to two [assuming that two or more people comment], then flip a coin). Aaaaaanndddd Go!

Now that I’m looking at these images all in the same post, I’m getting a kind of morbid vibe. That wasn’t my initial intention. It is just some more stuff that I shot last week, and wanted to share. All three of these works were featured in galleries exhibiting at Pulse. The painting on the top was done by Cindy Wright. I have really been enjoying the photo-realistic stuff that I have seen lately.

Below, is a mixed medium piece by Matthew Cox. It is an Xray partially stitched over with cross stitching thread. Super cool concept.

Finally, these skulls are made from pieced together glass gathered from Mexican beer bottles. The artist is Andres Basurto.

It is Tuesday, which means that Sam is headed home today. Bummer. New LMC dropping later tonight.

As promised, here is the first big super exciting giveaway. Instead of attracting more readers, it might actually drive some away. But the purpose is to show some love to those who do read. Incidentally, no one reads blogs on Friday (so says Google analytics). But… for those who do, here is a chance to win your very own Flud turntable watch (featured above). It’s so easy. All you have to do is– 1. watch the video below, which I shot using a Flip cam (so please excuse the camera shake); and, 2. name five of the various artists who’s work appears in the film. Hint: one of them is a perverted photographer who recently did a shoot with a perverted pop singer. Another hint: at least three of the artists’ names (street name, at least) appear in the film. The first one to correctly list 5 names in a comment on this post wins. Go!

Happy Friday!

The first art show that we hit yesterday was The Armory. It was massive. Almost too huge. I was exhausted by the time that we left. The shot above is overlooking half of one of the two piers that contained the show. Again– massive. Anyway, a few of my favorite shots from the armory include the one directly below, and the one with the hanging dollar bills.

I wasn’t really paying attention to the names of the artists for these two shots. I wasn’t even particularly fond of the pieces, but I thought that the setup of the display lent themselves to an interesting shot. Especially the one above, the way that those two gallerists happened to be standing right there conversing.

After The Armory show, we headed a bit further downtown to hit Scope. Below are some of my favorite paintings from the show.

Andy Denzler is the artist who painted the work above. The artist who did the one below is quickly becoming one of my favorite painters. Her name is Anna Borowy. I first saw some of her work a few months ago on a press release from a gallery show that she was doing in Berlin. It was very, very cool to finally see some of it in person.

And finally, I really enjoyed this piece by Victor Rodriguez called “Two Masks.” I love the concept and work. Two more shows today.

Sam B. rolls into town tomorrow. Good times will undoubtedly ensue. Incidentally, there are also grips of art shows going on this week. I will be covering nearly all of them for Curated/HS.  So, sorry if you hate visual art. Because, hey, there are going to be some photos of art shows on here for the next few days.

On an entirely different note. I just wanted to say how much I love the readers of JNB. Yeah, all 12 a of ya’ll (did I spell “ya’ll” right, Kelvis?). Even the crazy ones (you know who you are). To show a little bit of that love, I’m going to start doing some giveaways. Basically just whenever I feel like it. I might make up some fake reason or milestone to try to justify it. But in reality it is just that I’m trying to unload some (debatably) cool swag (of which I have amassed shload of in my fake-line of work)(I’ll try to cut down on the parentheticals in the rest of this post, I promise). Winning it might entail some sort of lame contest that I invent.

As a matter of fact, I have already come up with a contest, as I was typing the stuff above.  I guess that I should announce the goods up for grabs, first. The item that will first be given away via Jake’s New Blog is none other than a Flud Turntable watch. Peep the images below of the actual watch that will be given away:

from a slightly different angle–

These images are just to whet the appetites of those possible 4 of the 12 JNB  readers who might be interested. The contest won’t actually start until probably sometime next week. The awesome thing about blogging for free is that there are no rules…. ever. But here is some insider information on what the contest will entail. I recently did a video for Curated and PF Flyers in which we featured various pieces of street art around the city. The contest will be something like “who will be the first person to name 5 artists whose works appear in the vid.” So– if you are perving on that turntable watch for your aspiring rapper boyfriend/husband (because let’s be honest mostly girls read this page), or even possibly for yourself, study up on your art. At least two of the artists have been heavily featured on JNB. Spoiler alert, one of them is not Banksy.

So, yeah. There is all of that. This might get embarrassing when I actually start the contest. But until then, happy hump day.

[top img: Curated, Juxtapoz, Highsnobiety]

As everyone surely knows by know, Radiohead recently released a new album after taking a break for a few years. I giddily downloaded the album from the RH site as soon as it was available. I really like the whole thing. I have featured Radiohead on LMC before. But, whatever. Why not do it again? This is the second track from “King of Limbs,” called “Morning Mr Magpie.” Press play.

It is a rainy Friday in this neck of the woods. It has been a rough couple of days. Our hosting has been on the fritz. We were offline for about half of the day, yesterday. So freaking annoying. Anyway, I shot this pretty cool thing at the Reed Space last night. I picked up a shirt from the event, featuring some of the artist’s work. Then I promptly left it somewhere. Then it started raining. When I got home, I had to run right back out into the rain to get some gatorade and crackers for my sickly little wife (who is finally feeling better this morning). And it is still raining. But all of that is ok, because it is once again Friday. Friday means reprieve. The photos above and below are just some crap that I snapped last night while I was waiting for the F train at Delancey. I liked the bokeh that the track signals made.

Have a great weekend!