I really should hate Xavier Barrade. My instinct tells me so. He’s French. He’s an artist that can’t draw with any patience. And thinks “freelance graphic designer” is a real job.
And yet he lures me in with his innovate ‘pie’ charts, fill in the blank science visuals, creative typography, and hand made book bindings. He makes me want to sew on paper, do math with M&M’s, continue to make bobble heads with the pages of my grandmothers old LIFE Universe Encyclopedias. So basically continue doing the same shit I’ve been doing for the past 24 years.
Its finally starting to feel like my birthday week is coming to an end. Despite feeling like a vagabond with the flu, the little things in life are still pretty neat.
Here is the list of little things that have made me happy, recently:
Making mushroom barley soup while listening to a William Shatner album.
Constantly hearing Devon singing on commercial breaks knowing that he’s finally making he bank that he deserves.
My grandmother laughing uncontrollably to break up tension between my mother and I.
Hand sewing dolls till sunset in the new and improved Riverside Park.
Braving Time Square to see Star Trek in IMAX with a polite yet loud mouthed friend embarrassing people who ‘hold seats’. A theater thats %40 full, and we can’t find two seats next to each other?
Making up ridiculous dances to ridiculous songs. Recording them in Photobooth. And laughing at myself when I’m down.
Renaming songs in my iTunes to titles that I find more fitting for the artist who wrote them. Like love songs called “Singing Shit I Should Eat”
Going to Fairway for lemonade at midnight simply because its warm out and I can. I don’t even like lemonade.
Receiving a mystery bundle of hardcover Woody Allen books, for my birthday.
Doing something fun before realizing that its potentially really gross. (Free Kayaking on the Hudson)
Getting to see the clip of Hank Azaria at the end of the stupid Ben Stiller movie preview. Azaria is one of my favorite actors. I think its the fact that he can play so many characters with a lisp.
Getting a man made cake box filled with bones sent to work, when I’m having a bad day.
I‘ve seen what this artist can do with a spool before, at the Brooklyn Art Museum. It was interesting I guess, but I’m glad to see that her core of creativity lies in unusual reconstruction of more things than just thread.
other dork art includes:
This David Herbert 8ft high VHS made of foam, plexiglass, and latex paint.
Invaders have pieced Charlie together through 10 feet of Rubrik’s Cubes.
What happens when you remove the unamused carb loving cat Garfield from the comic bearing his name? This guy went there.
Sometimes funny, mostly just surreal. You can now watch Jon Arbuckle fighting a losing battle against boredom, travelling deeper and deeper into insanity. It makes you wonder…did Garfield even exist, or is Arbuckle a spitting image of that neighbor I used to have who did too much acid in the 60′s?
This 
ASCII art being brought to another level, when 
