The pair recently riffed on reforestation by populating a Quebec park with enormous green foam trees, cut in the familiar iconic silhouette of pine tree car air fresheners. They then created a second version of the forest, this time inspired by modular Lego trees.
Really? Personally, I think anyone that drops a bunch of styrofoam into a park should be fined for littering. This guys get a contract to do more crap to humble my poor downtown.
Here’s my question: did we always do such useless crap? What would have happened if someone at Sterling-Cooper pitched this?
Mr… Mr… . it’s not useless crap, it’s public art. And everybody knows the value of publicly funded art. … .
Besides, “you guys” rode out the economic roller coaster, you can afford it. We, near San Luis Obispo, California on the other hand, haven’t fared as well, but the city fathers are still commissioning public art at the expense of other things … like road repair.
So, relax. Breath in. Breath out. Have a Latte, and enjoy the art, even if it doesn’t show much more than a middle-school level of sophistication… . . .
Riffed? Is it supposed to be dark humor or something? The reason I ask is because you could draw a correlation between the contrast of the “fake” trees to the surrounding real trees as much as you could correlate re-forested land being inferior to un-touched preserved forests.
At first I thought this was meant to mock re-forestation efforts. I don’t quite get the message here.
I’m upset that they call this art. Although I do think that a lamp I worked on was featured in a home living section of a paper, I’m insulted that this crap gets press. There are designers across Canada busting their arses every day (Bombardier, Blackberry, IP Wireless, CCM/Reebok, Bauer/Nike, Chlorophylle, Pelican (canoes), Umbra and various consultants like Alto Design and Gad Shannan). We should have ten articles praising good work that actually lands in the hands of people for every article talking up this second rate stuff.
Loafer: I meant to add an “etc.” at the end that would have included you;) Hey, I forgot Richard and someone else that has a robot as an avatar (I think). There is a lot of really good ID work being done in Canada. Why aren’t we talking about it?
I get the part about hiding development. My best work is still in development and it’s hard not to want to post sketches and photos daily. It’s really exciting to me. However, there is a lot of finished product that we should be celebrating as a profession that seems to slide into the ether while some kids run around with foam trees in the forest.
As per the discussion, I think anything that inspires people to appreciate or even discuss their love or hate for art is a bonus. North America in general has a real lack of appreciation for the arts and in turn design. A discourse that encourages opinion and why they have an opinion is good for everyone in all the creative fields. It’s all part of pushing the boundaries of creative thought… good or bad, it should be embraced.
but yeah, it’s pretty crap
I like the insight behind their company name… very clever (funnily enough, that’s my mum’s name)
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