{"id":2209,"date":"2011-09-25T00:01:57","date_gmt":"2011-09-25T06:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=2209"},"modified":"2011-09-25T00:02:01","modified_gmt":"2011-09-25T06:02:01","slug":"7-imps-7-kicks-238-featuring-sophie-blackalland-a-handful-of-illustrators-and-designersill-explain-promise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=2209","title":{"rendered":"7-Imp’s 7 Kicks #238: Featuring Sophie Blackall
and a Handful of Illustrators and Designers
(I’ll Explain, Promise)"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

Happy Fall, one and all. <\/p>\n

This morning, I’m featuring illustrations from two books meant for grown-ups, Sophie Blackall’s<\/a><\/strong> Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found<\/a><\/strong><\/em> (from which the second illustration above comes) and Graphic USA: An Alternative Guide to 25 U.S. Cities<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (from which Austin designer Bryan Keplesky’s<\/a><\/strong> wonderful don’t-shave image above comes), edited by Ziggy Hanaor and with art from various illustrators and designers — but two books with exciting art, nonetheless. And exciting art, which talented illustrators and designers create, is what 7-Imp is all about, yes? I’d like to think so. <\/p>\n

And can I just say that these two books are super-rad-neato-skeeto, to be erudite about it? They really are. I love them. <\/p>\n

First up … <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s been a very Sophie-Blackall year here at 7-Imp. Her name and\/or art has appeared no less than seven times here at the blog in 2011. What can I say? I’m a fan (all the neater that I got to meet her in person in New York City in August). And I’m featuring more of her illustrations here today, because if I ruled the world, I’d decree that everyone see her new book, Missed Connections: Love, Lost & Found<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, released this month. And that’s on account of it being fascinating and delightful and funny and even haunting, all at once. <\/p>\n

Many of you probably already know about Sophie’s Missed Connections<\/em> blog<\/strong><\/a>. Actually, let me back up: You know what a missed connection is, yes? This is when the eyes of two (or more) strangers meet across a room (or subway or laundromat or coffee shop or even, in one of the most heartbreaking Sophie-illustrated entries, aquarium), but contact information between interested parties is not exchanged. And then the moment is lost. Forever. (Or: “Untold people a day kick themselves,” Sophie writes in the book, “for not being bolder, braver, more spontaneous.”) But then you know what Missed Connections sites are, yes? Well, there are missed-connections sites every-dang-where, but it all began, I suppose, with Craigslist, where one could enter missed-connections information and try to find the person with whom he or she had momentarily connected. <\/p>\n

For years now, Sophie has been illustrating Craigslist missed-connections entries at this blog of hers. (“Messages in bottles,” she writes at her blog, “smoke signals, letters written in the sand; the modern equivalents are the funny, sad, beautiful, hopeful, hopeless, poetic posts on Missed Connections websites. Every day hundreds of strangers reach out to other strangers on the strength of a glance, a smile or a blue hat. Their messages have the lifespan of a butterfly. I’m trying to pin a few of them down.”) <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Now they’ve been compiled into a book from Workman Publishing, complete with a wonderful introduction from Sophie about what pulls her in the first place to illustrate these snapshots. “How on earth (you may ask) did I find myself in the position of love guru?” she writes, adding that she’s received twenty-seven emails this year alone from happy couples who united after having posted a Missed Connection. (“Some even sent photos,” she adds. “Six of them asked me to illustrate their wedding invitations. Several yearning types wrote, begging me to help them find their lost loves.”) <\/p>\n

First, Sophie explains how illustrators set their own hours and how they get to spend most of the day on the Internet and call it “research<\/em>. All this isolation can be good for productivity. It can also lead you to an atrophied palette, compulsive blogging, and thinking of Ira<\/a><\/strong> as your friend.” Here’s what else she wrote: <\/p>\n

Once a week I make sure I leave my windowless cell in Brooklyn and go into Manhattan, either to see an editor or buy feathers, or to look at the stupendous armor at the Met or at tattoo catalogs on the Lower East Side. One day I squeezed into a subway car with a bushel of peacock feathers and a pound of sea scallops, and a handsome chap squeezed in next to me. We apologized in rounds, and when he stepped off he appeared in the window and mouthed two words. I turned to the girl next to me.<\/p>\n

“What did he say?” I asked. <\/p>\n

“Missed Connections,” she said. <\/p>\n

I had no idea what she was talking about, but I didn’t want to seem uncool, so I made a mental note. <\/p>\n

I got home, dropped my scallops and feathers, went to the computer, and looked up Missed Connections ….<\/p>\n

Here is the first one I read:<\/p>\n

You had a guitar, I had a blue hat
\n– m4w – 28
\nWe exchanged glances and smiles on the subway platform. I pretended to read my New Yorker but I couldn’t concentrate. You got on the Q and I stayed on to wait for the B. You were lovely.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the space of eight seconds, I had experienced love, loss, and regret. I held my breath and clicked on the next post.<\/p>\n

And the next.<\/p>\n

And the next. <\/p>\n

It was dark long before I tore myself away….<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the rest is history, as they say. If you’ve followed her Missed Connections blog, you know how perfectly entertaining it it to see Sophie bring these short entries to life with humor and affection and whimsy and her ever-so-Sophie element of surprise and quirkiness. And now they’re all compiled into this book, which I can’t recommend highly enough. And Sophie is sharing some of the images today. <\/p>\n

“We have only one life,” she writes further in the book’s introduction, “and we rush through it. We make choices and follow paths and we don’t linger too long at crossroads. Moments of intimacy with strangers are minor detours we rarely explore, but those moments make us feel alive, and human, and part of something greater than ourselves. Then connect us to each other.”<\/p>\n


\n
\n<\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/font><\/center><\/p>\n

Next up is Graphic USA: An Alternative Guide to 25 U.S. Cities<\/a><\/em><\/strong> (Cicada Books), edited by Ziggy Hanaor. As Ziggy likes to say, who better to take you around the USA than its artists? <\/p>\n

I flippin’ love this book, which was designed by April<\/a><\/strong>. It is, as the subtitle tells you, an “alternative guide” to 25 U.S. cities, with entries written and illustrated by illustrators\/designers who live in that city. This all means that you get lists of galleries, restaurants, bars, hotels, cinemas, thrift shops, boutiques, taverns, coffee shops, you-name-it that have what they deem “an alternative edge.” Each entry reflects the designer’s singular experience of that city, which means you see really fun things like (for the Milwaukee entry from Mike Krol<\/a><\/strong>): “Value Village — A thrift store across the street from The Domes….Mike scored a sweatshirt with a large deer head and three other shirts: one with a howling wolf head, one with a snow owl, and one with a duck. It’s just that kind of Wisconsin thrift store.” (Later, Mike notes that The Oriental is an old movie theater “where, on certain nights, a weird dude plays the pipe organ before your movie starts.”) Or (for designer Katie Hatz’s<\/a><\/strong> entry on Philadelphia), “You know when you’re in a bar and your friend gets up to use the bathroom\/smoke a cigarette\/talk to someone attractive, and you’re in a place so slick and stark that there’s nowhere to rest your eyes without staring awkwardly at the other patrons, so you pretend to play with your phone until your friend comes back? Here, you don’t have to do that, because there are photos of cute dogs all over the walls. Furthermore, the beet salad has big fried goat cheese balls in it.” <\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

From Camillia BenBassat’s<\/a><\/strong> entry for New York City<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

In the editor’s note opening this book, which follows 2010’s Graphic Europe: An Alternative Guide to 31 European Cities<\/em><\/a><\/strong>, Ziggy notes: <\/p>\n

The concept behind [this] is that people who work in the graphic arts, and who have an offbeat asthetic to their work will often seek out the unexpected and inspirational elements in their environments that one wouldn’t find in most travel guides. The recommendations in this book are the personal favorites of the individual contributors. They were not compiled by a team of trained researchers, and for the most part they do not include the bucket list of recommendations that most tourists feel they have to tick off. They tend to reflect the alternative, independent culture that is bubbling underneath the city, feeding into its public persona, but not immediately apparent to the visiting outsider. Not all the suggestions may be your cup of tea, but … [i]t’s kind of like a friend writing down their hot tips for each place.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

{Pictured above is an image from Bryan Keplesky’s<\/a><\/strong> entry for Austin, Texas.}<\/em><\/p>\n

The entries are funny and honest — some are surprising, and all are entertaining. <\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

Image from Katie Hatz’s<\/a><\/strong> entry for Philadelphia<\/em>
(Click to enlarge)<\/center><\/p>\n

It’d be easy to dismiss this book in an oh-I’m-not-hip-or-“edgy”-enough fashion. One of my favorite quotes from Salinger’s Franny and Zooey<\/strong><\/a><\/em> comes to mind here. Franny says:<\/p>\n

It’s everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so \u2014 I don’t know \u2014 not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and \u2014 sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But that isn’t this book. And it could have been. And that would have been tragic. What it is to me is a series of entries by beloved misfits (this is a compliment, coming from me), not to mention talented graphic designers. Artists, that is, who are gloriously left of center and who see the world in a different way. <\/p>\n

Ah. Refreshing. <\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

From Elizabeth Graeber’s<\/a><\/strong> entry for Baltimore, Maryland<\/em>
(Click to see entire spread from which this image comes)<\/center><\/p>\n

For a list of the cities covered in this book, you can visit this page<\/a><\/strong>. Most entries are divided into sections, such as “Stay,” “Eat,” “Drink,” “Do,” and “Music,” but you’ll also see sections like “Green Spaces,” “Expeditions,” and “Outdoors.”<\/p>\n

Here’s some more art from the book. Enjoy. <\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

From Michelle Weinberg’s<\/a><\/strong> entry for Miami, Florida<\/em>
(Click to see entire spread from which this image comes)<\/center><\/p>\n

From Bryan Keplesky’s<\/a><\/strong> entry for Austin, Texas:<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

Click to see entire spread from which this image comes<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

Click to see entire spread from which this image comes<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

Click to see entire spread from which this image comes<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

Click to see entire spread from which this image comes<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

<\/a>
\n

Click to see entire spread from which this image comes<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

* * *<\/center><\/p>\n

MISSED CONNECTIONS: LOVE, LOST & FOUND. Copyright \u00a9 2011 by Sophie Blackall. Published by Workman Publishing, New York. Images reproduced by permission of Sophie Blackall.<\/em><\/p>\n

GRAPHIC USA: AN ALTERNATIVE GUIDE TO 25 U.S. CITIES. Copyright \u00a9 2011 Cicada Books Limited, London. Images reproduced by permission of editor, Ziggy Hanaor.<\/em><\/p>\n

Note for any new readers: 7-Imp’s 7 Kicks is a weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you. <\/p>\n

* * * Jules’ Kicks * * *<\/strong><\/font>
<\/center><\/p>\n

1)<\/strong><\/font> Speaking of misfits, as I did above, I went to a high school reunion of sorts last night, a small misfits reunion, if you will. <\/p>\n

2)<\/strong><\/font> Misfits. <\/p>\n

3)<\/strong><\/font> This cover of a song by Haley Bonar<\/a><\/strong>, called “Wendy Bird,” as performed by Daniel Martin Moore<\/a><\/strong>, is beautiful. <\/p>\n