The Artful Home: Jim Datz Brooklyn Poster

I'm flipping for this brand-new Brooklyn Poster from graphic designer and illustrator Jim Datz. (Our daughter was born at home in Cobble Hill during our two-year sojourn in NYC, and will forever be a Brooklyn girl.)

Combining typography, color, '50s-style illustration, and urban signage, the signed, limited-edition screenprint measures 16 by 24 inches and is printed on 100-percent recycled paper.

It's $48 exclusively at Three Potato Four, and makes a nice companion piece to Datz's Manhattan Poster, above. Check out more of Datz's work right here.

The Artful Home: We = Trouble

Last fall, the print-release site Tiny Showcase put together a group show at Brooklyn's Secret Project Robot gallery. Called We = Trouble, the show featured collaborative works (as well as several solo pieces) by a international group of 32 artists. (Above: Three Cranes and a Deer by Nigel Peake and Holly Rice.)

The exhibit "was designed to showcase communities of artists that do not subscribe to traditional art world values of egocentricity and competition, but rather foster communities of trust and encouragement. Sixteen artists were given complete freedom to invite a partner that they would most enjoy collaborating with. Responding with an avalanche of marathon drawing jams, long-distance parcel post, fake feuds, spying, empty threats, pseudo sabotage, and curiosity, the participants spent the last six months oscillating between forgetting about the show altogether to pulling all-nighters just trying to out-trouble one another, or simply trying to trouble to their maximum extent."

A few of the artists are familiar names -- there's a significant Bay Area contribution, for instance -- but many of them are new to me (and several of those were love at first sight). Now these original artworks are available through the Tiny Showcase website. Some of my favorite pieces:

Slutty Plan by Riikka Sormunen

Pony by Riikka Sormunen

Sex Grill by Jaakko Pallasvuo and Riikka Sormunen

Caves, Telescopes, and Slides by Nigel Peake and Holly Rice

Acclimation Blast by Maxwell Loren Holyoke-Hirsch

North by Caroline Gaedechens

Secrets by Caroline Gaedechens and 1911 (aka The Good Machinery)

Bird Series V by Matt Furie and Aiyana Udesen

Ghost in the Graveyard by Jen Corace

We Were There by Catia Chen and Danni Meyerson

Boglight by Michelle Blade and Marci Washington

The Wanderer by Michelle Blade and Marci Washington

Moon Mouth by Michelle Blade and Marci Washington

Moon Bathing by Michelle Blade, Jay Howell, and Ferris Plock

Bones by Jay Howell, Deth P. Sun, and Ferris Plock

Lost Marbles by Ferris Plock and Kelly Tunstall

Untitled by Erin Althea and Drew Beckmeyer

Purple Panties by Mike Bertino and Daniel Gibson

Check out all of the featured pieces here, and contact Tiny Showcase for info and pricing on available works.

Cool Stuff: Dexter-Style Dining

From Metropolitan Home's Showtime House, designer Amy Lau's Dexter Dining Room pieces bring new meaning to the phrase "bloody good meal."

Bloody Comfortable Armchair, $4,500

Hematolagnia Dinnerware, $60 to $135 per piece

Dismembered Flatware, $400 per setting

Vertebrae Candlesticks, $125 to $375 each

Umm ... yeah. I think I'm having salad for lunch today.

All available from Brooklyn's Spring Design & Art.

Cool Stuff: Brooklyn Tableware from Fishs Eddy

My husband and I are both California natives, and have spent most of our lives here. But although Oakland is home now, Brooklyn will always hold a special place in our hearts. Our daughter born there, for one -- that's her below on the stoop of the apartment building where she entered the world. (Yes, she was born at home -- by accident. It's a long story.) And building snowmen in the schoolyard across the street and climbing onto the bus for the ride to playgroup in Park Slope are some of our son's very first memories. We also made several amazing and, I hope, lifelong friends during our stint in the brownstone-filled borough.

So when a pal reminded me yesterday of Fishs Eddy, the incredible New York dishware outlet that we used to frequent in our NYC days, I popped over to the company's website to see what was on offer, and was delighted to discover this line of whimsical Brooklyn-themed items.

Clockwise from top left: Glass, Square Plate, Tote, Mug, Small Tray, Cereal Bowl. Prices range from just $4 to about $14 per piece. Check out the entire collection right here.

P.S. If you find yourself in New York, don't pass up a chance to visit the flagship Fishs Eddy on Broadway at 19th. In addition to the company's own signature wares, you'll find a mindblowing collection of unique table- and servingware salvaged from hotels and restaurants across the country.

Good Reads: The East Bay as Brooklyn West?

Yesterday's New York Times featured an interesting article called "Sisters in Idiosyncrasy." The piece described how the Bay Area -- specifically East Bay cities like Oakland and Berkeley -- share a sort of cosmic, arty connection with Brooklyn. Says author Noam Cohen, "There is a young, earnest population that is beating a path between artsy, gentrifying neighborhoods in Brooklyn and their counterparts in the Bay Area, especially East Oakland and the area south of Market Street in San Francisco, or SoMa."

Now don't get me wrong, I love The New York Times (and, in fact, I have written for The New York Times, not to mention having lived in Brooklyn). But I'm always amused by its signature arch -- although still somewhat breathless -- reportage on trends and social phenomena. As if the newspaper is the first to notice such things, and is doing a thoughtful and charitable public service by filling in the rest of us cretins on whatever it has so astutely taken note of. Like, "Wow -- there's a 'creative class' here in the East Bay, kinda like the one in Williamsburg and other arty, gritty Brooklyn 'hoods? I had no idea. Thanks ever so much for enlightening me, New York Times!"

I also love how the Times never fails to see everything through its New York-as-Center-of-Universe prism, as depicted by the classic New Yorker cover, above. Of course Oakland is the corollary of Brooklyn -- because, I mean, rather than having its own unique identity, every other place in the United States is simply aspiring to be a little more like New York City, right?

Anyway, give it a read and let me know what you think.

The Artful Home: Jen Ferguson

The last time we visited New York, we made a date to visit Jen Ferguson's art studio in Brooklyn's Dumbo. Jen is our friend Ted's sister, and we'd long coveted the original pieces that we'd seen hanging in Ted and his wife Ellen's home.

The color saturation and detail work in Jen's paintings is incredible, and we admired her wickedly comic, Goreyesque renderings of people and other assorted beasts. But it was her architectural work that we really fell for. After we moved back to the Bay Area from Brooklyn, we decided that we simply must have some of the Pratt Institute graduate's dark depictions of New York landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Chrysler Building to remind us of our time in that great city.

Original art is pretty much out of our budget at this point in our lives, but that day in Dumbo we picked out a bunch of prints that we treasure. And visiting Jen's studio made a huge impression on our artistic daughter, who was only 7 at the time: As soon as we got home, she started begging us for a big art table on which to set up her many creative projects, and a smooth glass paint palette just like Jen's. She received both, and now her room is more art studio than bedroom.

Whether Laurel eventually becomes a working artist like Jen remains to be seen, but I think the idea of a space of one's own in which to create -- as well as the notion that you can grow up and actually continue making art -- are ideas that will stick with Laurel forever.

Anyway, after visiting Jen's website recently, I was delighted to discover that she's now selling archival prints as well as originals online.

A sampling of Jen's available work:

Brooklyn Bridge Footpath, $15 for an 8-by-11-inch print or $125 for a 13-by-19-inch print

Manhattan Bridge print, $15

Brooklyn Bound print, $125

The Brooklyn Side print, $125

Elephant & Castle print, $65

Dejuner sur L'herbe print, $15

Fiesta print, $12

The Pool watercolor on paper, $425 framed

The Long Bridge watercolor on paper, $425 framed

To see more, visit Jen Ferguson's site and online store. (And if you live in the New York area, stay tuned for details on Jen's next exhibition in November.)