By Nadine Kam

Kate Spade
Kate Spade inspirations scroll by at http://www.katespade.info/ Go to “Things We Love.”

While working on a story about the Kate Spade Ala Moana Center opening a few weeks ago, I was also milling around on the company’s Web site, double-checking prices.

One of the features of the site is an invitation to go “Behind the Curtain,” which leads to projects and a slew of “Things We Love.” If you have time to explore, clicking on any of the dozens of images will lead you to artists’ Web sites and some goofy stuff, like hundreds of line drawings of sheep. Moving your cursor over an image at their site will tell you what you’re looking at so you can decide whether or not to spend a few more seconds actually opening the page.

The image at top right in this box led me to http://www.moleskine.com, where myMoleskine Artwork allows artists around the globe to share the work contained in their Moleskines as displayed in thumbnails below:

This image led me to the work of Filip Pagowski, whose textile designs collaboration graced the Comme des Garçons runway:

I also liked theblog.weemade.com/ which allows parents to posts works created by their young Picassos. In my studies of art, the aim is to return to the freedom of expression of unschooled innocence. It’s so hard to do. A decade ago, we presented monthly children’s art contests in the paper, and we’d see this phenomenon over and over. The most expressive works came from children in grade 4 and younger. By the 6th grade their technical skills became stronger, but with that, the work became tighter, more constricted. It is so important to learn the “rules,” but it can take a lifetime to then learn to break them.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 6th, 2009 at 12:15 pm and is filed under inspiration, art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.