Between now and next spring, New York’s Lemar & Dauley take us a step further back into the nameless 90s, reviving those garish color combinations through modern, genre-bending designs.The preview of the Fall 08 – Spring 09 collection shows us familiar styles mashed up with references from De La Soul to Keith Hering to Ghostface. Check out pieces as they become available at lemaranddauley.com

You know that person: the one who, all of a sudden, decides to pack in all their worldly possessions and move across the world in order to find that certain something missing in their lives. There’s a lot of love for this person because, most times, they have some really great stuff they end up just giving away to their friends, who then accept bucketloads of compliments for the art they actually didn’t spend the time picking out or paying for.

(Friends in New York and L.A. who recently benefited from the liquidation of my personal collection: you’re welcome.)

Having taken up residence in Sydney last week, I was lamenting my blank walls and making plans to remedy this situation. Coming across The Art Traders was both a revelation and a kick in the guts at the same time. Curating a Southern Hemisphere art collection will be a piece of cake from here on out, but it also has me wishing I didn’t just gift my Yoshitomo Nara sketches away. Yolande Gray and Fiona McIntosh sell the art of Sydneysiders’ on consignment and have compiled a fantastic assortment of contemporary and Aboriginal art, spanning all pricepoints and tastebuds. Check them out online at The Art Traders, or visit them in Sydney at 134 Darlinghurst Road, Darlinghurst.

The more bad news we hear about the economy the more convinced we become of collecting art. Now it’s time to start your investment and Common Art wants to help. They have put together an exhibition of 70 emerging artists specifically chosen to catch the eye of collectors. Thus they titled the show “Start Your Art Collection 2008!” The show includes original works, small sculptures, limited edition prints and every thing else with a maximum of £200. It’s a cheap way to begin or extend your own collection. There is a big kick off private viewing Friday beginning at 6:30 p.m. and a lot of the artists in the show will be present. The exhibition is the East side of London in Shoreditch and will be open through the September 21.

When curator Henry Urbach joined the staff of the SFMoMA in the autumn of 2006 he began collecting a wide variety of objects ranging from architectural drawings and models, industrial-design objects, books, posters, photographs, and furniture. All in all he gathered over 246 items all of which are now being shown in the museum’s 246 and Counting Exhibit. Among our favorite works on display are the three pieces from New York-based artist and designer Ju$t Another Rich Kid’s Indulgences (for the man who has absolutely everything!) collection. Rich Kid’s gold dipped charms, Cokespoon 1, Cokespoon2, and Swizzle Sticks add a dose of rebelliousness to the whole affair, but are just a handful of works to glimpse as the museum offers the rare chance to sneak a peak at every work stockpiled in one department over a two-year period.

The first time we saw the type of classic design work displayed on Grain Edit was in a past life. We were getting up there in years and could only talk about walking five miles to school in the snow and how these new patterns frightened us. This time around we’ve got a different point of view. Now we’re grateful that someone has created a site to showcase the classic design work from the 1950’s thru the 1970’s. The Oakland based Grain Edit graphic design tribute doesn’t just trumpet the creations of yesteryear, it also focuses on the work of contemporary designers who have taken inspiration from that era. Aside from displaying fine examples of vintage creations the site contains original articles and houses interviews, designer libraries, as well as images from rare design annuals and vintage kids books from their own bookshelves, amongst other things. Yes, Grain Edit is a truly wondrous playground for those interested in immersing themselves in a vintage aesthetic, but don’t take our word for it, check it out for yourself.

You might be saying to yourself, “Hey, I live in a gravity defying home. It’s called an apartment.” And you’d be right. But, PointClickHome has a whole gallery full of slightly wackier concepts than your Upper East Side, white-pained-brick, 12′ x 9′ coffin. Architectural feats include tree houses in Java, lantern-like condo bubbles in British Columbia, and the occasional angular cube found in Scandinavian countries. Our favorite: Archangelsk, Russia’s Gangster house. This wooden tower of tower was apparently owned by a repudiated mobster that loves Frank Gehry and hates structural stability.

Dave Eggers is a modern day renaissance man. Not only is he responsible for founding McSweeney’s, but he’s got a few impressive books under his belt and also runs a writing program for underprivileged kids amongst other things. Eggers continues to make our worldly contributions feel a little less significant with his latest venture, a collaboration with Apex Art entitled Lots of Things Like This. The upcoming exhibit explores an unnamed crude, often funny, and certainly irreverent form of contemporary art that ranges from one paneled cartoon illustrations to text-based art best exhibited in the works of people like David Shrigley, Raymond, Pettibon, Nedko Solawkov and Tucker Nichols. If you’ve got a twisted sense of humor, and you find yourself in New York between April 2nd and May 10th we recommend making your way to Apex Art on Church Street in NYC to check it out.

With Polaroid film set to go the way of the dodo sometime in 2009, it's only a matter of time before the many shutterbugs who champion the photo format run out of their remaining film stock. Luckily, for fans of the non-digital instant image some of the best scene snappers have pooled some of their favorite images together so that the art form of Polaroid photography might live on forever. For The Love of Light: A Tribute To The Art of Polaroid gathers the work of twenty-five photographers from ten countries, on five continents in one breathtaking volume of photos produced with the their precious Polaroids. The book will be available in July, and hopefully will be such a roaring success that it will lead a world wide Polaroid revival and force the parent company to reconsider its stance on phasing out their film. C’mon photo fans…band together to save an endangered species before it's too late.

Founded in 1901, the Society of Illustrators is the grand mac daddy of this artistic genre. And, like every established society, once a year (for the past 50, at least) they pat themselves on the back, drink champagne, and laugh snootily in the air on what a good job they’ve all done. We imagine. In fact, we’re not really sure what goes on at one of these events, but we do know that the illustrators feted are all exceptionally good. From the political to the absurd, and minimal to ornate, the editorial show focuses exclusively on illustrations commissioned for books, magazines, journals, and online pubs. The exhibition is running until March 23rd, so if you’re in the New York area it’s worth you while to stop at the Museum of Illustration for a look at the class of 2007 (including Brain Stauffer, whom we recently profiled).

Via The I Spot

If you feel that Helvetica isn’t living up to its potential (cough, heathen, cough) and there’s nothing new about Times New, typographical design site Reserves could be the graphic tool you’re looking for. The site is the brainchild of Mike Jarboe, who uses his aesthetic brand to influence the companies like DC Skate, Globe, Nixon, 686, Transworld Snow and Skateboarding…well, a lot of board sport culture. In keeping with their urban influenced typeface and stock art, Reserve has launched a few new elements: concrete surface texture stock images, an Atari-style pixel type called Scheme, and vector art-based silhouettes of Street Style.

A super-duper music geek friend just linked me to Anthology Recordings, the first digital reissue label which, within 5 minutes, already had me tuned in to rarities I never knew even existed. Fabulous ’60s Thai go-go girl band? Check. Compelling, heart-lifting soul from Bobby Patterson? Uh-huh. Early recordings from stoner rock progenitors Sir Lord Baltimore? Yeah, baby. According to a chat with Wired, the label’s Keith Abrahamsson takes advantage of songs and albums that have outlasted their copyright dates and whose ownership have gone back to the artists themselves. It’s a good deal for everyone; you pay as little as .98 cents for a song, $9.98 for an album, and the artists get their well-deserved cash. Listening to the music samples are fun, but reading the biographies, oftentimes written by a producer or band member of the group you’re checking out, adds a personal touch you won’t find on other MP3 sites. And as if they haven’t already made us giddy with this service, all the tracks are DRM free. Which means you can listen to your purchases via the multiple methods you want but be sure to make your friends buy their own copies. It’s the right thing to do and can prove again to the big record companies that we can be responsible for the music that we adore.

Attention all fans of art in greater Los Angeles area: Overgrowth at GR2 runs from February 16th to March 12th, and it’s sure to be a doozy. The exhibit features both the solo and collaborative works of Katherine Guillen, Zachary Rossman, and Brian Rush. The three artists worked in concert on twenty mixed media compositions, each 4'' by 6'' in size, allowing each other's work to be engulfed by that of their collaborators in efforts to create stunning works that are truly a coming together of artistic minds. Their solo stuff ain't so bad either as Guillen's uses gouache paintings and prints to “explore the explore the tenuous relationship between urban and natural environments” while Rossman's collection of gouache and graphite drawings delves into the themes of “decay, isolation, and supernatural occurrences.” The pieces Rush has up his sleeve are a collection of “paintings, medium-sized mixed-media pieces, and sculptures” depicting “whimsy as a divider between ‘facts' and creativity.” So get there while the gettin's hot…or for the opening reception on February 16th.

Admit it. Ever since you were a kid, you've harbored fantasies of blasting off into the great beyond of outer space. Heck, you still read science fiction novels and imagine yourself in the role of the heroic space adventurer fighting off would be planetary conquerors and seducing aliens of the opposite sex. Unfortunately, you're no real life James T. Kirk, but you're not alone in your desire to be one. John, Veronica and Peter Kleeman know just how you feel. They have a thing for all things astronomical too. That's why they founded the Space Age Museum. Over the past 20 years, the Kleemans have assembled quite the collection of familiar objects exhibiting a certain space aged spirit; whether it's a Rocket-finned Chevy or space aged cereal toy, you'd be sure to find it included in one of their exhibits of out of this world items. However, unlike most you won't find a gift shop, but you can change that. The Kleemans are searching for artists and designers to help create products for their future shop, so feel free to lend them a hand.

There’s some innate humor in the pairing of the name “Richard Goodall” and the word “Underground.” I don’t mean this snarkily; I mean this from the same perspective that seemingly drove the online shop’s font choice (Don’t you think we should make it feel a little more gangsta?). However, there is nothing innately humorous about the shop (slash gallery; Richard Goodall Underground and Richard Goodall Contemporary are two of the UK’s leading art spaces), which, to my shock and bliss, stocks about a 18,000 posters, art toys, skate decks, books, magazines, tee shirts, and everything else. That number is slightly salted with exaggeration — but in my defense — what use is reality when reality is 1,742 posters? Aside from representing many of today’s best underground talent, the shop is the only place I’ve ever found five Kings of Leon concert posters at once — including one from their December of 2003 show with Ben Kweller (signed by the artist, Dennis Loren/selling for five pounds/beautiful). It’s sort of like Wal-Mart, except filled with tons of glorious magic instead of ex-Disney Channel-ers Christmas albums. I feel lame for not knowing about this sooner (that’s my disclaimer, sassy readers), so save yourself the same fate and scope the grounds before your friends do.

Graphic designers in the T-shirt biz collectively turn out innumerable designs every month, but it’s rare to find our favorite ones selling their creations for more than just — and sorry to be so blatant — profit’s sake. That’s not a terrible thing, of course, because everyone needs to make a living, but as a person who also provides services I’ll bet they wouldn’t mind some of that money going to a good cause. Christopher Sleboda and Kathleen Burns of Part of It thought of the same way. Why not give these artists a place to sell shirts that go to a bigger pot? So they started Part of It this year to motivate artists like Jeremyville (whose shirt is pictured) and Dustin Amery Hostetler to make shirts with graphics that specifically relate to a cause or charity of their own choosing, with all sales of that shirt going to that organization. The list runs the gamut, from the International Dyslexia Association to the Arts Commission of Greater Toledo, which are places that wouldn’t necessarily receive the attention from the population of T-shirt buyers otherwise. If you’re not in the market to add the 500th T-shirt to your closet, they’ve got an awesome selection of tote bags too.