Photo Picked up by Schmap

A few weeks ago I received a surprise message in my Flickr Inbox from Schmap, a website that creates free maps and guides online (and has a utility to allow you to make your own). They wanted permission to use one of my photos in their newest Amsterdam guide update. Pretty cool, I thought, and they since they aren’t charging people to use their guides I felt it was for a good cause.

Today I received notification that my photo (the one above actually) was included in their new Amsterdam guide. Its pretty buried in the Bloemenmarkt section, but it is there. Here’s the Amsterdam Guide.

Unfortunately, Schmap only creates guides for major cities worldwide, so no Maastricht guide. Yet.

Wiki Loves Art Photography Contest

24 Oranges, a fun, English-language blog about Dutch culture, blogged today about a photo competition that has museums opening their doors to camera-wielding amateur photographers. The contest is called Wiki Loves Art (Dutch site), and the intention appears to be to create a collection of Creative Commons images from various Dutch museums to be used in Wikipedia. Contestants can enter photographs under a Creative Commons by-sa (attribution, share-alike) license for the chance to win 500 Euros to be spent on photographic equipment. The contest is running the entire month of June.

While I’m not a great photographer, I may enter the contest just for the chance to take some photos inside museums that normally do not permit that behavior. I respect that many art pieces can be damaged by too much photography (flash exposure, etc), but limited bursts of activity like this seem relatively harmless and provide a great way for individuals to increase access to their cultural histories.

Evil Inc Artwork Framed

Nothing motivates a person to finish getting the little odds & ends tied up like having a dozen guests. One of my projects was to take this great original art from Brad Guigar of Evil Inc and get it framed. Since he has draws in black & white, but the comic displays on his website in color, I custom cut the mat to accommodate both the original and a printout from the website. It looks great hanging in the living room.

Evil Inc is a humorous webcomic about supervillains who have taken villainy to the corporate level. Even if you’re not typically interested in superheros (I’m not), its definately worth checking out.

KunstTour 2009 Maastricht: our wandering path

This weekend the 10th Maastricht KunstTour has filled the streets with tiny flags and mapped out art routes to encourage the exploration of Dutch contemporary visual and media art. The theme this year is Best Before… and the website assures attendees that the ArtTour comes in powdered form and is “before 2018, if kept in dark and dry place.” Of course, its only running May 21 through the 24th, so if you want to check it out you better hurry.

Since the website above didn’t have many details in English, we headed to the VVV hoping to get more information there. On our way, we spied a little “KunstTour” flag outside a U of Maastricht building. Along with big numbers which indicate stop along the pre-created routes, these flags are the tip off that there is an installation. The VOC (Vibrant Offkey Cabinets) installation turned on suddenly when it sensed us entering the room and played rather disturbing music with vacuum air, rubber hose, and plastic pipes. You can see a short video we made here.

At our second stop we picked up a map and meandered our way through a series of other installations and showrooms. We spent about three hours. Some things were fun, others were a little to avant-garde for our tastes. I got lazy with the camera though, so the only other image I have for you is of this dragon ‘car’ created by Project X. It was one of a half dozen strange vehicles like those you’d expect to see at Burning Man.

I personally loved the Printing Museum (free open house today!) which is a tiny museum of various kinds of printing presses; some still working. The docent didn’t speak English, but still gave us an extensive explanation and demonstration of the various machines in Dutch. I was able to follow the gist since I know some about printing already. I’ll definately be going back when I have a better grasp of the language and can understand the details. The machines were beautiful and they had a few books there that were larger than side tables.

As always, I enjoyed seeing what the local artists were up to. People are capable of creating so much and it is really inspirational. I’m looking forward to this event next year. Hopefully we’ll be able to check out more of it then.

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