Miriello Grafico

Instead of having the circus come to town once a year, what if it was a monthly deal in the backyard of an old house- showing the bizarre instead of the banal? That’s what’s been happening at Bruce Cartier’s Technomania Circus a few blocks from Miriello Grafico, here in Barrio Logan.

Here’s what Cartier says about it, “Technomania Circus is difficult to explain, but easy to enjoy. You never know what you’ll find happening in the Blackyard: blacklight illusion, performance art, dance, puppetry, music, and more. Whatever you find, it’s never ordinary. From our inception in North Park’s Xanth Club in 1999, to a several-year stint in the Bay Area, to the current location at the Center for Amusing Arts in Barrio Logan, we’ve been breaking down the barriers between performer and audience, between culture and crudity, and changing everything you thought you knew about theater in the process. We strive to remain all-inclusive yet retain our edgy and experimental nature.”

I’m making it part of my 2010 entertainment plan. Gotta love the grassroots, underground energy behind it all. And besides I seemed to have outgrown the Barnum’s thing a while back.- RM

Since I was a kid, I always wondered where all the gas for all those cars could be coming from. That was 40 years ago. I also wondered why “they” just didn’t make the street move instead of all the cars, like a big escalator. But then I got smart and stopped asking questions . . . until now.

Miriello Grafico is a sponsor of an event call TRANSITIONS, High Speed Transit Forum. It’s coming up on November 12th at San Diego’s Point Loma Nazarene University at 6-8pm.  It’s being organized by Calvin Woo and San Diego’s Design Innovation Institute.

Getting high speed rail on the west coast would be a wonder. Maybe this roundtable event, which will include SanDag and Sacramento CalTrans players, can help at least, define where the effort needs to be placed to break through to a reality.

Consider attending. Register here.

I remember sitting on the floor of our house in Denver in 1969 and watching Apollo touch down. I could have sworn I saw the spacecraft actually circling the moon- with my naked eye- when I went outside during commercial breaks to stare at the moon. That was 40 years ago.

Wechoosethemoon.org is a very well done interactive re-creation of first launch to the moon of Apollo 11. The site is divided into 11 stages and uses the original footage in amazing ways. Pretty good progress in 40 years.

I’ve noticed an undeniable resurgence in the interest in bicycles- older bicycles- over the past year.  Classic steel-frame bikes in particular, have made a return and are being recrafted now into individual custom-assembled, personal statements about their maker.

The show we had here at Miriello Grafico/The Logan last September - Reinventing The Wheel- featured cool frameworks by Sky Boyer and the boys at VeloCult, in San Diego.  I must have six friends currently scouting for particular frames they can build their custom creations around.  Buying off the shelf is out, scanning eBay and garage sales for forgotten and neglected bike parts is in.

Pushing the trend even further from the fine arts end, is Willie Cole, an artist from New Jersey (born 1955) who transforms ordinary domestic parts, irons, lawn jockeys, and bicycles parts into sculpture with references to African-American and West African religion, mythology and culture.  Cole has shown at The Whitney, The Walker and The National Gallery in D.C.   A Toronto friend sent me these shots from their museum where she spotted Cole’s work this week.

Find out more on Cole and his other work from Kimberly Brooks’ article on the Huffington Post.

 I had never spent time in Houston before so when Alex Barber, the incoming president of the Art Directors Club of Houston, invited me to help judge submissions to the 53rd Annual Art Directors Club of Houston, I was there.

In some ways Houston was what I expected, a city shaped by the oil industry, big money and conservative politics. But it was also a place of cool surprises, risk-taking creativity and reinvention. The ADCH kept the five judges running all weekend. If we weren’t huddled in a print warehouse evaluating Houston’s creative work, we were eating BBQ or becoming best friends with Houston artists, print makers and designers. With a largely traditional client base, the ADCH has a vital purpose in the Houston design scene where a creative community helps in the role of inspiring, promoting and pushing. Especially critical when the marketplace itself isn’t doing the pushing for them. And let’s face it, the marketplace is rarely the driving force for new creative invention in the end.

The judges group was stellar. It included art director Michael Borosky from Eleven, photographer Jeffrey Brown, illustrator Sterling Hundley and web expert Molly Holzschlag. Saturday night was a blow-out event with Houston artist Wayne Gilbert, a painter and Houston original whose pigments are made from human remains.

The last morning I spotted a bar room sign on the side of the road, ripped-down recently by the devastation of hurricane Ike. 10 minutes after I’d said, “I’d love to have that sign”, ADCH leader Jamie Farquhar was on the phone to her brother, “Get your truck out to highway 56 where it jogs south - right now. I need you to pick up something for a friend of mine.”  I was getting another glimpse of what makes Houston. . . Houston.

Scheduling a major party on the first day of the stock market’s downturn and the Vice Presidential debates might seem like its own form of social-suicide. Instead, the opening party of The Logan building was exactly what the masses needed. A place to meet, share, commune and understand that we are all in this together. And quite possibly, the innovation and problem-solving skills of the creative community may be more essential to the national dialogue than ever.

Ron Miriello toasted the crowd, “Our shared abilities of creativity and collaboration are fast becoming a new and important currency-type. As the financial markets waver and the myopic drive for individual wealth is paused, there’s an opportunity for the creative mindset and their unique abilities of invention, collaboration and informed risk-taking. The unique abilities of the people in this room are needed at a time like this.”

The celebration brought over 300 designers, architects, politicos, writers, artists and business people together to enjoy an evening in the creative beachhead neighborhood of Barrio Logan. The hosts – Miriello Grafico and LJG Partners – invited friends, clients and community members to a celebration – and celebrate they did. The Barrio restaurant, The Guild, managed the food and Temecula Valley ConVis organized the wines, all offerings from Temecula Valley. The Barrio Logan spokesperson Rachael Ortiz, arts tagger Crol, and the Mariachi Juvenil helped first-time visitors better understand the rich culture and history of the neighborhood. San Diego architects were plentiful, including the designer of The Logan, Jonathan Segal, who created a space where people obviously love to linger, share and invent.

Watch the party video on YouTube created by Jeff Durkin.                                                                        Find incriminating party pictures on Flickr.

The Sanctuary 143 nomadic artist collective opened their Reinventing The Wheel artist installation at Miriello Grafico’s Logan warehouse to over 700 people. “It felt more like New York than San Diego”, “I’ve never seen so many people into an art event in San Diego before”, and “I was blown away to find this level of energy, and in Barrio Logan of all places.”–were some of the comments coming out of the din.

Several artists and bikesmiths, including Ron Miriello of Miriello Grafico, contributed to the show pieces, all based loosely on the theme of reinventing- rethinking- the wheel. Velo Cult of South Park San Diego had 100 night-riding bicycle members arrive in mass to swarm the show and further expand the eclectic crowd of artists, designers, politicos, media, kids, dogs and hipsters.

Sanctuary 143 is an artist group, masterfully driven by Sean and Stacy Kelley and Jeff Faeth, with an approach to arts events founded on low egos, true collaboration and hard work. You can see photos of the Reinventing The Wheel event on Flickr.

Learn more about Sanctuary 143 and their next event  at : http://www.sanctuary143.com/category/events/

9/18/08 New York:  At the 2008 AIGA Annual Design Legends Gala, Ron Miriello was honored as an AIGA Fellow for his career accomplishments as a designer and his contributions to the design profession. Also honored from San Diego|AIGA was MaeLin Levine of Visual Asylum. Ron and MaeLin were two of twenty-one designers who were recognized at the national event held on the Hudson River at Chelsea Pier 60 in New York. Other 2008 Fellow inductees included Jennifer Morla/AIGA San Francisco, Art Paul/ AIGA Chicago and Terry Marks/ AIGA Seattle.

Harley-Davidson Motorcycles and Design Within Reach were recognized for their corporate design and brand leadership at the event.

Ron said, “I could see the lights of Jersey City across the Hudson River from my table at Chelsea Pier, where my Italian grandparents came to in the 20’s and where my dad grew up. They would have enjoyed the evening too.”

See photos and details of the event at: http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/fellow-award

Finding a new creative use for  everyday, throw-away objects has a special satisfaction for both the maker and the viewer. Each get a slightly new perspective on things we see everyday. Re-purposed works send an interesting message that art is always surrounding - as long as we’re wearing the right pair of glasses.

These hanging mobile sculptures, made by Ron Miriello, are made from highway barricade sign and used zinc printers plates, cut with a CNC laser and then bent into three dimensional forms. This series was part of the Sanctuary 143 Reinventing The Wheel exhibition and are now installed in the offices of Miriello Grafico.

Tan is a graphic artist that work with the public realm and dreams up some very inventive projects to build community and open thinking.

Trained as a graphic designer, Tattfoo Tan’s art practice seeks to find an immediate, direct, and effective way of exploring issues related to the individual in society through which to collapse the categories of ‘art’ and ‘life’ into one. Through the employment of multiple forms of media and various platforms of presentation, Tattfoo promotes group participation between himself and an ‘audience’. Within this collaborative practice both minds and bodies are engaged in actions that transform the making of art into a ritualized and shared experience. His website contains all the community projects he’s done and they are very cool efforts: www.tattfoo.com