Interesting Ideas Update

Lower Manhattan is a carnival of art deco details.

Signs and sights from Pulaski Road. This mosaic sign is one of the best. I’ve never seen another one like it.

Follies of Europe: Architectural Extravaganzas, by Nic Barlow, Caroline Holmes and Tim Knox. Garden Art Press, 256 pages, 286 color illustrations, 2008. ISBN 1-87067-356-5

In the United States, writing on the environments of self-taught artists tends to place them within the outsider art context or, sometimes, within a specifically American tradition of individual expression.

Follies of Europe demonstrates a very different way of looking at these sites. Not only is their individualistic exuberance not distinctly American, but they belong to a tradition of highly personal outdoor extravaganzas going back at least to the 17th Century. Indeed, the book opens with reference to Roman gardens decorated with miniature temples and palaces, which are folly structures par excellence.
Read the rest of this entry »

U.S. 11 as it runs between Birmingham and Bessemer, Alabama, is an outdoor vernacular art gallery that gives even the beloved Western Avenue in Chicago a run for its money.

I’ve never made it to Carhenge in Nebraska but my colleague Svilen recently did. View his gallery.

A new treasury of oddball store names from around the world.

Some first-rate signage from the funky Chicago suburbs of Waukegan and Kankakee.

Great lodging images from motel matchbooks.

Here’s a selection of my 100 favorite signs from the pages of Interestingideas.com’s Roadside Art Online section.

Three great gift ideas from the pages of interestingideas.com
2008 Diner Art Calendar

Gyros Project Calendar 2008 Edition

Bizarre Bazaars the book: Weird, Wacky and Just Plain Embarrassing Business Names From the Grog N Groc Hall of Fame