In case you want to get audited by customs these suitcase stickers are for you.

From Random Good Stuff

Contributor has once again teamed up with Society6 and Club Mumble to curate their second art show in support of Contributor‘s charity. Building on the success of last year’s group show,“One Way Or Another” plays on the personal nature of a skateboard. Things like how you grip your board, how loose your trucks are and how you know that the size of your wheels down to the slightest of millimeters will make the hugest difference. In the end, the little wooden toy becomes one of the most personal things you can own.

Combining an open call at Society6 and a group of specially invited guests (curated by Andy Jenkins, Bob Kronbauer, Sandro Grison, Justin Cooper, Mike Giles and Annie Lam), the collaboration has selected over 40 artists/collectives from around the world to create original artwork on full-size blank maple decks.

What makes this project unique is that rather than people buying an already finished piece of artwork, their purchase will commission an artist/studio to make a board especially for them. So, when the board arrives, the design it features is a complete surprise, hand-crafted by your chosen artist. Boards can be purchased for $150 each in the Contributor online store with all the proceeds going directly back to getting skateboards to kids across Canada.

From Dre Urhahn and Haas&Hahn of Favela Painting:

“Our latest work in Rio de Janeiro. It’s called Praça Cantão and spans over 34 houses, covering 7000 square meters. We are slowly moving towards our goal: painting an entire favela and we’re getting closer and closer.

Over the last month, Praça Cantão, the square at the entrance of the community of Dona Marta was turned into a vibrant artwork of monumental scale. 34 houses on the giant hillside favela, located in the center of Rio de Janeiro, have been painted in a design of colorful rays, radiating into the city. This 7000 square meter artwork is part of the ‘Favela Painting’ project by Haas&Hahn (Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn), a project that aims to transform communities into landmarks and inspirational monuments as a part of Rio’s image, next to the statue of Christ the Redeemer and Sugar Loaf mountain.

Realization of the artwork is largely driven by the inhabitants of Dona Marta. 25 local youth have been trained as painters, providing for their own income and being responsible for turning their own neighborhood into a colorful monument. This grassroots method of working has proven to be successful in earlier projects, and gives the local community empowerment, pride and color. The local team is complemented by three painters from another favela, Vila Cruzeiro, where two of the previous projects by Haas & Hahn took place.

The project has thusfar been financed through grants and donations, but a co-operation with the dutch paint company AkzoNobel might open new doors. A meeting with their Managing Director Tex Gunning, showed they had a shared vision. “They wanted to give color to the community”, Dre recalls, “and we wanted to give art to the community. I see no reason why we cannot recreate this idea across 300 houses, 3000 houses, whether its in Rio, Johannesburg, Mumbai or anywhere in the world.”

About Favela Painting

In 2006, the Dutch artists Jeroen Koolhaas en Dre Urhahn conceived the idea of creating community-driven art interventions in Brazil. Named ‘Favela Painting’, their first efforts yielded two murals which were painted in Vila Cruzeiro, Rio’s most notorious slum. The first mural is entitled ‘boy with kite’ and has a surface of 150 m2. The second mural proved to be more challenging, with a surface of 2000 m2. Painted on a staircase in the heart of Vila Cruzeiro, it depicts a flowing river with Koi Carp fishes in the style of a Japanese tattoo, designed together with Rob Admiraal. The artworks for the murals are painted in collaboration with the local youth. Training and paying them as painters, learning them the tricks of the trade and empowering them by contributing to the development of the artwork. These projects received worldwide press coverage and have become points of pride both within the community and throughout Rio.

Using a grassroots-based bottom-up approach has proven to be a key factor in the success and final results. In order to generate support and approval for their activities, the artists always make the favela their home. By spending their time within the local community, they’re able to connect to their surroundings more easily, winning the hearts and minds of people. In their point of view, the inhabitants of the favela are a legitimate part of the city, but not seen that way from the outside. Using these beliefs, they work with the locals to paint the artworks, literally helping them changing the face of their community. Over the years, inhabitants of the favela’s have become aware of this method, and are actively requesting their favela to be turned into an artwork. As one woman from Vila Cruzeiro put it: ‘I’ve never been to a museum in my life, and now I’m living in one’.

Favela Painting is supported by the Firmeza Foundation in the creation of striking artworks in unexpected places. It collaborates with the local community to use art and color as a tool to inspire, create beauty, combat prejudice and attract attention. The Foundation facilitates the worldwide realisation of art interventions, and looks after their maintenance. It also develops relevant spin-off projects in the areas of education, socio-economic / social support and development of local people involved in the projects.

As of March 2010, Favela Painting has established a collaboration with AkzoNobel’s decorative paint division. Based on their mission of “adding colour to people’s lives”, AkzoNobel intends to participate in an inspiring and meaningful manner in local communities in the countries in which it operates. The objective of the cooperation between both parties is to realise worldwide, large scale “community driven” works of art. Works of art that make a colourful difference in the lives of individuals, groups, communities and cities. Works of art that have the potential of inspiring others elsewhere, that leave an indelible impression and can work as a catalyst in the processes of social renewal and change. Via Wooster Collective.

When people ask us… What kind of street art do you like the most? Our answer is “The kind that you see in the photos above” Simple. Fun. Interactive

Photos nicked from here. Via Wooster Collective

Dutch artist Levi van Veluw uses his own head as a canvas, as he did in his 2008 series “Landscapes”, pictured above. He doesn’t accept help, but decorates his head completely by himself. At the link, you can see more examples of his work and a video of the artist decorated as a country landscape with a functional model train circling his head.

Link via Jules Crittenden | Interview | Photo: Levi van Veluw

Dutch artist Levi van Veluw uses his own head as a canvas, as he did in his 2008 series “Landscapes”, pictured above. He doesn’t accept help, but decorates his head completely by himself. At the link, you can see more examples of his work and a video of the artist decorated as a country landscape with a functional model train circling his head.

Link via Jules Crittenden | Interview | Photo: Levi van Veluw

Via Neatorama

School’s always in with Artware Editions’ E For Effort Loose Leaf tees, bags and tanks, a playful riff on the inexpensive writing paper from youth.

A collaboration between Brooklyn artists Beka Goedde and Rachel Ostrow, each hand-screen-printed shirt encourages crafty additions to their clean lines.

he Loose Leaf tees and bag are available by emailing the gallery directly. Shirt prices range from $50 to$65 and just $20 for the tote bag.

Via Cool Hunting.

With its latest entries having just appeared online, the Famicase exhibition — curated by Tokyo game culture shop Meteor — once again proves why it’s a yearly art/game highlight. The premise? A collective of Japanese designers and artists imagine cartridges for their favorite Famicom (8-bit Nintendo) games that never were.

While this year’s crop has strayed away from anything as blatantly/lightly controversial aslast year’s Bush Jr cart, it takes no less a sardonic swipe at Western culture withBurp’n'Shoot! above. The game, the artists say, is a “fun lazy redneck experience” that involves “sitting on the backyard couch drinking Budweiser and shooting at empty cans, watermelons and a broken TV” while avoiding the errant basket- and baseballs of the neighbor kids (Note: “Budweiser and gun controls required”).

Below is a gallery of my other favorites from this year’s exhibition, the full series of which can be found at the official Famicase 2010 site.

OLULU UP CENTER‘s Neco Touch is a game “all the rage among German children” that awards points for befriending feral cats with careful touches on the nose (eliciting purrs is a 1000pt bonus).

Takuya Nomura’s YAMAB-ECHO utilizes the microphone on your console’s player-2 controller to simulate the experience of hearing “confessions of love” echoed by distant mountains.

FrogPort‘s The Secret Society, as you might expect, sees players on a mission to “uncover the whole truth behind the secret societies that manipulate the world”, complete with the disappearance of friends and family, and unidentifiable black shadows.

Kuske‘s Alpaca brings all the excitement of raising one of the earth’s most curious creatures straight to your living room.

Takashi Nakamura‘s The Machiavelli is an ends-justify-the-means “simulation of evil”, and the precursor to later literary games The Kierkegaard (a game about “the escape from despair”) and The Nietzsche (an Übermensch RPG).

Tibori‘s Tokyo Sightseeing is a game delivering all the banality of asking strangers to take your photo, losing your children and grouping onto buses, in an effort to see as many sights as you can (and filling your ‘sightseeing gauge’), as quickly as possible.

Machi & Fuka‘s StreaKing 2 is, obviously, the followup to the beloved ‘streaking sim’ original, now with.. human pyramids?

∞ bit computer, says its creator, is a game containing the first levels of every NES game ever. Clear stage one and you go on to stage one of the next game and then to the next… forever.

Shiyunsuke Hasegawa’s This World is Mine is a biblical Genesis simulation where players can head off all future “population growth, social inequality, violent crime and environmental destruction” by — as best I can translate — limiting creation to cute animals and beautiful blonde women.

Minoru Takahashi’s Family Genom lets players sequence their own genetic “passwords” to create any number of happy mutants.

Yeah, you can joke, but I’ll bet you that someone, somewhere, has got this actually working in an emulator.

And finally, a game that probably is actually half-commercially-viable: Taigo Furukawa’sMADRIS — an educational puzzle game “developed by Soviet scientists to improve the housing of Japan” — lets you fit falling living rooms, bathrooms, and bedrooms together to complete your dream floor-plan. An edit mode makes this also a useful CAD tool for serious residential housing construction companies.

The best accessory for the iPad i’ve seen yet, the iCade. I hate April Fools.

Via Josh Spear

My friend Scott Belsky spent nearly 5 years writing “Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming The Obstacles Between Vision & Reality” – a book all about execution and how some of the most productive people and teams in the creative world operate. The book was published two days before his 30th birthday, so his wife went all out and made him a cake. The cake was tasty, and the book is now a bestseller on Amazon. Via Josh Spear.

Definitely need this for the next black tie event I go to.

Via Josh Spear.