Dear AT&T,

Please take the money you shower upon the hacks at your advertising agency ( BBDO Worldwide ) and instead install more cell phone towers or hire more nerds or do whatever it’ll take to improve your stinkpie of a network. I can’t make calls from my studio in Redhook, Brooklyn so that’d be a good place to start.

love,
Tonky

Background:

2005-
Artist duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude finally realized “The Gates,” a massive ephemeral art installation covering NYC’s Central Park with thousands of yards of flowing orange fabric suspended from orange plastic gates.

The concept was 20 years in the making and was funded entirely through the sale of concept sketches/collages rendered by the artist.  In the words of the artist, “an expression of joy and wonder.” No corporate funds, no government sponsorship, just pure aesthetics ( open to argument of course )

2010-
AT&T steals the work to sell its snake oil to the masses as part of its sponsorship of the World Cup soccer tournament. Despite a disclaimer stating, “The Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have no direct or indirect affiliation or involvement with AT&T” the advertisement is a straight forward pillaging of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s intellectual property.

Tonight Tonight,

Some of my work is in a group show called “Made in Redhook.”
The opening is tonight Sat, May 22 |  7-10PM

Lucky Gallery is located in Red Hook
176 Richards Street, Brooklyn, NY. 11231
GOOGLE MAP

In fact, all day is the Redhook area studio tour. So why not make it a day-long adventure?

http://www.brooklynstudiotours.com/

Come on by for free wine and mind blowing art.

-Tonky

“Immediate Communication of wisdom from mind to mind.”

Such joy.

-Tonky

DRILL BABY DRILL!!!

Ok another sublime set of photos. I PROMISE the next post will be warm and fuzzy. Perhaps puppy related.

Don’t deny this great followup to the Icelandic volcano. These images posted at AMERICAblog, taken by a DOE (http://www.energy.gov/) contractor  depict the  burning and collapse of the BP owned and operated Deepwater Horizon, the ginormous oil platform that is now sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Beyond Petroleum my ass.

This began unfolding just over a week ago and now an underwater oil gusher threatens the gulf coast with all kinds of black greasy misery.

I really had no idea how big these offshore oil platforms were. Since they drill in water over a mile deep they aren’t actually attached to the bottom with a tower of steel like you’d imagine, rather they FLOAT and are anchored with epic lengths of cable.

Note the tornado created in the weather systems caused by the fire. Reminds me of those alien ships falling at the end of independence day. So big.

All that sweet precious buried sunlight gone to waste.

-Tonky

(link thanks to BoingBoing.net)

<gulp>

I picked these night photographs by Marco Fulle from his shots of the Icelandic volcano shutting down Europe’s economy called Eyjafjallajökull. (pronounced: “AY-yah-fyah-lah-YOH-kuul”)

Ljósahönnuður means lighting.

Fulle masterfully shows us the violent electric storms inside and around the plume of ash belching forth from Eyjafjallajökull.

For me, these evoke notions of what the crucible that is our rocky crag earth must have looked like for the first 100 Billion years or so. And where it will return in another 100 Billion.

Simply sublime.

-Tonky

Have a gander at some pics from a set for a New York Lotto commercial for which I performed some design work.

Shown above is the spot’s NYC based production designer Julian Laverdiere towering in front of the Met Life Building and Grand Central Station.

I aided Julian in the creation of various generic and landmark buildings. My role was to run around to photograph various NYC sites and to grind away in Photoshop to create large-scale printable facades that would be assembled and detailed by Brooklyn Model Works.

The experience was so compelling that I bought a Mega Million ticket and …. LOST

Enjoy.

-Tonky

CREDITS:

Director- NE-O
Production Designer: Julian Laverdiere
Production Co.- SKUNK
Agency- DDB

-Tonky

MainStreetBrigade.org has teamed up with Funny or Die to put a muzzle on the snouts of corrupt Wall Street Bankers with the founding of the CFPA.

I snort laughed when George Bush 1.0  mistakenly calls President Obama Borat… then Barbar.

CAST:

Fred Armisen: Barack H. Obama
Will Ferrell: George Bush II
Darrell Hammond:  William Jefferson Clinton
Dana Carvey:  George Bush I
Jim Carrey:  Ronald Reagan
Chevy Chase:  Gerald Ford
Dan Aykroyd:  Jimmy Carter

Enjoy:

Loving the work and new portfolio site by Brooklyn based artist, designer, illustrator and all-around-dude Mark McCormick.

Mark is Senior Designer at CRUNCH Gyms and so you’ve likely seen his work across every aspect of that brand’s collateral. Cool icons for web, murals, print, you name it.

The melted snowman on treadmill above makes me yearn for Spring (dare I say Summer?)

Take a minute to look through the great concert posters, personal projects, and other goodies at his website: http://markmccormickdesigns.roxer.com

Also he’s participating in “Thing a Day” at his other website. Good for a daily intertube fix:

http://nakedfowl.posterous.com/

-Tonky

Hello all,

We will be exhibiting our wall stickers, limited editions, and custom design services next week at the NYIGF (New York International Gift Fair).

The fair will serve as a launch platform for a number of never-seen-before new products and designs and hope you will consider stopping by to have a look

Tonky Designs can be found at booth #3901 in the “Accent on Design” section.

If you plan on attending, we would love to meet you so please RSVP by Jan 30 to receive free goodies ($35 Value) as thanks for your support and attention.

Please email us: info [at] TonkyDesigns.com with RSVP in the subject line.

See you there,
-Tonky

Welcome,

There is a delicious show in the gallery at the airport (Truax Field) in Madison, WI that features photographs and rapid prototypes (3D objects “printed” layer by layer) by scientists from UW-Madison’s various research departments in collaboration with Tandem Press.

The exhibition text surveys the history of medical illustration and explains how “as early as 13,000BC, drawings of body parts aided Egyptians during the mummification process.”

The fancy colored 3d objects shown above and in the gallery below (click image to see larger) are upscale versions of such tiny molecules as DNA and RNA and also molecular motors that will some day propel themselves through our body to perform repairs and deliver drugs  like chemo to affected regions.

The grey electron microscope image of a tree-looking tendril is a “trichome” on a mustard plant leaf. These structures are what make a leaf feel “fuzzy”

The crystalline image shows nanorods – a material being developed for use in solar cells.

This show is stimulating beyond the aesthetic joys these images provide because we are reminded that we live in the future. These scientist are inventing tiny robots that will repair fatal aneurysms and new materials that will allow us to harvest sunlight for energy and thus avoid wars cause by lust for the buried sunlight that is crude oil.

-Tonky