I love paintings on wood… these pieces from Anthony Lister’s solo exhibition FIERCE are lovely! From the press release: “Opening Friday, January 14, THIS los angeles and Monster Children magazine host Fierce, a solo exhibition featuring original works by Australian graffiti and street artist Anthony Lister. Fierce debuted this past December during Art Basel at a pop-up gallery space in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District. The exhibition will make a special one-night appearance in Los Angeles at THIS los angeles in Highland Park, and works on view include 11 wood panels, five large canvases and more than two-dozen masks.” The opening reception takes place on January 14, 7-10 p.m. at THIS los angeles, 5906 N. Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042.

Remember his window painting at the Standard NY Store? See a few more of his pieces on the next page… wonder woman cracks me up…

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The process and creative imagery that is produced along the path to great products are often quite a work of art… It’s so inspiring to see Mercedes-Benz embracing the process by formalizing sculptures in their process of exploration and discovery. There’s something almost magical when seeing the design process itself shared through these sculptural experiments, especially when they share the sketches and organic inspiration that leads them there. Works of art being displayed along side concept cars and current cars fill you with curiosity and open ended inspiration of what the future may hold. Mercedes Aesthetics No. 2 just debuted at Detroit Auto Show.

I love this quote from Mercedes Head of Design, Gorden Wagener, “Inspiration is the pre-condition for the calm, coherent yet passionately emotional design of our cars. In the interior sculpture Aesthetics No. 2 we have allowed creative fantasy to develop freely without constraints.” Regarding sculpture details, “On a scale of 1.5 to 1 the sculpture measures 18.3 x 6 x 8.5 feet. The finely wrought frame painted in alubeam Liquid Metal is light and strong; the white seating landscapes look like ivory.” Take a look at the inspiration behind and the design process that went into it… as well as the very cool final sculpture!

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2011 has gotten off to a fine start on NOTCOT.org. The first roundup of the year is full of surprises including robotic chickens, xrays of lightning and LED embedded rugs. To find out more about these posts and more, click on the individual images.

Happy last monday of the DECADE! Phew What a 2010 we’ve had! So many adventures, so much daily inspiration. Hard to believe it’s been over 5 years of ideas + aesthetics + amusements… here’s a look back at the top 100 (magically algorithmically calculated) posts of 2010 from NOTCOT.org! We’ve come a long way ~ with nearly 40,000 posts on the front page, the world just keeps on serving up more exciting inspiration! So mouse around the pics, and click to find out more! I’ve just spent a bit of time digging around the archives getting lost exploring it all!

Cheers + hugs to you all for supporting NOTCOT through the years! Here’s to an awesome 2010 ~ and an even BETTER 2011!

Wilde Dieren/Wild Animals By Rop van Mierlo. Beautiful. Odd. Book of wild animals! That sensation of watching water colors soaking into a page… just getting absorbed so naturally… somehow, Rop has embodied that in this book of strange wild animal paintings… the video really pulls it all together so mesmerizingly tonight, i keep watching it over. See it and a peek inside on the next page!

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Too beautiful not to share ~ Daniel Bjugård Photoetched Christmas Card made out of 0.2 mm hardened steel made in collaboration with Mikroponent AB… see the next page for how it looks assembled!

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TIME/LIFE: Science/Library - A Revolution in a Quiet Room… WOW. Mixing Dan Funderburgh’s signature detailed style with the scientific retro slant of TIME/LIFE… all in gorgeous Vallery in Barcelona. WIsh i could be there! And wishing i could get that microscope wallpaper you see above! Also the jellyfish and other bio organism vinyl stickers on the walls look stunning as well! See more pictures i found over at Funderburgh’s flickr feed after pouring over the Fox Is Black’s post… as well as some from the Vallery, which even has prints for sale!

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“It’s a 60’s post modern gingerbread house. Although I hesitate to call it a house… It’s more of a Palazzo.” And then i can’t help giggling. And then once i stop… can’t help but note what an awesome gingerbread palazzo that is! The whole Acura Season for Reason ad campaign by RP& is pretty cute ~ though there’s a tiny part of me that wants the ridiculousness they mock in the ads more than reason! See the chestnut roaster and the awesome xmas tree/live reindeer/etc, as well as the Gingerbread Palazzo ad on the next page!

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SO MUCH INSPIRATION! It’s been a really fun week over at NOTCOT.org, so just in case you missed any of our favorites, click the pics above to find out more! Also, don’t forget, we’re a curated user submission system, so feel free to click the Submit New Link button to send things on to our editors if you find something awesome!

Save the date! Jan 15th. Gallery 1988 : Venice (Grand Opening!) presents MULTIPLAYER: Limited Edition Posters Inspired By Video Games! And curated by the super awesome OMG Posters. As they say - “Opening January 15th at their new Venice gallery, Multiplayer will feature over 30 limited edition prints based on classic video games. You can see most of the artists on the list below, but there will also be a surprise or two.” Can’t wait!

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So many great inspiring ads and videos this week! The Conan O’Brien Amex Ads ares are just incredible. From a design and travel perspective, they are such a nice look at a culture and an artisanal skill. First there was “Curtain” ad shot in India, where in about a minute you get to see exactly how cloth is made and dyed… in the follow up, we’re brought to Italy, and Conan blows the glass to make the Applause sign! The obsessive attention to detail in these ads, and sharing the process… the pain of imperfection followed by the perseverance to perfect it… such a great thing to aspire to! Take a look at both adverts as well as the great Making Of videos on the next page!

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Spotted this stunner of a new ad from Audi at the always awesome Stash ~ “Imagination Meets Engineering” advert for the new Audi A7 Sportback. It’s like an xray kaleidoscope of nature meets engineering madness that is absolutely mesmerizingly set to Basement Jaxx’s ‘Dracula’. I just watched it a few times over! See the video on the next page, as well as screenshots of some of my favorite moments.

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Facebook data infrastructure engineering team intern, Paul Butler, has made a beautiful infographic mapping friendships through plotting their coordinates and connections… and what lit up looks a lot like the Earth At Night!

Butler’s goal? “One that piqued my curiosity was the locality of friendship. I was interested in seeing how geography and political borders affected where people lived relative to their friends. I wanted a visualization that would show which cities had a lot of friendships between them.” And how did he do it? “I began by taking a sample of about ten million pairs of friends from Apache Hive, our data warehouse. I combined that data with each user’s current city and summed the number of friends between each pair of cities. Then I merged the data with the longitude and latitude of each city.”

See close ups, as well as comparisons between his infographic and the Earth at Night on the next page…

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Another gorgeous week has passed and this week’s NOTCOT.org roundup is full of stunning images of lustworthy products, breathtaking scenes and overlooked minutia. To find out more about each post, click on its individual image.

Mmmmm, you know i adore a good unexpected juxtaposition… like these fun paintings by Kelly Reemsten! Headless/footless women in lovely party frocks holding simple tools… like bolt cutters, axes, gardening shears, chainsaws, crowbars… and wearing dish gloves and oven mits… simple every day things! They also have great names like ‘The load I Carry’, ‘Heavy Handed’, ‘Axe’, ‘B & E’, ‘Prowler’, ‘Leverage’, ‘Character Assassination’, etc. Awesome, right? And these are all large oil paintings ranging from 20’x20’ to 44’x44’. How fun would it be to have the perfect one hanging conspicuously in that perfect entry way… Is it any surprise that she started in Fashion Design and Painting? See more on Kelly Reemsten, and see some of my absolute favorites on the next page!

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