nicholas latkovic

The Diamonds. “The Stroll”. Mercury Records, 1958.

“Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn’t seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.”

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh, author, aviator and spouse of fellow aviator Charles Lindbergh

Note: The author is visiting a select team of designers working in the crafts department at Martha Stewart Living headquarters in New York City.

And yet i still feel a great sense of of commonality with these women. I ask them if they think the world divides into people who don’t make stuff and people who do. They answer diplomatically, like social workers, saying how everyone has their own special creativity.

They think that I’m trying to catch them out in some snobbery, to claim membership in in some exclusive group. But I’m talking about something as value neutral as double-jointedness. The inability to look at something without wanting to somehow make it into something else, a compulsion completely separate from aesthetics or talent.

I try a different tactic. I ask if they’ve ever passed by the garbage of Duggal Photo, a processing lab in the Flatiron district. The trash at Duggal almost always has something good: pristine black cardboard, which would cost a lot to buy in a store, or some very nice acetate or clean foam core. Suddenly they know exactly what I’m talking about. Just thinking about it makes their eyes light up like the Cratchett children on Christmas morning.

Actually, there is a much clearer marker by which to divide the population: between the people who make things, and the people who receive the things we make. Staying up late exploring one’s obsession of the moment is one thing, foisting the product of those obsessions upon friends and loved ones is something else entirely.

Giving someone an art project might appear very generous on the surface, but in another sense it’s an act of bullying. More than a store-bought gift, it’s an attempt to curate someone else’s taste. You’re also consigning them to the task of having to take care of your work. It’s a bit like leaving a baby on their doorstep. After the initial amazement at its profound beauty, it simply becomes a liability. I have made and given away easily twenty years’ worth of things. Some of the recipients have moved almost that many times. Others have died, gotten divorced, or been widowed. I have made things out of food — polyurethaned food, but food nonetheless.

“I was doing a lot of mushroom prints, and everyone got one for their birthday that year,” muses one of the women. “Actually, you know, come to think of it, I haven’t seen a lot of those up. I wonder what happened to them.”

Rakoff, David. Don’t Get Too Comfortable: The Indignities of Coach Class, The Torments of Low Thread Count, The Never-Ending Quest for Artisanal Olive Oil, and Other First World Problems. New York: Broadway Books, 2005.

Featured music:

Grieg, Edvard. “In The Hall of the Mountain King”. Peer Gynt, Suite No. 1, Op. 46. 1876.

“Sophia’s Choice”. By Tracy Gamble, Richard Vaczy. The Golden Girls. NBC, Los Angeles. 15 Apr. 1989.

A very young Gillian Taylforth “interviews” other young people about their misadventures with fireworks.

A vintage “What would you do?” film observes the coffee break ritual in the workplace environment and attempts to find a solution for this “American institution” annually costing employers thousands of dollars.

Coffee Break. Dir. and wri. Gene Carr. The Calvin Company, 1958.

“We spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to create impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about.”

- Tim Jackson, Professor, Sustainable Development at University of Surrey

scratch·paper \ˈskrach ˈpā-pər\
Function: noun
Date: 1899

: paper that may be used for casual writing

- Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Writing Better Social Letters. Coronet Instructional Films, 1950.

How far would you go for a friend?

Two university room mates take their friendship to new levels of commitment when pregnant Gabriela persuades best friend Otilia to take the lead in arranging an illegal abortion for her in 1987 Romania, before the fall of Communism. Over the course of 24 hours, the young girls meet unexpected obstacles requiring split-second decisions to ensure the plan is executed within a specific amount of time, less they be caught. Directed by Cristian Mungiu.

It’s not a pink slip. It’s a blank page.

More than 130,000 advertising professionals have lost their jobs in this Great Recession. Lemonade is about what happens when people who were once paid to be creative in advertising are forced to be creative with their own lives. Directed by Marc Colucci.

Featured music:

Caspian. “Further Up”. You Are the Conductor. Dopamine Records, 2005.

Caspian. “Our Breaths in Winter”. The Four Trees. Dopamine Records, 2007.