No quaint paint for this water tower

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What is art? During my art student days in the swingin seventies, the idea that art is dynamically defined by perception was the new standard. Now it’s just the standard.

Awesome, because it opened the door to art today as expessed by a sweater for a water tower.  As reported last month in the New York Daily News story, Queens Artist Covers SoHo Water Tower with Yarn Sweater,

Some artists use paint, others clay. For Robyn Love, it’s all about the yarn. Lots of it.

The crochet fanatic unveiled her latest large scale art piece made of her favorite material Saturday atop a 15-story SoHo building. The Queens mother of two, using 60 balls of yellow and black yarn transformed a drab wooden water tower into a huge yellow pencil – point included.

“I wanted to do something that was iconic of New York,” Love said.

Love was hired by the D&AD organization, which gives out pencil-shaped awards, to create a supersized version. “The pencil is the highest award for design and art students,” said Maria Lishman, the organization’s spokeswoman.

Love was given three weeks to crochet what is essentially a massive yellow sweater to envelope the brown water tower atop 395 Broadway.

“I could never do this all by myself in three weeks,” Love said, so she called in backup – six crochet masters with decades of experience.

Team Love worked 10 hours a day and they pulled it off.

Love said she wants to take a break before crocheting anything else. “I’m going to see where the wind takes me before I do another huge project,” she said.

While it’s not my perceived idea of “art,” I would guess that the world is at least a more fanciful, unexpected place because of it. Hmmmm. Maybe it is art, after all.

Heavy water or light alcohol?

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With so many marketing short-cut brand extensions out there, extensions between bottled water and other estabished beverage brands is a natural, but Pabst Blue Ribbon water is a concept I can’t quite fathom. Flickr user oldtasty picked this one up in Jingdezhen, China and reports it’s “definitely better tasting than the beer from which the brand name was appropriated.”  

Then, there’s Smirnoff Source. I’ll bet the concept looked white-hot on all the MBA’s powerpoints, but premium bottled water with alcohol never quite caught fire in the U.S. In the summer of 2007, celebs (like the oft intoxicated Paula Abdul) were seen swigging Smirnoff Source, a premium malt beverage with 3.5 percent alcohol.  It was marketed as an ultra-premium alternative to light beer, which likely looked good on paper, but ultimately idiotic on TMZ.

Why bother when we already have alcoholic water–it’s called Vodka. Oddly enough, the satire about the product actually preceded the product itself. As seen two years ago at http://www.bestweekever.tv/2007/01/09/ad-wizards-official-vodka-of-the-lohanvolution/