50/50 Art Show this Friday at DU!

50 artists. 50 works. all under $50. Check out the video below!

TED x CLE

This is a great article about TEDxCLE which is put on by  two really good friends of the DU.  Eric and Hallie’s event, TED x CLE has grown to become a force to be reckoned with.  And if you feel like getting a little background info on this dynamic duo, below is a link to a video of Eric proposing to Hallie and becoming shall we say, emotional…  awwwhhhhh….  We love you guys!

Here is that romantic video…  It gets really good at around minute 10.  enjoy!

Dredgers Union on Channel 3

Danielle and some other members of Team DU showed off some new Spring 12 product on Channel 3′s Good Company yesterday.
Check it out!

speaking of walking in a park: NYC’s THE HIGH LINE

This is the High Line during it’s years of use.  (To mostly passengers between 1934 – 1960′s).  And Below are some images of what the High Line turned into after it’s last use (carrying a few frozen chickens in 1980).  Not to say it was not beautiful in it’s own romantic sort of way, but certainly not safe or functional.  (these images by Joel Sternfeld by way of The High Line.org website.)

In 1999 two guys who lived in the neighborhood of the High Line, started Friends of the High Line and their efforts to save the tracks and have them re-purposed as a pedestrian park were underway.  It didn’t happen over night but in 2006 the project was underway, led by world class firm JAMES CORNER FIELD OPERATIONS. 

Check out this video that much better explains this amazing project below:

ATTN: CLEVELANDERS:  Take note as FIELD OPERATIONS is the same firm that was commissioned to re-imagine our own PUBLIC SQUARE!  We too can have a world class park! Check out the PROJECTS section of their website then click on Cleveland’s Public Square.  Now look at the images below of the High Line today and take note of the billions of dollars worth of development that has been spurred on around this park as a direct result of this project.   We too could see the same kind of positive impacts, from a functional, beautiful, world class make over of our city’s center.

Below are images taken from the High Line.org’s website:

Below is a pic of the DU buying assistant, Jen Allanson and the RS buying assistant, Jennie Doran while on a recent trip to NYC and (of course) the High Line.

Anyhow, I just love the High Line and want so badly to be able to walk to Public Square on my lunch break and have the same sort of experience.  And I can’t help but think of all the amazing potential projects, businesses, buildings etc that would pop up around it.

xoxoxo

danielle

NYC part 2: play

Each time I come to NYC I get a little bit better at knowing my way around.  Yet each time, I think to myself, ‘this is the best brain exercise!” because it is not quite instinctive and I have to always take a beat and think about where I am and where I am headed.  Wes and I were meeting up after work one day and he was walking to meet me in Chelsea and we realized we were walking towards each other on the same street just a few blocks away and he said to me “I’ll be on the North side of the street” and I was like…”um, without Lake Erie I don’t know where North is!”.

I am there about 6-8 times a year between work and seeing my bff who resides there.  But it was THIS trip that I felt that things really started to ‘click’ for my sense of direction.  I have to admit, the GREATEST GRID exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, which my mom and I visited over this past weekend, really helped my understanding of how to navigate this city.

Turns out that while downtown seems to have been exempted to some degree from the grid plan of 1811, Manhattan is made up (mostly) of a series of North South Avenues (1-12) and East West Streets (1-155) (with a few distinctive and notable streets that are the exception to this -Madison, Lexington, Broadway also i suppose the addition of the alphabet streets of the lower east side).

Anyhow, this is notable because it makes it very easy to understand where you are in relation to where you are going and you can start to gauge the distance, which will determine if foot, train or cab would be the best form of transportation.  For awhile now, my understanding of the geographic relationship between neighborhoods has significantly improved my confidence in getting around, but I should have started with learning what the grid was here.  In fact, it is similar to Cleveland’s own grid in a few ways as we have numbered roadways running North South (4th st., 6th st., 9th st., etc) and east west streets cutting across them (st.Clair, Superior, Euclid, Prospect etc.).

I’m still going to have to calibrate my brain upon my next arrival to the big apple, but each time, it gets a whole lot easier, and a lot more fun subsequently.

Above is an image of the survey done of each of the avenues.  The exhibit is really cool because it shows how until the elevation of each road had been leveled out ( a HUGE issue and undertaking ). On one side of the street there would be rocky ledges right up to the street, which the city paid to level, and on the other side huge craters.  The city would pay for the streets to be brought to the correct elevation but required land owners to either excavate or fill in their own lands to get to the proper level.  It was really fascinating.

Below is a video I found on youtube of the exhibit.  Pretty cool.  Visit the museum’s website here.

xoxoxo

danielle

New Dredgers Union Video!

We are so stoked on this new video that Uppercut Motion and Sound just made for us!!!

Dredgers Union “On the Map” Video

Below is the Dredgers Union segment from the “On the Map” video series created by Go Media.  They dropped by the DU a few months back to chat with Sean and Danielle.

“On the Map is a video series featuring the people and places that make Cleveland a creative, culturally rich, and inspiring place to live and work.”

Check it out!

closet visit

I only just “stumbled upon” (double entendre !) the amazing CLOSET VISIT, but I am already addicted!  The Artist/Photographer, Jeana Sohn, visits the closets of some notoriously stylish women, then essentially seems to play dress up photo shoot with them!  I think it would be such a fun exercise to take one’s own wardrobe out of their closet, put it onto a rolling rack in a different setting and put inspiring outfits together like you were styling a shoot and not just getting dressed for work in the morning.  Sometimes, staring at the same assortment in the same dark closet day after day can be so uninspiring, but seeing these women’s closet’s makes me wonder what kind of outfits I could pull together with my own wardrobe.  Perhaps it’s my old days of being a stylist that make this particularly alluring an exercise to me, but I cannot help but imagine it.

Well Jeana has recently taken it to the next level by collaborating with another artist, Claire Cottrell.  Together, they have turned these ‘dress up photo sessions’ into dreamy short films.

Check out their first collab:  Closet Visit No. 1 :

Mathilde, their latest video, which I have included below, is this sort of Lolita meets Alice and Wonderland meets Virgin Suicides dreamy little video.

Enjoy!

xoxoxo danielle

originally spied the Closet visit series on Honestly WTF blog.

Dredgers Union x Go Media

We’re stoked to be a part of an upcoming Go Media project!

Dredgers Union Roar Along the Shore video!

You really had to be there to get the full awesomeness of this party… but this video comes close enough!

It might be a little dark, so don’t be afraid to watch it “full screen”.