This Angels & Demons display is in front of the Sony Building on Madison Ave. in NY, featuring animated ambigrams! (Start spreadin’ the news… )
I’m interviewed at www.ambigram.com
Photo © Frances Schwabenland 2008. Used with permission.
See my Angels & Demons ambigrams at the film’s promotional site (much more than you will, or did, in the film).
Following a short theatrical run in England, Monkeyshine was recently released on DVD, exclusively on Amazon.com. A year and a half ago, I created an ambigram that plays, shall we say, a pivotal role in this film. The BBC has acclaimed Monkeyshine highly as “a little gem”, “grounded and believable”, and “expertly shot.”
I designed my first quarter-turn ambigram for J S Mayank’s 8-minute film/music video, “Ethereal Pondering of a Sightless Gaze,” which also features my “Carpe Diem” ambigram, in beautiful company. The film is playing at the Newport Beach Film Festival, Saturday, April 25. [You’ll find it under LMU shorts] and the London Independent film Festival, April 17–27. [You’ll find it under official selection 2009, international shorts]
Three of my logo-inspired paintings will appear in the Cade Center for Fine Arts Gallery at Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland. The exhibition is entitled Transaction Analysis and will run from March 11 to April 14. (The college and gallery will be closed March 23 to 29.) On Wednesday, March 11, there will be a gallery talk at 12 noon, and a reception from 6 to 9 pm.
Nikita Prokhorov has set up an “Ambigram Sketchbook Exchange: Digital Edition” on his “Ambiblog,” inviting several ambigram artists to submit the pre-computer stages of their work on an original ambigram. I developed a LOUIS ARMSTRONG chain ambigram for the blog.
My Visit to the Set of Angels & Demons, Sept. 22-26 In May, the people at Sony asked me to create some new ambigrams for the Angels & Demons movie that was being filmed this summer. I’d love to show them here, but they’re under wraps until the movie opens in May of ’09. But I can show you the ambigram they requested to identify the table where Tom Hanks relaxes between takes, an A&D official Sony Pictures bike, and a couple of other snaps.
As the ambigram reads the same from both directions (and is plural), I presume he shares the table with other actors.
In the process of working on these projects, I was in touch with
the props master on the film. Trish invited me to visit the set, which I did for the week of Sept. 22-26. She could not have been a more wonderful host. Ron Howard was kind enough to take a few minutes out of his long and busy day to chat with me at some length about his work and mine and our mutual friend, Dan Brown. And without exception, every one of the film’s support crew that I talked with was friendly and helpful.
I chatted briefly with Tom Hanks and gave him a print of this image that I had designed for him. It’s not an ambigram, but a rather challenging crypto-symbolic icon that might take a real symbologist to unravel. Let me know if you can unscramble it.
Speaking of real symboligists, here’s a photo of Maggie Macnab and me in a… um… parking lot in Los Angeles. Maggie’s the author of a really excellent book on the symbolism of geometric shapes and numbers as expressed through logo design. I highly recommend Decoding Design. A resident of New Mexico, Maggie joined me for a couple of days in LA to watch the A&D filming, and to evaluate the mojitos and margaritas of southern California. (Gladstone’s on the Pacific Coast Highway was the clear winner).
Oh yeah, and here’s the bike.
Along with my Inkblot partner, Eric Zillmer, I‘ll be presenting at the XIX International Congress of Rorschach and Projective Methods in Leuven, Belgium. The Congress is held at the KatholiekeUniversiteit Leuven from July 22 – 25. Our presentation, “Open To Interpretation” will be made on Thurs, July 24, 1:30 to 2:30 pm.
Jeffrey Price (left, scholar and collector of M.C. Escher’s prints) recently presented Bruno Ernst — who was a friend of Escher’s and has written extensively about his work — with a very special birthday present. Jeffrey commissioned me to create an ambigram for the occasion. He then framed the print to become the top of a beautiful custom-made box for Mr. Ernst.
Bruno Ernst (right in photograph) is the author of The Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher, and several other books about optical illusions, mathematics, impossible figures, and science.
Jeffrey Price is the proprietor of Artists Market where his great collection of Escher’s work is on display.
