Did you lie about being the outdoor type? Never rolled a sleeping bag, let alone a mountain bike? While apologies must go to the Lemonheads for that blatant lyrics rip-off, it is the anthem for the indoors and what better way to spend your time there than by browsing the web? Sure, your pale, vitamin deprived limbs may barely be able to move the mouse, but at least your mind will be enriched.
Here are 10 arty websites to get your started.
1. The Cool Hunter: http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au
Australian-based The Cool Hunter, founded by Bill Tikos in 2004, is at the forefront of culture, design, creativity and basically all things cool. It is one of the most read culture and design sites in the world, and has approximately 2.1 million monthly site visits. Winner of the 2007 & 2008 Webblog Awards for Best Culture Blog, the Cool Hunter features everything from travel destinations to art, ads to design. In our eyes; however, the best section is ‘Treelife’, where one can wile away the hours pretending they live in one of the many amazing tree houses shown there.
2. Fact Mag: http://www.factmag.com/
If you like music, you’ll already know about Fact Mag a UK and US based online music magazine that is known for its exclusive mix series, where artists such as Four Tet, The Horrors and the xx are invited to contribute an exclusive mix to download. If you are after extensive music coverage that you won’t necessarily get in J-dominated Australia, this is the place to go. Fact Mag also now has its own online TV channel, FACT TV. This is a great place for discovering new music this summer and picking up your next earworm.
3. Brain pickings http://www.brainpickings.org/
For the intellectual among us, Brain Pickings is a site that offers philosophical ponderings on the ins and outs of daily life. You will find a lot of great discussions and ideas here, not all of them to do with art (although they do have a fantastic art section), but this website is worth listing here regardless. Founder Maria Popova describes the site best in saying, ‘Brain Pickings is a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness, culling and curating cross-disciplinary curiosity-quenchers, and separating the signal from the noise to bring you things you didn’t know you were interested in until you are.’
It also has great book recommendations, and our favourite – the literary jukebox, which pairs a different song with a literary quote.
4. Meathaus http://meathaus.com/
There is one staff member at ArtsHub who, if he hears the phrase ‘comics aren’t for kids anymore’ will twitch and shudder with rage, because that is stating the obvious and website Meathaus is testament to that. The site describes itself as, ‘A loosely defined collective of friends and associates contributing to irregular comics and art anthologies and an art-blog-website with a special emphasis on drawing, sketchbooks and comics.’ And that it is. Those with a penchant for all things comic art will get a real kick out of this one and seeing as comic book fan and outdoor type are a twain that never shall meet, this is the perfect inside activity for those who prefer their action drawn. The Daily Drawing section is a particular favourite.
5. The Strange Attractor http://thestrangeattractor.net/
The Strange Attractor is a Chicago based website that accepts submissions of interesting art from across the globe. The main crux of the site is essentially blog style posts of images or videos of interesting art. Flick through the archives and you’ll come across some truly interesting art that you probably never would have found before. The site also has a ‘creative couples’ section, which although it hasn’t been updated in a while still makes for good reading. Other sections, ‘The Place I Live’, ‘Bookshelf’, collaborative series ‘Pattern and Shape’ and the ‘TSA Flickr pool’ are excellent resources and hotbeds of creativity.
6. Beautiful/Decay: http://beautifuldecay.com/
Beautiful/Decay was born out of the boredom of its creator Amir H. Fallah, who was trapped in the ‘burbs in Nothern Virginia and ‘bored to tears by the uniform lifestyle that was the norm’, as it explains on the website. In 1996 Amir started a DIY photocopied ‘zine that soon, with technology, grew to become an internationally recognised design-driven lifestyle brand. It has a blog that is worth visiting on a regular basis, and those looking to shade themselves from the sun this summer can spend hours flicking through old pages, which feature things like Kitchen Accessories made out of body parts, flesh covered furniture, turning earthquakes into art, photos of the Yakuza crime family and much more. In fact, we have to cut this short now because we’ll never get to the rest of the sites.
7. Ventilate: http://www.ventilate.ca
Like a lot of the suggestions here, Ventilate focuses on contemporary art but this blog sways even more drastically towards design with a lot of it specifically of interest to creatives working in the advertising industry. It features a lot of digital and much of their content is video based. You’ll find everything here from show reels from Argentinian studios, to Spanish directors, to Berlin animations. The site was launched in 2011 and is directed by Michael and Yuko Brown and overseen by contributing editors.
8. The Selby: http://theselby.com/
Todd Selby’s project, The Selby, started in June 2008 where Todd – a photographer, journalist and illustrator – posted photo shoots he had done of his friends in their homes. People liked what they saw and within months the site had up to 100,000 unique visitors daily and high level companies from around the world wanted in. Now, Selby features artists and creative types from around the world (including Melbourne’s Pellegrini’s) and if you decide to head there you are guaranteed to become lost in the archives, which are a visual feast. His portraits also include handwritten notes, scrawls even, with the people featured. It’s a lovely touch. Some personal favourites include Brazilian fashion designer Cris Rosenbaum, Peter Curnow and Gavin Brown, and video Rockaway Taco.
9. Day Trotter: http://www.daytrotter.com/
The Day Trotter encapsulates the grassroots creativity that the internet does so well. Featuring exclusive, alternate versions of old favourites and unreleased originals by some of your favourite artists, Day Trotter tracks are recorded with (and this part is for music buffs) minimal mic’ing, giving the tracks an authentic feel. This is a place to discover new music that you can’t find anywhere else and there are some pretty illustrations to accompany them by johnnie cluney to boot.
10. Google Art Project http://www.googleartproject.com/
Okay, so it’s the giant of online art collections, but it would be remiss of us not to mention it despite the fact that most of our readers are already aware of it. Browse the online collections from galleries around the world in high definition if you should so choose. You have the option of saving your favourite galleries and coming back for more. For the more classical tastes than the previously mentioned, Google Art Project is a nice way to fulfil that new year’s resolution by brushing up on your art history.
