after prufrock

One of Phil Hansen’s strongest pieces, a tricycle painted portrait of cyclist Lance Armstrong. Hansen averaged “about one color a day and ended up riding [the] tricycle for over 6 hours daily”. Read more about his dedicated process here. The journey was to end for this dizzying stenciled escapade when Hansen got out the cutters and proceeded to sell the individual pieces of the work alongside his other art posters. A portion of the proceeds was to be donated to Armstrong’s Livestrong Foundation, an organisation which promotes research as well as unity and support for cancer sufferers and survivors (also the original foundation to utilize gel bands as a means of global promotion of a cause).

Armstrong’s own survival story had me quite emotional when he spoke at the Flight Centre Global Gathering in Hawaii last week. And between the illness and the seven Tour de France wins, Armstrong had to endure a slew of rigorous and highly publicised drug tests, despite demonstrating a clean result each time his integrity was taken to task. Arguably, what sets Armstrong so bitingly above his peers has nothing to do with substance abuse, but has rather been proven to be irrefutably linked to his unique physical attributes. A VO₂ max level of 83.8 mL/kg/min -much higher than the average person (40-50), as well as a greatly enlarged heart (30% larger than the average man), and unusually low lactate levels, all seem to come together to produce a seamless cycling machine.

There was one thing in particular Armstrong said in his keynote presentation that struck a cord with me, as I found it to be truly applicable to any low one may experience in life: “it is when you’re at the bottom that you’re actually in best possible place, when the expectations of you are so low but the prize is so great.”

This is when we can really turn things around, and when our critics don’t even see us coming.

for more thompson; bio/portfolio

(*MACRO/MICRO links updated)

In lieu of a Penguin post, (admittedly absurdly delayed), here is a touch of typographic bliss for those of us who remain sold to the lines of the pen.

Cameron Adams, aka The Man in Blue, decided to satisfy his longtime curiosity of the origin of his favourite fonts by engaging their esteemed creators in sending him a sample of their handwriting. The results proved fascinating, seemingly revealing that the correlation between what is organic to the designers’ hand and the final product is relatively weak. However the exposure of the handwritten samples to their static siblings brings out a kind of emotive leap, which in turn gently directs me to the study of graphology. This assumption that the individualised script we each produce is a unique expression of our personality traits, has in time developed into a dedicated muscle group of physiological concepts just waiting to be flexed. Here they are flexing away, and here again, and this is where they snapped a tendon. Of course, when the study of handwriting analysis is compared to the romantic art of palm-reading, how can it not suffer a critical dismissal?

& if you are so inclined, you always try your hand at analysing your own script. I found my own results to be daringly accurate, although much in the same way I find my newspaper horoscopes to be on unsuspecting Sunday mornings.

[Via Slashdot]