Harbour Scene by John Northcote Nash
John Northcote Nash was born in London in 1893. Although he had no formal art training, he became an influential landscape painter, one of the founding members of the London Group, and a member of the New English Art Club.
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Under Great Northern 1 by Norman Long
Norman Long is an oil painter based in Lancashire, UK, whose work includes portraits, figurative paintings, still life, and plein air cityscapes of London and Manchester. Owing to my own musical preferences, let’s take a look at the last group.
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As this blog embarks on its seventh year, a lot has changed, from my own interests to yours in seeking out information here. Each year, I’ve documented the ten most popular posts of the year, and the 2014 batch contains its share of surprises.
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Located at 16th and Arapahoe Sts. in downtown Denver, the Daniels & Fisher Tower was designed by London-born Frederick Sterner and built in 1910 as the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.
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Cincinnati Design Disaster Awards: in case you missed this last week.
14 Amazing Images of Cincinnati’s Inner City Neighborhoods: just that.
Back to Vlasic: on normcore and uncool cities chasing trends.
Don’t Call It Gentrification: what’s been going on in San Francisco.
Gentrification Is a Natural Evolution: and how to anticipate what’s happening in London.
How Hungary’s Painted Homes Rebelled Against the Socialist System: amazing public art.
Norway’s New Passport — Already a Design Classic?: a gorgeous passport design manages to capture a sense of place.
Then & Now: An Interactive Look at Downtown Cincinnati’s Past: coolness.
RR Interviews: Zan McQuade of the Cincinnati AnthologyPt. 1 and Pt. 2: an informative, two-part interview about this book, which includes a contribution by yours truly.
Rare Neon Signs on Display at the History Museum at the Castle: an awesome exhibit opened this week in Appleton, WI.
Malls Fill Vacant Stores with Server Rooms: creative reuse in places like Fort Wayne, IN and Jackson, MS.
Taylor Swift Explaining New York Vocabulary Is Beyond Cringeworthy: T-Swift was recently named the NYC Ambassador, and this is her latest foray into “realness.”
Rome’s Rebel Lake Is a Parable of the Contemporary Commons: a long read, but a great story of grassroots urbanism.
Shopfront Elegy: photos of ghost signs and storefronts, in London and beyond.
Save the Davis: this Monday, an attempt to prevent the demolition of the David Furniture Building in Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati.
NKY Scholar House to Offer Housing, Programming for Low-Income Student-Parents: very cool.
All the Places the New York Times Has Compared to Brooklyn: two surprises — New Orleans and the Hamptons, plus a bunch of the usual suspects.
Bollards, Bricks and Black Cabs: Why the Best Urban Objects Are Mundane: the Museum of the Mundane celebrates just that in London.
Tennessee Wonderland: Exploring an Abandoned Neighborhood and Hotel in the Tennessee Mountains: a haunting, in-depth look at the abandoned town we stumbled onto in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park earlier this year.
Half of the United States Lives in These Counties: weird/interesting map/stat stuff.
Since the 1970s a Man Has Been Planting a Forest Larger than Central Park, One Tree at a Time: a fascinating endeavor.
Turning 14 in Cincinnati: ‘I Worry about Surviving’: a harrowing read.
Why Other Cities Matter: an essay by Zan McQuade, editor of the just-published Cincinnati Anthology.
Historic OTR building: Demolish or rehab?: an update on the plight of the old David Furniture Building in Over-the-Rhine.
Neither Created nor Destroyed: an excellent essay about Cincinnati and its suburbs by local artist and Anderson dweller Jenny Roesel Ustick.
Gifts for Gardeners: a big thanks to greetabl for including our regional wildflower seed bombs in this great gift guide!
San Francisco – and Sean Penn – Show a City’s Heritage Bars Are Worth Saving: a quasi-landmarking program for iconic businesses.
Metal Spikes Installed Outside Luxury Apartments in Apparent Effort to Keep Homeless Away: in London, treating the homeless like pigeons.
To the People of Cincinnati: read an excerpt from this upcoming book, pre-order your copy, and mark your calendar for the gallery opening and the literary gathering.
Cincinnati Group Promises Big Bucks to Creative Entrepreneurs with Best Pitch: just that.
You Might Pack Up Everything and Move to Cincinnati After Watching This: you won’t, but it’s a cute little video.
Last of the Urban Horsemen: on the horse-and-carriage industry in NYC.
‘Cool’ London Is Dead, and the Rich Kids Are to Blame: “houses in Mayfair are now bitcoins for oligarchs.”
Completely Surreal Photos of America’s Abandoned Malls: absolutely bizarre places, abandoned or not.
Ghost Signs Aficionados Survey: if you like ghost signs as much as I do, become part of this research project that “explores how people in changing urban neighbourhoods seek to retain their connection to local places, including how they use online/mobile devices to do this.”
Classical Landscape at Night by Simon Quadrat
London-based artist Simon Quadrat primarily paints urban landscapes whose exaggerated perspective and foreboding desolation are in some ways reminiscent of the Metaphysical surrealism pioneered by Giorgio de Chirico.
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Department of Everyday Visualingual 