Invaded!

Maps.  I mean, they're cool and all, but do you really need a weak replica pasted onto a stretched canvas?

...what we need here is some intergalactic inspiration:

 

There.  MUCH better. 

A Lil' Caffeine for your Morning

A close friend of crappy hotel art is crappy cafe art.

Coffee shops in particular have their own special breed of...coffee...art?

Don't get me wrong; I pay my respects to the roasted bean gods most mornings...I just don't find it particularly exciting as an art object. 

Especially if you're just going to dust that foam and cinnamon...give me foam art or give me death. 

I think what really bothers me is that this picture lacks any sort of emotion ...much less the grand anticipation most of us feel before that first cup.

Beige and boring isn't how I feel around espresso drinks. 

No...it's something a little more...

***

...like..

***

 THIS.

...giddy and googly-eyed to the very last drop.

May all of your coffee (and art) be served with a strong side of excitement!

Words, Words, Words

So, apparently it's become a thing to just write a bunch of words and call it art.

Sometimes the stock artists use a common poem or lines to a song:

...but usually there are just a bunch of lame platitudes crapped out on a canvas. 

...incidentally, WTH does "live out loud" actually mean?  That...makes no sense.  And while we're at it, if I see one more "live laugh love" trifecta on a sorority girl's wall I'm going to delta kappa kick someone's ass.

Then there's this:

So...we're just going to list things in a category now?  As fun as visual scattergories sounds, I'm not into it.

Well, now that I think about it, I do feel inspired to write a few words when I look at it:

ugly

BORING

uncreative

banal

lame

A F F E C T E D

But you know what?  Beer deserves better than that.  In honor of good (and crappy) beer everywhere, this:

Sage advice, beer bottle.  Sage advice.

Mais, Oui

Stock art seems to favor looking...French.

...ish. French-ish. Because apparently anything written in French=classy. But we don't want to write anything too advanced...we just write the stuff we learned from watching Amelie with subtitles...

...or taking that one semester of French 101 in college. 

...I know these things.  J'ai dit oui to my Invitation au monde francophone:

...for one semester before I went to Spain and decided to study Russian.

Whatever.

Anyway, I came across this beauty the first time I went to Ross in search of hotel art. 

"White wine from France."  

Because we're classy, we wrote it in French.

So I ask, why stop there?

What is a good picture of French stereotypes without the actual wine...

 ...the eiffel tower...

 

...and smoking?

Being me, you knew a dinosaur was coming, too:

Some of you reading may ask,

"Bridget, why do you do this?"

You know what I say?

"Pourquoi pas?"

P.S.

The people in my French 101 book are TOTALLY drinking wine.

...totally.

Where We're Going, We Don't NEED Maps!

For whatever reason, maps seem to be popular stock art.  I get it; they're bland (and thus non-offensive), (moderately) informative, and (sometimes...although rarely) interesting.

  

Whenever I see these dull pieces of stock art, I can't help but think of this classic dialogue from Arrested Development:

Narrator: Thanks to the family’s largesse, Buster has studied everything from Native American tribal ceremonies... to cartography: the mapping of uncharted territories.
Michael: Hasn’t everything already sort of been discovered, though by, like, Magellan and Cortés, ...
Buster: Oh, yeah, yeah.
Michael: NASA...all those folks?
Buster: Those guys did a pretty good job.

 So...how to make a map interesting?  For me, the natural conclusion was to take my dino buddy...

  ...to the final frontier:

...'till next time, may all your hotel art be interesting...or at least fun to mock.

xoxo, bridget

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P.S. Just in case the reference in the title eluded you:

In Search of New Material

So, I know that if I were intelligent and more business-minded and less lazy, I would be hitting up garage sales and thrift stores for my materials.  But...as we've already established, I'm lazy. 

(I'm not sorry that I'm not sorry)

I spent a good deal of time on Friday foraging (you guessed it) the s*** piles called art at the back of my local Ross store.  As usual, they didn't disappoint.  

During my first visit I was just so excited and...inspired...that I failed to notice variations on the same crap(per) theme looking right at me:

...over...

...and over...

...and. over. again.

(This last one even came bedazzled!!!)

Seriously, who decided lousy pictures of bathrooms were a good idea? I'm assuming the idea is to hang them in one's room of rest, but it doesn't make a lot of sense.   If I saw one of these in a bathroom, I would hear the following internal dialogue:

"Hey! Buddy! just in case you forgot, you're in the crapper!  Here's a picture with wacked out perspective and proportions to remind you of that!  Enjoy the dump!"

...and if you happened upon a picture of this not  in a restroom...um..why?

As we've already established, bathrooms aren't pretty. They're gross. Not to mention an incredibly boring art subject.

Mass art maker people: PLEASE STOP THE MADNESS.

(In other news, new awful hotel revisited art coming soon!)

You're No Monet

...

...BUT I AM A FAIRY PRINCESS!!!111!!!