David de Rothschild hopes to sail "a 60-foot catamaran made mostly from recycled plastic" from San Francisco to Sydney, reports Jesse McKinley in the New York Times (2/22/10). The boat is held together with glue made from cashews, but David, "a 31-year-old English banking heir and environmental daredevil," is thoroughly confident. "I'd give myself 100 percent chance of making it," he says, then adding, "But obviously, there's always a percentage that's outside of our control."

David's point is simply that "waste can be used as a resource." His 60-foot boat, which he calls the Plastiki in a nod to "the famed 1947 journey of the Kon-Tiki," is made of "thousands of recycled plastic bottles," some of which were melted down and reformed and others pressurized, "some with their labels still clinging to their sides," ring the boat's hull. Power is provided by solar panels, and "a small organic garden" will be fertilized by ... well, let's just say, the five-member crew.

Jo Royle, the Plastiki's captain, says the small biodiesel motor is pretty much useless. "We sail with the wind," she says. And if a storm hits? "We don't have the ability to get out of the way." So, if the boat breaks up out there, leaving behind some 12,000 bottles, the mission might be self-defeating. But David rather imagines his crew passing the time sunbathing, playing chess or dominoes, and blogging. "I'm over the moon," he says. "I'm super chuffed." He's even lined up a bunch of sponsors, including Nike, which has designed high tops for the mission.

Theo Sims, "a British-born neo-conceptualist," hopes to promote "cross-cultural conversations" at a "mock-up of a Belfast pub," reports Charles McGrath in the New York Times (2/22/10). The pub, which Theo calls the Candahar, is built in a 12 x 20-foot plywood box, and is located "on the third floor of the Playwrights Theater Center on Granville Island," in Vancouver. In other words, it's less a pub than performance art, with its run timed to coincide with the Oympic Games.

Theo built "the whole thing himself, using a router and drill, and it's pretty authentic looking (image). There are beer taps, a brass rail, a bench balanced on beer kegs and reproductions of the buzzers once used to alert the barman that a customer will be needing a fresh pint shortly." It's modeled on a now-defunct pub, called the Blackthorn. The pub's name, Candahar, "comes from a street in Belfast that used to be the headquarters of a school of Irish artists."

Working the pub are brothers Chris and Conor Roddy, "authentic Irish publicans wearing fedoras and thick Irish sweaters." Theo imported them himself. Patrons can get local beer using special tickets, not real money, since "the Candahar is not a bar but a theater space." As Conor explains, "This gives people an opportunity to have a slight respite from all the Olympic fever, and it has really brought the community together." When the Olympics end, Theo says he might try to sell it, but his dream is to "take it down, make a bonfire and burn it."

"Old-school graffiti ... is just about everywhere except the place that was once its sole domain: the metal skins of subway cars," reports David Gonzalez in the New York Times (2/5/10). In fact, it is more likely to be found in photographs, published in coffee-table books or on websites. "What started in the '70s as a visual assault on commuters has attained a certain acceptability, if not cachet, thanks in part to the city's crackdown on subway graffiti in the late '80s." Some are happy about this, while others are not.

Some of the original artists -- teens then but middle-aged now -- have gone mainstream. Eric Felisbret "was part of the Crazy Inside Artists, a legendary crew from East New York, Brooklyn." Today, he wields not a can of paint but a camera, photographing graffiti art and posting it online at at149st dot-com and publishing it in a book, Graffiti New York. He reckons that "there is probably still as much illicit graffiti in town, only more scattered -- on trucks, rooftops or the upper floors of buildings."

He comments: "The trains used to move your name around ... Now the internet moves your name for you." But Eric admits that this is not the same. "You could paint 100 pieces legally, put them on the internet, and somebody in Germany will say, 'Wow!' But they won't know that the writer took no risks ... for the traditionalists, the assumption of risk carries far more value in the culture." Then there's Joe Lopez, now 52 who, as a teen used to tag trains in the Bronx. These days, he actually works for the Transit Authority. "Believe it or not, I'm a supervisor in the No. 4 yard," he says.

Five years ago, Stefan Strumbel of Offenburg, Germany, gave up graffiti and began making cuckoo clocks instead, reports Gisela Williams in the New York Times (2/4/10). "When I did graffiti, it was all about marking my territory," says Stefan. "But then I started thinking that graffiti itself was more of a New York thing and that I should do something that was authentic to where I come from, the Black Forest."

He's referring to a German idea, "heimat," which basically means "homeland," and how it relates to his art. "For so long after Hitler, Germans haven't been able or allowed to reclaim their heimat," says Stefan. "I wanted to ask the question, 'What is heimat?' and make it something fresh, ironic and dynamic." He found his answer in cuckoo clocks, which are, of course "quintessentially German" as well as "symbolic of the Black Forest region."

So, Stefan "began buying clocks from local stores and transforming them into street-inspired pieces with spray paint." The clocks "are based on traditional models but are adorned with grenades and handguns instead of rabbits and antlers" (images) They are priced anywhere from $1,200 to $35,000 each. Mon Muellerschoen, a curator, thinks the clocks capture a new German spirit, a "Germany that is aware of its past, but ready to take new, lighthearted and colorful paths -- a Germany that can accept its cliches with the wink of an eye."

Richard Koshalek wants to put a "145-foot-tall inflatable meeting hall" on the National Mall in Washington D.C., reports Nicolai Ouroussoff in the New York Times (12/15/09). The structure would bubble up through the interior courtyard of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, which sits about half-way between the Capitol and the White House. Made of translucent fabric, it would ooze out of the top of the building, and out one side, as well, looking not unlike a giant bubble of blue chewing gum (images).

Visitors would enter the four-story space via "a short, tube-shaped corridor" ultimately entering the main hall, with a stage and semi-circle seating for up to 1,000 people. Since the fabric is translucent, visitors would be able to see out into the National Mall from inside. Richard's idea is to use the created space for "performing arts, film series and conferences to foster a wide-ranging public debate on cultural values." Because it can be inflated on short notice, the museum could "respond nimbly to cultural issues of the moment."

Its installation actually would be "a performance piece in itself, something like watching event organizers blow up the balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade." A couple of "refrigerator-size air pumps" would do the trick, with the whole thing anchored by a giant, water-filled tube that doubles as a bench. As a temporary structure, the design circumvents protracted approvals for new construction. And, while it would cost about $5 million to build, that's "a relatively paltry sum by the standards of recent museum expansions, even in today's rough economic climate."

Wild Bill's Nostalgia Center is celebrating its 25th anniversary, which is quite something considering it's a store that "doesn't sell anything anyone really needs," reports Hannah Vahl in the Middletown Press (12/14/09). The store actually had a different name -- Apple Core -- when Wild Bill Ziegler founded it as a gift shop on Main Street in Middletown, Connecticut. Since then, it's had several other names -- "Buffalo Bill's, the Beetles Store, the 60s store." But what hasn't changed is the insanely eclectic merchandising mix.

It's a mix determined primarily by happenstance (virtual tour here). Wild Bill "acquires much of his goods by getting out-of-the-blue calls about a large load of items, such as 8,000 sport jackets, 50,000 3D glasses, 75,000 posters and 10,000 picture frames ... Once a man driving by said he had a truckload of whale bones and whaling tools he had inherited from his grandfather." Wild Bill bought it all, and "managed to sell bones to Wesleyan University and Trinity College in Hartford, though a whale rib still hangs suspended from the ceiling of his store."

The whale rib is really nothing compared with what Wild Bill has got going on the store's facade. In addition to a mural of various pop-culture icons, there's a huge bobbing head featuring Wild Bill's likeness above the door. The mural got Wild Bill into trouble with the town, but he eventually prevailed, arguing that the mural was art, not advertising. "The town gave us a half million dollars of free advertising by fighting us, "he says. To celebrate his 25th, Wild Bill commissioned a sculpture "made of 1,000 animal traps and other metal objects" (image). It's yours for $500,000.

"Optimism is about openings where people don't expect to find them," says Reed Seifer in a New York Times piece by Michael M. Grynbaum (11/20/09). Reed has had a thing for "optimism" ever since he came across a somewhat less optimistic view of the concept on a packet of Domino's sugar: "An optimist is someone who tells you to cheer up when things are going his way." At the time, Reed was a Clark University grad student, and he ended up writing his thesis on "optimism."

His thesis "focused on an incident with his father, who once offered an empty soda bottle to a homeless man collecting cans for redemption. The man refused, finding the offer patronizing." Reed's latest project is on both a grander -- and humbler scale. Via the Arts for Transit program, Reed suggested printing the word "optimism" on NYC transit cards, and beginning in September, the cards (image) were introduced with absolutely zero fanfare.

To Reed, that's entirely fitting: "I've always loved art that exists in unexpected places," he says. "I like that maybe not everyone's going to see it. Or maybe one day you just look and say, 'Oh.'" He also likes that the word "can be read as an encouragement, a command, a taunt, an aspiration." And he's happy with his choice of typeface, Akzidenz-Grotesk. "It's very open and minimal, and you can see the line weights of the letter forms are all equal weights, so it's not distracting." So far, the MTA has printed seven million of Reed's "optimism" cards.

Robert Wennett figured his best chance to attract retailers was to build a mall with a really amazing parking garage on top. As reported by Fred A. Bernstein in the New York Times (12/2/09), the resulting building, at 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, "features seven exposed concrete slabs supported -- seemingly precariously -- on tilted concrete columns." Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, who also designed the "bird's nest" stadium for the Beijing Olympics, Robert thinks the geometric design qualifies as art. "The idea was it should not look or feel like a garage," he explains.

The idea was also to attract high-end tenants, and at this Robert succeeded: "So far, all but one of the retail spaces are rented ... at annual rents of up to $150 a square foot, which is high for Miami Beach." And this during a recession. Most of the tenants "are big international companies looking for a toehold in Miami," according to Daniel Kron, a prospective tenant who first reserved space, and then declined to sign a lease. But Robert's pitch that the building's architecture would make it a shopper magnet proved persuasive to other retailers

"Product can be sold much better on the internet," says Robert. "The reason to take physical spaces is to create an experience." He adds: "If we had built a normal project ... it probably never would have happened." That's actually true for another reason: The city of Miami "doesn't count most parking spaces in a building's square footage for zoning purposes." This enabled Robert "to significantly increase the square footage he could build" and "create an imposing structure that would attract high-end tenants."

A new building at The Cooper Union is stirring controversy in its neighborhood, which is exactly as it should be, suggests Ada Louise Huxtable in the Wall Street Journal (12/2/09). After all, Cooper Union's original landmark structure, The Foundation Building (images), was radical in its day, 150 years ago. The school's founder, Peter Cooper, "brought the fine arts and the structural arts together, pioneered the admission of women, and featured a library free and open to the public long before the New York Public Library was established." He also had a really woolly beard.

The original structure, at the time New York's tallest building, was equally woolly, including as it did "the first rolled iron beams ... in anticipation of the metal-framed skyscraper" as well as a "circular elevator shaft" that anticipated "the vertical transportation of the future, although it did not receive one that fit until a 1970s renovation." The new building, known as 41 Cooper Square (images), similarly makes use of next-generation, energy-efficient materials, and, if not an elevator, a remarkable staircase.

Twenty-feet wide, the stairs are like "some wildly updated, indoor version of Rome's Spanish Steps ... It rises in a void, wide-open to every floor ... An intricate, soaring, free-form, white-tube lattice, like a huge, abstract sculpture, fills the space around the stair and defines the edges of the void ... The stair is ... the building's organizing element and circulation spine." Students do tend to linger on it. The controversial element is the building's exterior, a curving, perforated, stainless-steel skin that doesn't exactly "go" with anything else in the neighborhood -- except for the "creative energy of New York" -- and Cooper Union, itself.

Octavio Bajonero Gil had an unusual art collection, a Mexican college was looking for something different, and the result is the National Museum of Death, reports Chris Hawley in USA Today (10/30/09). Octavio's collection includes "dozens of tiny calaveritas," or small, decorated skulls, "along with hundreds of other death-related artworks he had acquired over 50 years." It forms the core of the museum's collection, and museum director Jose Antonio Padilla, thinks it makes for a most relevant exhibit.

"Mexicans have death imprinted all over their art and culture," he says. "So why not a museum about it?" Actually, some Mexicans are less than enthusiastic about the idea, given that the "country is grappling with a wave of murders following President Felipe Calderon's military crackdown on drug cartels. But Jose counters that "this is not a museum of drug violence. It's a museum about a certain artistic tradition." In addition to those really cool calaveritas, that includes "depictions of death from other countries, from American Halloween decorations to small replicas of the terra cotta soldiers of China."

Also featured are various "statues of 'Saint Death,' the grim reaper, which is increasingly worshipped at shrines and chapels in poor neighborhoods of Mexico." Some visitors are so taken by this that they try to leave offerings. "We get some unusual people here," says Juan Manuel Vizcaino, assistant director of exhibits. The Museum of Death attracts some 70,000 visitors each year, about one-third "from other countries, mainly the United States." One visitor, Spencer Garcia-Stinson of New Hampshire, left impressed: "It's definitely kind of bizarre," he says. "In the United States we don't like to talk about death, but here they're dealing with it so openly ... It's amazing."