Recognizing that evocatively named crops such as Long Island Cheese Pumpkins, Double Yield Cucumbers, and Mammoth Grey Stripe Sunflowers are ripe for illustration, Hudson Valley Seed Company has created Art Packs, a set of seed packages that feature the work of 11 artists from New York’s Hudson Valley. Bridge to Paris Pepper -- born of a hybrid pepper called Paris and produced by Phillies Bridge Farm -- features an antique photograph of the Eiffel Tower, while rodent-loving artist Ayumi Horie leapt at the chance to illustrate Rat’s Tail Radish (named for its distinctively curled edible pods). Designed by Sarah Snow of Treeo Design, the colorful packages unfold like flowers and are printed using earth-friendly inks on recycled paper. At $3.50 each, Art Packs are an economical gift for anyone with a green thumb and an appreciation for art in unlikely places.
http://www.seedlibrary.org/catalog/artpacks/

Set aside this summer's mass-marketed pop offerings and broaden your playlist with a zine that sounds as good as it looks: The Journal of Popular Noise, founded by graphic designer Byron Kalet, is an “audio magazine inspired by the traditions of pop music, printed periodicals, and the delight of a finely crafted artifact.” Translation: a twice-yearly, limited-edition trio of 7” vinyl records tucked inside a letterpress printed holder that folds out to reveal a poster containing information about the journal, the musicians, and the compositional process. The new spring/summer 2009 edition, featuring spoken-word works by Andrew W.K., Ian Svenonius, and Walker & Cantrell, ships next week, just in time to bring some old-school sparkle to your Fourth of July celebration.
http://popularnoise.net/

Want to spend a day at the beach with Ed Ruscha, Raymond Pettibon, Karen Kilimnik, or Julian Schnabel? (We do!) Now you can, thanks to a new series of beach towels from the Art Production Fund’s Works on Whatever (WOW), a collection of artist-designed everyday items. In a towel that reproduces his signature broad strokes of color over a vintage map of Martinique, Schnabel’s love of maps translates well to terry cloth, while Kilimnik gets into the swim of things with a beneath-the-sea tableau of starfish, shells, and seahorses. Pettibon’s towel references one of his favorite themes—surfing—and adds a meta twist: a line of text hovering over a surfer astride a giant wave that reads, “Later he could be seen in the beach parking lot, behind his van, a towel wrapped around his middle, changing out of his wet summer suit.”
http://worksonwhatever.com/artistbeachtowels.aspx