Old school. 03/11/2009

Digging through design archives of yore, I came across the LMU student design publication, Avant 360. My final semester at that fine institution,I was featured in Avant 360, and although most of my conscience is screaming to keep these old designs hidden—the article where I interview myself is too ridiculous not to share.

PicWheel. 03/11/2009

This is a slightly old project, but fun nonetheless. I was visiting an old friend in Los Angeles who has an amazing balcony cactus garden. Sitting on her balcony is really like being on another planet, not smoggy hell-A. But I digress. I always try to bring a small token of appreciation when I crash on couches, so I made said friend a pinwheel out of photographs I had taken with my Diana camera of her and our friends on my previous trip to LA. I haven’t made another since, but custom pinwheels are definitely on my list of things to make as gifts in the near future.

Celebrating America. 03/11/2009

Over the 4th of July this past summer, I took a beyond epic roadtrip to the heartland of America, Kansas. Lawrence, Kansas to be exact. The trip was filled with fireworks, slip and slides, anti-abortion billboards and transexual anarchists. It truly made me love this country. Unfortunately my camera broke. I managed to fix it, sorta. It took photographs, but the LCD screen died and a viewfinder is non-existent on my camera. Nonetheless, I snapped away as fast as I could during one 20 minute interval on July 3 and created this poster out of every photo that I took, regardless of how bad. And alot of them are really bad.

 

Reviving the post. 03/11/2009

Alot of good things have been happening, and thanks to inspiration from my friends and former “art school” classmates, I’m getting it all on the netz. The first round of images I’m uploading are of lo-fi postcards I’ve made to send to said friends. For some reason I am much more on top of making, collecting and sending postcards than I am updating this newfangled technology. (Get off my lawn you darned kids!) I’ve always collected ridiculous postcards throughout my travels, both perplexed and enamoured by the outdated photography coupled with horrific typography. I’ll eventually scan all of those collected ones, but for now, here are my attempts to make mailboxes worldwide a little brighter.

* Sidenote: The ‘Free Roman’ postcard was Ms. Emily May’s and my first attempt to see if we can manage to get any postcards sent through the US mail censored. So far, no luck.

**(Sidenote)2: The black and white postcards are all xeroxed found images and quotes from the wonderful novel ‘Shantaram.’  The reverse side of the chupacabra image shows the written side containing all of the Wikipedia entry on ‘chupacabra’ that would fit.

Who Says Valentine’s is a Sacred Day? 11/02/2009

Since St. Valentine’s Day currently could be no further from a liturgical calendar holiday (they don’t even know anything about the guy, or if he was just one guy!) we at Scattergood decided there was no use for Valentine’s Day in its current form. Our first step towards its devolution: Valentine’s Day cards, of course! We had planned on shunning Valentine’s Day altogether in favor of a rad Bill Murray-themed Groundhog Day card(!) but complications arose. So we forged ahead with a Valentine’s Day card because it gave us an extra two weeks to get them together. Time rules this life. Tory Van Wey illustrated these raucous little numbers and we screened them in our lab (read: dining room). Hope your day is bright and cheery!

Vday Cards!

Bacharach remixed! 11/02/2009

I recently lifted and remixed an idea from my lovely and talented neighbor Emily May. She makes amazing journals out of old record sleeves. I rediscovered recently a gem of an album I have had since I got my turntable hand-me-down from my ‘ole dad when I was 15, Burt Bacharach Plays His Hits. (And no, I didn’t buy it to be ironic – we hadn’t covered irony in lit class yet.) I decided to turn this work of art into a journal for a music journalist friend of mine and also used a great illustrated page from a Rolling Stone article on David Byrne as well as pages from the most excellent book on the Austin independent music scene (other than my high school senior thesis, of course) titled Dissonant Identities: The Rock ‘n’ Roll Scene in Austin, Texas. Other materials included: electrical tape and string. I think it turned out pretty cool.

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Badges! 11/02/2009

I did it! I fulfilled my life long dream of owning my own buttonmaker. My good friend Craig alerted me to a ridiculously cheap one including all the fixin’s and I snagged it! Everyone who enters my living room has gotten the button fever. Pins are being cranked out at a ridiculous rate here.

I’ve come up with two lines already – both made from reusing items found lying around my house. The first is named “What The Phonebook?!” – It features things I cannot believe people use a phonebook to look up – all found in the local Portland Metro phonebook. I hope to branch out to other metro area phonebooks and find even stranger things. Already, I cannot (but now do) believe that someone would use the phonebook to look up “Slaughterhouses” or “Toilets – Portable” or my favorite, “Bridge Clubs.” The other line of badges are made of fabric scraps I have collected from various other fabric-based projects. Pretty straight forward but I think they make really cool, unique, non-plastic-y buttons. I hope you concur!

prOBAMAductions 22/01/2009

Scattergood Productions was invited to two Inaguration parties last night, and being the ultimate party-goers we are, we decided to bring along a couple of party games.

We printed a Democratic Party twister mat (featuring: Obama! Hillary! Pelosi! and Biden!) complete with spinner as well as two rousing versions of ‘Pin the Ears on Obama.’ Needless to say, both were a huge hit. Left foot Hillary proved to be the downfall of all. Below are pictures of the DNC Twister mat..