iJunto 05/11/2009

A most excellent friend and artistic collaborator of mine, Ms. Eml337 makes the most hilarious and existential magnets on the planet. So in the spirit of our iJunto, (a Franklinesque organization of the digital age that ponders morals, politics, and philosophies of contemporary culture–usually in art form) I used my newly revived laser printer to create stickers from her totally excellent magnets: because what says 2009 like taking something original and one-of-a-kind and mass reproducing it?!

* Up top is a scan of the OG magnet, the photos directly above are of my sticker sheets, before being cut down.

Micro-loans will save the world. 05/11/2009

Fact. A good friend of my family started her own organization called the Liberian Widows Initiative that raises money to give loans to Liberian widows living in a refugee camp in Ghana (where there are zero opportunities for anyone to make a living, let alone widowed mothers) to start their own small businesses.

I helped Kate design her business proposal back when she was just getting the organization started, and I didn’t even know how to use InDesign. Luckily those designs are lost to the world, but this is a flyer we jut put together last week for a woman in Kansas who is donating a huge percent of her Mary Kay sales to the LWI.

Check out lwinitiative.org for more about the organization.

Another from the vault. 04/11/2009

I hope to soon only be posting current work, but there is just soo much old junk lying around here, so I figure, ‘Why not?’ These are painting/installations I created for a friend who was licensing Danish houseware products at a trade show in New York. All he knew is that the products had to be used, the pieces had to be easy to hang, and they had to be made and shipped from LA to NYC in a week for cheap. So I created some light, fun, everday images out of the products. It was going to cost an arm and a leg to have them shadow-box framed, so I purchased some canvases streched on 1x2s and just painted the back of the canvas and wood to make a faux-frame. I think they came out decent and are still in tact despite being lost by UPS for about a year on their return shipping from NYC to Austin, TX, where upon they unexpectedly arrived at my doorstep. Talk about mail art!

More pcards. 03/11/2009

I’m going to add a couple of postcards I’ve received in the mail from my most favorite mail-art buddy, Emil337. She always finds and makes the best things to send in the mail. More to come First Post, the post that hurts the most.

Big girl job. 03/11/2009

So it only took me a year, but I have finally helped produce some real graphic design. I can take about 0.2% of the credit for said design, but the folks where I currently intern were kind enough to let me put my grubby hands on a couple of projects they were working on. I’ve learned more through working on production of these projects in a few months than the whole of my life and am super grateful for that.

* The first project I’ve added here is a brochure for the Austin Film Society

Reviving the Game. 17/06/2009

I almost forgot about the best job I’ve ever had.  Tory and I became the defacto golf cart decor girls at Coachella and Stagecoach. I wish I had pictures of more than these two, but once I track them down, I’ll add them. These two animals, however, took the cake.

We pitch Pebble Beach and Lion’s Municiple Golf Course later this week.

Now What?! 05/05/2009

So I’m back in Austin. (Say it with me kids) “Now what?!”  Well I promptly left again, of course!

I had good reason to do so. I met back up with my parter in crime, Victoria Van Wey in sunny Los Angeles and after a couple of days of being more “LA” than we ever were when we lived there (including hikes in Malibu, buying instruments on Sunset, and dining at sidewalk cafes in the Hollywood Hills- pretentious? moi?!) we headed out into the deserts of California. “We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers… Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get into locked a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon.”

Then we began work at the Coachella Arts and Music Festival and Stagecoach Music Festival. 2 weeks of sun, art, and music. Can’t beat it. We had a really good response to our works of art this year, including a few being totally obliterated by the bands they were made for. There is no higher compliment for an artist. Really. Check out the pictures of our artwork and their subsequent destructions.

* Black and white photos of my dinosaur pinata being destroyed by No Age courtesy of jaredeberhardt.com

Leaving Portland. 05/05/2009

It sucked to make the decision, but I had to face the fact that there were too many YEOs (young, energetic, over-qualifed) in Portland and I was out of money, with no prospects, even coffee-shop type- service jobs.

The job market really was  horrible and I wish the best to my friends that have stuck it out there. I hope to visit soon. But I started looking for opportunities in good ‘ole Austin, Texas, my hometown, and things seemed more hopefull there, so I loaded up the car and made the drive back across the country from the great Northwest to the hill country of my youth.  Below are some photos from my last days in Portland (in a cemetery) and from the drive back to Austin.

*Funny side note. I will never in my life spell cemetery wrong because of a serious typographic error on the part of the State of Texas. I live near the Texas State Cemetery in East Austin, resting place of many Confederate soldiers, Stephen F. Austin and Barbara Jordan.  The state installed a really nice limestone wall and sign around the cemetery, unfortunately they spelled it “Texas State Cemetary” and no one caught it until about a month after the engraved, stone sign was erected. All I can find is this  article and there is no photo unfortunately. Texans!

Freaking Awesome Gravestone

Gravestone, backside

First Nationer Shop.

Gonna Move Here.

Oh right! I have a blog. 26/04/2009

So many things have happened since February, so let’s start at the beginning.

First: While in Portland, I tutored Vietnamese immigrant students in ESL for IRCO (Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization) in Gresham. It was an amazing opportunity and I really regret no longer being able to spend time with my kids Jessie and Thao.

Posted below are photos of flashcards I drew for the girls with English words and pictures on them. We would play Go Fish! with them to reinforce the words’ spelling and pronunciation. It was always great fun.

notebooks galore! 11/02/2009

I have had these ridiculously cool elementary flashcards lying around for too long, and decided to do something with them the other day. So I used some paper from a failed project, some leftover fabric lying around, and a couple of my roomates amazing illustrations, and BAM!, wait, no, that’s copyrighted….. and ZOINKS! a really cute inspirational notebook!