Now What?!

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.

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.

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.

Up. Uptown. Uptown Dubonnet?

Dubonnet?

This has nothing to do with my own work but made me laugh and think of my History of Design professor, Prof. Dooley. I bought a cup of tea at Uptown Espresso “Home of the Velvet Foam” in Seattle during a recent hiking trip in Olympic National Park and chuckled at the appropriation of A.M. Cassandre’s ‘Dubonnet’ wine advert. I always wonder about artist and designers’ intentions with using obvious references to other works. Ah, but this one has a french press! Tell your class I already found this one Dooley, its taken.

Dubonnet?

Uptown detail

Cassandre’s advert

Who Says Valentine’s is a Sacred Day?

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!

notebooks galore!

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!

Bacharach remixed!

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!

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

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..

Holiday / Moving Cards

Since I moved to Portland right around the holidays, I decided to combine my second- annual holiday card mailing with a change of address card and made one postcard.

It features a drawing I made of my new mansion (read: duplex). While sitting on the curb across the street drawing, my neighbor exclaimed that it was “the best drawing of someone’s own house” that she had ever seen. I think there are too many qualifiers in that statement to be considered a compliment. But I digress.

I printed the postcards on 4×6 sheets of Trader Joe’s paper grocery bags using Tory’s gocco printer. I then wrote in my address 435 in red over my door. On the reverse I wrote over the TJ’s print with a sharpie like a normal postcard, added an overpriced 27 cents US postcard stamp and mailed them off to the lucky recievers. Mail art lives!