the makings of me

Try to improvise, make without over-thinking, think about making, make something out of nothing. And, repeat. 

A constant busying of the fingers is substantially therapeutic, and sometimes beautiful things can happen through fortuitous encounters with paper scraps and office supplies. 

of christmas past

Christmas is a tiny tree within a globe, homemade matching pajamas, a younger self in a my-size apron, and showing off my mad MC skillz. 

Christmas past becomes the present, thanks to a new old turntable, and an ever-growing collection of classics. Though the days of life without care seem long past, the past seems closer than the present, or the future. It is the days of Christmas past that anchor the Christmas present, making me feel lucky for those who have been there through it all. Happy Merry Joyous Christmas to you, and yours. 

two lines align

Two Lines Align is the accompaniment to a recent exhibit curated by Michael Worthington at REDCAT gallery in Los Angeles, positioning the works of artists/designers Ed Fella and Geoff McFetridge side by side in order to spark conversations about the oft-blurred lines between art & design, "the shifts in the perceived cultural worth of [graphic design and art] over time...by placing Ed Fella and Geoff McFetridge's design careers end to end to make one chronological line, one lineage. While Fella's career reflects how graphic design has historically struggled to define itself in relationship to art, McFetridge follows a path wherein the integration of art and design is taken for granted."

A belated thank you to the MCAD library for ordering in this lovely and inspiring book for me. I miss it already...Check it.

seasons greetings

A few of my favorites from some holiday cards made for family and friends. 

I realized this morning how grateful I am for the wintry week, for the recent fireside chats with dear friends, for this overriding wave of nostalgia that uplifts the spirits and reminds me of the power of a simple Seasons Greetings, when kindness and selflessness, integrity and generosity have the power to conquer all. Sometimes the less we think about ourselves, the more our selves are fulfilled. Good things are to come, I hope. 

black cab in a black cab

Four minutes and twenty-two seconds of me, smiling so hard my cheeks hurt. Its embarassing!

These charming little Black Cab Sessions are worth checking out, and I must say quite the perfect way to while away a dreary day. The simplicity of harmony and poetry never ceases to amaze me––how wonderful it is that a voice, a beat, a chorus can transform space, capture time, and reawaken bottled emotions. Music feeds the soul. 

lekman landscapes

Dear Jens Lekman, So I created some strange little dioramas and turned them into record (LP) package designs for your three albums. I am unsure how I feel about them, and unsure about the difference between good and bad right now. Perhaps I need to let them be for awhile. Perhaps I need sleep. The center one–Oh, You're So Silent Jens–is my favorite, based off of the original album cover art. The other two I am still unsure. But I hope at the very least they do not insult. 

paths crossed

...and for the smallest of moments girl and dog and rabbit were the only three beings out there in the world, dancing on tip-toes through the freshly fallen snow. 

optical illusions

It deosn't mttar in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat lteer be at the rghit pclae. 

The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. 

Thank you spell check. 

progress

I have begun to have these dreams again: My world becomes a grid, and undoing what I've done is simply a matter of command-z. Things are beginning to align, I hope. Stuff is getting stuffed.

rising and sinking

Recent drawing/wishful thinking screenprint plan. 

"Rising and sinking like a whale, she was in a sea of her own waves and perhaps of self-generated cold, out in the middle of the lake..."

-Eudora Welty

col-lab-or-ate

Tis funny when your iTunes goes all a-shuffle, and suddenly things just sound so right. 

against all odds

How the late nights have been spent, lately: Pumping fists. With my eyes closed. 

learning to stand

At the end of May, the does give birth to one or two fawns; at first they lie helplessly.

A fin mai, la chevrette met bas un ou deux jeunes. D'abord, le faon sance forces gît sur l'herbe.
A few hours later they can already stand on their feet. 

Mais déjà après quelques heures il se dresse sur ses pattes.

ºººLa Forêt Mystérieuse, par Dr. V.J. Stanekººº

jolene

A large-scale woodcut print, inspired by my grandmother Jolene. I wished to portray the sense of confusion and social distortion my grandmother often experiences due to her hearing loss, paired with the youthful sensibility of a lost girlhood.

 

There seems to be so little ahead of me now. At once eager to rise above the present, I fear a future of circles, and wonder if I will never escape the cycles. I see the world through the eyes of my grandmother, and am filled with an unbearable weight of passing time and losing time and leaving time behind. 

r-e-c-i-p-e-s

This lovely little box is everything I've ever wanted from a recipe tin. It's too good to be true, really. Such fantastic reds and yellows, and bits of greens and blues. Special thanks to Kindra for the loan, and for the recipes enclosed.

zesty pickles

SEE Malcolm Gladwell explain the existence of zesty pickles, among other things, and why they make us happy. 

READ his recent profile in NyMag, wherein he discusses his latest book, Outliers:

"Great people aren't so great. Their own greatness is not the salient fact about them. It's the kind of fortunate mix of opportunities they've been given..."

It is people like this man that brighten the dead-brained nights of semester's approaching end. I fear that too much doing has made me forget how to think, and I plow forward towards the glow at the end of the corridor, dreaming of an afternoon without agenda, lying on the carpet, wrapped up in a flurry of words.

another world

Today I wish to escape to this place. I'll imagine I'm bouncing amongst blossoms, staring at the sunlight through the branches of le petit tree. From Le Petit Arbre, par Thelma Volckman Delbesse, illustré par Sylvie Selig. 

I need another world. Moi aussi, Antony. 

gifted

Dear Katelyn Farstad, Thank you leaving such a terrifically tasteful little storage device in my studio today. You said it reminded you of me, and I think to myself, "Hmmm...Being synonymous with hot pink and gemstones and fencing in hot pants isn't such a bad thing in the grand scheme of things...in fact its pretty rad." So thank you, Kate, for being crafty and uplifting and inspirational and massively multi-talented. And thanks also for thinking of me––it means multitudes. Sincerely yours, TTYL, Aimee.

sherman

A new friend came to stay today! Otto, meet Sherman. Sherman meet Otto. They're getting along well thus far...sort of. 

Play time was followed by floor time was followed by nap time. Don't worry, a & c! The pup is in good hands. 

long johns

when i awoke early yesterday morn, i wished to myself for it to be appropriate to wear long-john sets in public. ice now coats the grass like a ganache of glass, and as i settle into the momentum of a sleeplessness, i embrace the chill of this new season, mindful of the fact that it is this severity of seasons that suppresses the weaknesses, paradoxically sugar-coating the blows.

or, perhaps, it simply reminds me that i hold in my possession my own coat of armor, the tools of survival to make it through to the spring. 

long johns rule. i'm searching for another set. and sorry for this awkward shot. American Apparel©, eat your heart out. 

dainty hippopotamus

When I was little I really wanted to be a zookeeper when I grew up. Well I'm grown up and sometimes I still want to be a zookeeper. 

There are only 3,000 Pygmy Hippopotamuses remaining in the world, but a new one was born recently at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia. Say hello, everyone, to baby Monifa. Oh precious. 

giant flag for obama!

Videos by Andrew Gauthier and his dear friend & fellow patriot, Isaac Gillespie. Every heart beats true, 'neath the red, white, & blue...Thanks guys! I miss you. 

and then a hero comes along

...with the strength to carry on, and you cast your fears aside, and you know you can survive. 

barack obama and mariah carey have simultaneously made my week. i cried a little bit. don't tell anyone. 

you can vote however you like

when i say barack, you say obama. 

barack. obama. vote. tomorrow!

fragments of days old and new

Daily meditation books from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The bindings are dry and crumbling, but the words inside have yet to fade. Such a beautiful display of decay. 

My life as of late has played out like a tragedy of Shakespearean absurdity, filled with errors and exits overlapped by acts of illness and incompetence. The curtains rise and all is in place, the curtains fall and chaos seizes all. Cues are forgotten, understudies have moved on, and a spotlight of assumptions and internalized accusations forever burns the pinholes in my eyes. And so I've come to realize the play is not the thing, and I've given up on catching, the conscience of a king. 

But as the curtain rises once again, I will try my best to make it through to the end.  

function follows

The explosion of a boiled egg gives rise to contemplations on form-making, as I sit in the sunlight daydreaming of the endless possibilities of the egg. I would very much like to make something out of this–a bowl, a chair, an overstuffed thing? 

The Mr & Mrs Jones collection, by Polly George. Whimsical forms, with function. 

"Form follows function––that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union." -Frank Lloyd Wright

boo!

Halloween greetings from my grandpa! Perhaps he is the origin of my dry sense of humor. Happy haunting everyone. 

needles and pins

A recent find: Lion pincushion, complete with dainty little scissors that turn into eyeglasses and a tape measure tail. Ingenious I'd say.
Some discoveries from the top secret stacks at the Minneapolis Central Public Library. A rainy day at the library last Wednesday was certainly a bright spot in a weary week...

I do enjoy a good grid. And also this bonnet and matching mittens. Quite fresh.

And just in time for the holiday season: A potpourri of wonderful and bazaar gift ideas! 

And! Before the Searchers, before Tom Petty, before Johnny, Joey, & DeeDee Ramone...there was Jackie DeShannon. And still it begins, needles & pins.

obamarama

In eight days we will all crawl out of our beds, put two feet on the floor, and realize the power of our democracy: VOTE, a little play on Counterforms for Obama, by El Conejo:

Pour Monsieur Brandt: Danke, Grazie, Merci.

Obama love: buttons by Village.

"Every four years, a presidential election gives Americans a common purpose: to choose the leader who will best serve our interests as individuals and members of a society. Make that several societies. More and more, we live in Venn diagrams of intersecting cultural, occupational, and geographical communities. We may be urban homesteaders cultivating vegetable patches, or rural entrepreneurs building online empires. We may be single parents, or part of a cluster of spouses and exes, impoverished yet hopeful, prosperous yet despairing. We may have marital partners who are the same gender as us and children who are a different race from us. As any designer aquainted with the multidimensionality of human experience knows–and that would be all of you–Americans are increasingly unsimple. This state of affairs...is why I.D. is endorsing Barack Obama for president." 

-Julie Lasky

I.D. Magazine

skills, tips, & life lessons

The Official Nancy Drew Handbook! Full of such tasty tips as how to determine a man's character by the shoes he wears, how to tap out a morse code message with your high-heeled shoes, how to pack the perfect handbag for all contingencies, and how to tell a good guy from a bad guy:

"Nancy has a sixth sense when it comes to sniffing out a bad guy. There's something about him that gives away his nasty secret; underneath that nice suit and hair pomade lurks a man with underhanded plans. It could be his wild bushy hair, his shifty penetrating eyes, or his crude scowling face. Whatever it is, Nancy spots them easily."  

Rather amusing, I'd say. Published by Quirk Productions, Inc., design by Bryn Ashburn. 

sugar high

Since when was food ever this fun? Koogle and Zonkers and freeze-dried ice cream cereal? Mmmmmm....sugar. Surely my dentist would approve.

face time

This is me last night round midnight after sitting in front of my computer screen for almost four hours, surfing the internet instead of doing homework. Over the course of those four hours I watched an average of ten YouTube Videos, listened to the latest episode of This American Life, shopped for shoes, ebayed, read some blogs, and wikipedia'ed a vast array of topics. But it's okay, because apparently surfing the internet improves brain function. Will technology ultimately be detrimental or supplemental to the evolution of the human mind? I didn't get any work done, but I did re-discover Roland Orzabal and this classic 80s music video...

best friends forever

Hmmm...really? Foreva? Foreva-eva? Though it is quite refreshing to to hear of politicians getting along, now isn't it? (Taken from last week's Time magazine).

Oh! And speaking of bff's, my new bff: Loy Bowlin, aka the Original Rhinestone Cowboy. Hmmm...too bad he's dead. 

R.I.P. my dear Loy B. You were truly a diamond of a man.