If you’re living in Philadelphia and don’t know about Fleisher, I suggest you make your way to their website and do a little reading. Fleisher is an amazing resource for affordable art courses in the city, and there are options for all age groups and levels of experience.
For Valentine’s Day they have an amazing event coming up: the Print Love-In. From Fleisher’s website:
Come learn about printmaking processes while creating love-inspired art. Participants of all ages will create their own valentine cards, and learn about relief, silkscreen, collograph, letterpress and lithography printing all in one place. Artists/printmakers will be on-hand to help participants create cards from a variety of images designed by Philadelphia artists.
Fleisher’s offering two, 2.5 hour sessions on Sunday February 7th. At 10$ it’s a total steal. Hope to see you there!
I’ve been working on a project for Neighborhood Bike Works. My housemate, Wayne, is in the process of starting a branch of the organization {which teaches kids, and adults, how to build and repair bikes – among other things} in South Philadelphia. We’ve both been living in South Philly for several years and have quite a bit of pride in our neighborhood, so when Wayne started planning a Fix-a-Flat event at Tattooed Mom’s {on Januray 17th} and needed a craft tie-in, it seemed like a natural fit.
Back in September, Dustin Hurt (director of Bowerbird} bought me a 3×5 Kelsey Excelsior press and a slew of teeny tiny lead type. After my trip to Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum, and my opportunity to print with type that was a foot tall, it was difficult for me to fathom working in such a small medium. Fortunately I was turned on to Boxcar Press and their polymer platemaking services, which allows me to bypass working with that teeny tiny type.
Let me say though, I don’t necessarily approve of polymer plates. I understand the convenience and the appeal, and I did just order my very first plates, but there’s something about working with old wooden blocks and a limited supply of letters that thrills me. Polymer seems to subtract a large portion of what I love about letterpress. Also, I’m Photoshop illiterate, which makes it incredibly difficult to design anything, and likely contributes to my standoffishness towards polymer.
I’m getting off track. I liked the idea of combining my love of letterpress with Wayne’s love for bikes, but knew that I couldn’t possibly design anything with the tiny type I own. Enter Twitter. I posted an update asking for interested designers which put in contact with Athens, GA designer Scott Hodges. A week later I had two amazing designs in front of me and a week after that I had the final files.
I sent the files into Boxcar this Monday, they called that evening to clear up some file issues, and by Tuesday afternoon they had shipped my files out. We’re expecting our delivery today and I’m looking for forward to trying this out for the first time.
For now, I’ll tide you over with Scott’s designs, and an extra one I did to fulfill the minimum order requirement.
I’m expecting to take a lot of flack for what I’m about to say: I have a raging fangirl crush on Zach Galifianakis. I’ve always known it, but watching The Hangover and Bored to Death tonight really solidified it for me. He’s everything I want in a man: chubby, bearded, hilarious – he can do no wrong.
I know pretty much nothing about the dude, except that he reminds me of someone I once knew, and that endears him to me; he’s a fucking stone cold fox {he is honestly 100% my type}; he has a homeless man beard; and he was born in North Carolina, Just Like Me. We’re clearly soul mates.
Zach, if you’re reading, let’s get married. I’m pretty funny, relatively attractive, and I’ll stroke your beard and rub your tummy while you fall asleep. I promise. Think about it.
I am reminding myself of this constantly lately and wish I had had the foresight to print a poster that said as much when I was at Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum {which yes, I know, I still have to blog about!}. Since I didn’t predict this mildly stressful period that I’m currently going through I instead whipped up this little desktop background in Photoshop last night. You should be able to download it if you click through!
There are two distinct sides of my personality: the cynic who firmly believes that love will never find her and the hopeless romantic who swoons over the thought of sweet nothings, love letters, other halves, soul mates, etc. Generally I side with the cynic. I am picky, nearly impossible to please; dropping men for the way they pronounce words, a face they make, the shine on their skin, their complicated dietary restrictions – the most minute things can prevent my happiness. And yet, that other part of me is always hoping, always searching for my match, my other half, the person who will be perfectly imperfect in my eyes.
I measure coincidences and search for the message the Universe is trying to send me. I read my horoscope {I’m an Aquarius} and match my sign with the sign of each potential mate. I don’t necessarily believe every word that I read, but I enjoy the insight it provides and often times I find that it’s relatively accurate. My dear friend Avalon Clare turned me on to the Enneagram {I’m a 6} and so recently I’ve been using that for insight also. These things are all relative, and I find myself embarrassed to admit that they are important to me at times, but what’s the point of that? I am a bit superstitious, I am a lover of some mystical things. I make wishes when the numbers on the clock are all the same, I insist that others make wishes when I find a stray eyelash on their cheek, I play games in my head with certain numbers – all of these things are my way to make sense of this crazy world we live in.
Maybe you’re wondering what my point is here, where I’m going with this. The hopeless romantic in me has always wanted to believe in true love, in other halves, in perfect storms; the cynic in me has always shot that all down and guarded me against it. There has been an interesting, and constant, war being waged within my body.
Until now. Now I am wrapped up in that perfect storm. My life has been filled with magical coincidences for the last eleven days and though it feels a little crazy for me to say this, especially in so public a forum, I feel there’s no other option anymore – I’m in love. I am head over heels, life-alteringly in love and I don’t think it will ever stop. It’s important to me to acknowledge how serendipitous my life is right now – though it’s been this way for several months, to be sure – and how it feels as if the Universe has finally put all the pieces of this puzzle of my life within my reach, while gently urging me to piece it together.
You see, my new gentleman {D, for short} and I, have been circling around each other for many years. We have had a series of near misses, close calls, narrow escapes. The only conclusion that we can both come to based on the information that has been slowly revealing itself to us is that we were never ready before now. It would never have worked like this, never would have blossomed, unfolded, spread before us like this, warm and welcoming and feeling absolutely right. We decided several days after meeting each other that we had no choice in this, we couldn’t do anything but let it happen to us and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Each day one more perfect thing about D, about he and I together, materializes and we look at each other in amazement, big stupid grins filling our faces.
I expect most people to roll their eyes at me. I expect them to say “we’ll see” or “good luck with that,” sarcasm dripping from their mouths – and I can’t blame them. I just hope they’re ready to hear me say “I told you so” in a few years when this is all still unfolding, when I am sitting calmly in the eye of my perfect storm, when I am happily existing with my other half.
I recently bought Keri Smith’s book How to Be an Explorer of the World. It’s wonderful. Exploration #16 asks the reader to create a 5 question survey and have people respond. After I collect the responses I’m to document it in an interesting way. Please help me with this creative endeavor by answering the following questions {private messages are allowed if for some reason you don’t want to share with the class}. Also, feel free to pass this along to your friends and create your own surveys!
1. What is your favorite of the 5 senses?
2. Do you believe in the existence of an “other half,” the idea of a “soul mate,” a veritable “perfect storm?”
3. What is your favorite sound?
4. What would you do {professionally} if you could do anything you wanted, no questions asked?
Because I’m heading into town on August 31st for a two week stay in beautiful Two Rivers. That’s right, my letterpress dreams are about to be realized at the amazingly wonderful Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum!
Do I need to back up at all? I know I mentioned Hamilton in my post about my road trip and then, sadly, I dropped the ball and never blogged about it. Well guys, I went to Hamilton and I fell in love.
My sister and I arrived in Two Rivers after 16 hours of driving and a less than pleasant night in Chicago, but our spirits were high once we saw our hotel’s proximity to Lake Michigan. Though Kel has no interest in type or printing, she was a trooper and stuck it out for our nearly two hour visit to Hamilton, which I suspect was possible thanks to the promise of cheese curds for lunch.
The type museum is housed in a portion of the Hamilton Manufacturing Company compound and the facade boasts large blocks of what I suppose is not actually wood type, but appears to be. Manning the desk was Jim Moran, a friendly gentleman whose love for printing probably trumps my own. I spent an hour and a half wandering around gasping in wonder and geeking out with him over anything and everything – including his archival process. When I realized that Kel was probably bored to tears, I wrapped up my visit, but not until I became a member of the museum.
Jim offered us some suggestions on places to eat and things to do while in Two Rivers and told me I’d have to come back to use my membership for discounted access to Hamilton’s press room. I left with my head full of letterpress daydreams and spent the rest of my time in Two Rivers fighting the magnetic pull that the museum most certainly had on me.
The membership to the museum included a digital replica of a wood typeface, and when I made it back to Philadelphia I received the email from Jim containing the file. He mentioned how nice it had been to spend time chatting with a kindred spirit and wished me well. Being the awkward but endearing young lady that I am I sent him a gushing response thanking him for his time and saying, “I feel like the next time I come I’ll have to spend a month in Two Rivers, and then just spend every day perusing your type. Honestly, I would love to do that, and I have the free time, so if you’d have any interest in apprenticing me for a month or so, I would do everything I could to get back there,” and then later acknowledging what a geeky fangirl I felt like for even suggesting such a thing.
As it turns out it really is true that it never hurts to ask, because this opened up a dialogue between Jim and myself hashing out the details of an apprenticeship. When I sent the initial email I was so embarrassed and terrified and expecting to get literally no response, so this exchange came as quite a relief.
Last Monday I received the official email from Jim accepting me to apprentice for two weeks in September at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. While the museum has seen many visiting artists and their students for instructional sessions, this is Hamilton’s first foray into apprenticeship, and I couldn’t possibly be more elated to be the lady to hold the honor.
The neighborhood I lived in as a little girl was filled with kids. There was never a shortage of children to play with, and they all became something like family. When I moved away I didn’t think twice about leaving all these neighbors behind – probably because I’d always felt like something of an outsider – but I find myself reminiscing about them these days.
Yesterday I got a call from my mother about a kid I’d grown up with. I’d more or less forgotten that J. was in an accident a month or so ago which had left him paralyzed almost completely, so when my mom told me that he was in rehab at a facility in Philadelphia I was a little shocked. She said that his brother had stopped by the house last night to let everyone know that J. was in good spirits, that he was starting to regain some movement in his arms, but that no one really knew what to expect – they just wanted to get as many visitors to him as possible.
Since I live in Philly my mom thought I might like to stop by. I was nervous, not because I’m unfamiliar with quadriplegia {I briefly dated a quadriplegic in 2008} but because I hadn’t seen him in at least 7 years and I wasn’t sure I was ready to walk into a room where he was existing so differently than the last time I saw him.
Anyway, the long and short of it is, I went. I wouldn’t have recognized him if someone hadn’t pointed him out, because it’s been so long, and he didn’t recognize me. I don’t know what else to say about my visit, except that it was surreal. In front of me was this man who had been like a brother to me, except now he was 25 or 26, and now he couldn’t move his limbs, and now I had to carefully read his lips to understand him because the ventilator made it difficult for him to speak.
There was a moment when I smiled at J. and he winked at me, and in that brief moment our childhood flooded back to me. I remembered the game of truth or dare we played where someone {probably R.} dared him to unhook my bra, he was the first boy to ever do so. I remembered the time we all skinny dipped together in R.’s pool. I remembered so many days and nights spent watching our siblings play together.
I stayed strong the whole time I was with J. I stayed strong as I kissed him on the cheek and walked away. I stayed strong, but now I am alone in my apartment and all I can think about is how tragic it is. He was always so smart and kind and wonderful to be around. What happened to him could have happened to me – to almost anyone I know. I am crying tears for him now because I know that in every interaction I have with him in the future I am going to have to be strong.
There isn’t much of a point to this, it’s just that I need to get it out. And I would like for you all to think positive thoughts for J. and his recovery. And please, please please please tell everyone you love that you love them every chance you can. Please live life to the fullest. And please, help me to be strong for my friend.
108 days. Wow. It’s been quite the roller coaster ride and, true to form, I’ve been really bipolar about my feelings about unemployment. For now {and for the last month +} it’s a really fantastic experience and I’m loving every second of it.
The downside of this has been my slacking. Have you noticed that I haven’t updated this blog in nearly a month? I certainly have and I’m kicking myself for it. It’s just that I’ve been so busy! How do you people have time for jobs!? I can’t for the life of me figure out exactly when I’m supposed to squeeze in real work.
I’ve been filling my days with volunteering, therapy, playing in parks, helping my friend Sue in her studio, road trips, printmaking classes, rooftop BBQs, Didion snuggles, sandwich eating for Unbreaded, bike rides . . . the list goes on and on.
Anyway, what I want to say is, I’m sorry I’m slacking. I promise I’ll update about my road trip soon. I’ve got potential big news about the Hamilton Wood Type Museum and my little stint with breaking and entering at the Forevertron. It’ll be worth it. Stay posted, ya’ll, the good stuff is to come.
I have a soft spot for good, clean packaging design – and designers get bonus points for something with a vintage look. I suppose that’s not uncommon these days, but when I saw the feature on Portland General Store {and the companion women’s shop} on The Dieline I was seriously short of breath.
The packaging is reminiscent of the “good ol’ days” – simple and to the point. There’s no need for flashy designs or excessive color, and the lack of both of these things delicately emphasizes the equally minimal product.
Creator Lisa Brodar is a one woman assembly line, creating not only the product itself but also the packaging and presentation. The Dieline quotes Lisa saying: “I’ve always been interested in health and well-being, and that spilled over into the choices I made when I started Portland General Store, which focuses on high quality, organic, and vegan products using as few chemicals as possible. I also have a background in marketing, web development, and advertising, and a BFA in Illustration, all of which have been valuable assets to the growth of Portland General Store (all design, product development, and packaging are done by me). I’ve incorporated a vintage pharmaceutical look to my products that is reminiscent of the past when there might have only been one general store in town to get all of one’s goods.”
I’m eyeing up the men’s shop for both myself and my gentleman. Scents like “wood” and “tobacco” sound like they’ll send me on an olfactory journey through my childhood; a combination of my Pappy, the log cabin in his backyard, and the room at the back of the house filled with tools and sawdust. Thankfully Brodar’s prices are reasonable so I can order a few things guilt free!
