Hot Cheetos and Toffees: The Things Students Say

Yes, at times it can be a thankless, 20-hour a day job where you may want to pull your hair out, snap pencils in half and make your syllabus billboard-sized and in all bold, italicized type. But we love it, anyway.

Just kidding… but sometimes it feels that way

Sometimes you have students that just want to squeeze through on as little as possible. Maybe they never cared about learning anything about art, or at least didn’t care about learning what you had to offer. But, thankfully, they’re balanced out by others who enjoy and appreciate learning and who (if you’re lucky) have a great sense of humor, as well.

Here’s a great card Blake got this semester from a couple of his students at Bowling Green:

Last semester, I was graced with a similarly sweet treat: Life Drawing students brought me Hot Cheetos and Toffees (since they couldn’t find Takis) to our final critique in honor of our “class song” by YN Rich Kids. This song perfectly described our night-class sojourns to the library coffee/snax shop to attain junk food sustenance and coffee to get us through the evening.

I’m also fond of students writing in their evaluations that I could “be more batman-like” in the “areas for improvement” section and that I am “like Chuck Norris.”

My other favorite highlights from the above evaluations are:

“…lighten up on the number of projects, damn.”

And, listed under “Weaknesses”:

“By the time I felt like I had a good understanding of the processes, we moved on.”

Isn’t that the point in a survey course?

Another student last semester made me a sweet little felt Christmas tree ornament for me filled with lavender that I carried around for weeks. Blake called it my “Hannah-nip.”

I had some very thoughtful students last semester at Murray State who took the time to write out detailed comments like the one below. I always love reading that my courses are “a lot of work” but that they learned a bunch.

In related news, this article from the onion cracked us up yesterday: Professor Deeply Hurt By Student’s Evaluation.

Teachers and students alike, hope you all have a great end to your semester!

p.s. Totally aware of the typos on the evaluations form and the card, but I dealt with it.

Kitchen Printshop Project, Part IV: Life is Short! So Get to Printing!!

If y’all recall, over the past few weeks I’ve been exploring friends’ at-home printshop/studio spaces across the country! We’ve already seen the fascinating spaces of Hope Amico in California and Ann Flowers-Gosser in Illinois, as well as the beginnings of my own printing space in my very own tiny apartment kitchen!

Today we’ll be looking at The Little Blue Chair Press, owned and operated by Hope C. Johnson! Hope and I were students together at Louisiana State University, where she earned her BFA in Graphic Design and Printmaking. She and her friend TahJah Krauss were always lighting up the printshop with their fantastic smiles, winning personalities, dedicated work ethic and serious printmaking skills! They lifted my spirits and provided a welcome break from some of the riff-raff that would infect the printmaking studio at LSU at all hours of the day and night.

Since graduation, Hope’s been keeping very busy! She’s married with a beautiful little one and a thriving letterpress business based out of her own home! How she manages all of that with a smile, I’ll never know, but I email interviewed her to find a little more out about her daily life and arts practice at The Little Blue Chair.

Hope shares with us here her love of life, family and printmaking as well as her appreciation for a daily schedule and living every moment to its fullest! So, grab a cup of coffee and enjoy this peek into Hope’s home printshop!

1. So, it’s been a long time since we’ve talked! You’re gradumawated now! And you have a hubby and an adorable little one! How do you have any time to work?!?

Time to work. Before I was a Mama, it was just my husband and me, both in school, both living off of whatever crakers we had in our booksacks, etc. Getting home for 7:00-8:00pm was a good day. Finishing the day’s work and prepping for the next day by midnight was normal. I was never used to looking at the clock.

Even during school, I had three printimaking courses back to back in the same lab, with the open lab to follow. So, I worked as much as I could, ate when I was hungry, went home when I was sleepy (or couldn’t take it anymore). With a bebe, the biggest difference is EVERYTHING being on the clock. I was never much of a scheudled person, but too many moms and happy babies conveninced me that schedules were the way to go. …especially when compared to the moms and babies who are not on a schedule.

So, with a little training (for the baby and myself), Finn wakes around 8:30, naps from 11:00-1:00 and again from 3:00-5:00. He goes to sleep at 7:30. HE IS A WONDERFUL SLEEPER. I honestly think I just have the best baby. I know we worked towards getting him on his little routine of sleeping through the night and being a happy nap taker, but seriously. He’s amazing. The pregnancy and labor and everything was just amazing.

So, with his schedule in place, for a printing day, I prep everything I can before he wakes up and when he’s awake. He entertains himself pretty easily. When he naps, I turn a box fan on high to buffer out any noise, and I get to printing. I’ve learned based on the job, that I can get out about 200-300 runs per naptime.

Once a week, I have a baby sitter that allows me to focus fully on the creative end of printing, the sketching, the designing…. printing with one eye open is easy, the dreaming is not. I HAVE to allow myself to have a creative outlet. Sometimes, it’s just sitting outside and thinking about the things I want to do! It’s definitely an adjustment, but I seem to be managing. I can’t wait to teach him how to print!! He’s heard those “clunk clunk” sounds of my press from the womb, so he ought to be used to the smells, noise, and all the goodness!!

2. What kind of projects do you take on for your studio? Do you normally take on commission work from specific clients? Or do you create lines of products that you sell to the public?

Both, but nothing too large, yet. I generally do custom work for clients. Most of my clients hear about me from Pinterest or blogging or internet searches. I do have an etsy shop I started up a few months ago. I’ve done decent with it, but definitely plan and hope to grow.

 

3. How do you feel about the art/craft divide? Do you get to make much “art for art’s sake”? Or do you feel it’s all one and the same?

Well, my husband is building me a studio attached to our garage. Once that’s in place, I definitely will be inspired to do more art for arts sake. I had more time before baby to do more art for arts sake, lots of it for his room. I’ll be setting up a place for silk screen. I want to do more relief printing. Honestly, it’s the space that’s stopping me at this point. So as long as I continue to annoy my husband until he builds, the sooner the studio will be there! =)))

 

4. What’s a typical day in the life of Hope like?

HAHA. I did a stop motion film project for a graphic design class “the day in the life of Hope.” I’m usually up by 6:00, well awake. I like to sit for 30 minutes. The husband knows not to talk to me for at least a half hour. He’s usually gone to work by 6:30. I do a few house wife work…dishes, laundry, start dinner (crock pots are the best).

By 8:30, I’m ready for the day, started and/or prepped for any printing or designing. I’m then greeting by a sweet smile, who is also ready for the day! It takes a good 45 minutes to feed him between a bottle and fruits. He loves fruits and veggies now!!

Usually, it’s the morning time that I run any errands. …or we will entertain. I’m back by 11:00, just in time for his nap. I take advantage of his two hour nap and work as much as I can. He’s up around 1:00, feed him again. While he’s up, I’ll try to finish any house work I left out on. We are outside a lot now that it’s warming up. He loves to be outside. I can put him in his walker, he’s content. I’ll sit there and draw, etc.

Nap at 3:00 …working and/or cooking and/or any type of productivity. He wakes at 5:00. Michael’s usually home by this time.

On Monday & Wednesdays, I have a bootcamp class. I worked out a good bit before pregnancy, so I’m getting back in the game. Finn loves bathtime. He’s asleep by 7:30 to 8:00.

Then Michael and I continue to catch up, talk about Finn, our days, etc. Sleepy time! Then the next day begins. It sounds so regimented, and it is, but I feel very much exactly where I need to be!!

 

5. What kind of equipment/supplies do you have in your studio? What else ya got in there? Snacks? Glitter?

My studio, currently, is COMPLETELY packed with all kinds of goodness. There’s no telling what I’ll find in there once I move out to my backyard studio. I have old arts & crafts I put together when I was 10 years old! I have a corkwall of projects from school, letterpress samples, art…art exchanges.I have a pie safe full of paper, envelopes, and inventory items. I have a shelf full of ink and tools for my press. Currently, I just have a tabletop C&P Pilot press. I recently purchased a tabletop stack cutter. It’s no Guilletine cutter, but it works pretty great! I would LOVEEE to find a C&P Old Style Press. I have some silk screen supplies, just no dark room. …ONE DAY.

6. What/Who would you say is your biggest inspiration on your work today?

Well, actually, my brother is probably the biggest inspiration. ….among others. My brother was killed in a car accident March of 2012. He was an amazing person. It’s hard to describe him without sounding so generic. He was special. He left his amazing attitude towards life within me. We were so much alike. He didn’t care about anything that didn’t matter. He only did what made him happy. Right now, what makes me happy is my family and making art. So I’m just going to do that. Sounds so cliche to say life’s too short… But from a much broader perspective, it only makes sense to do things that make your soul sound. So if it makes you happy, you be happy.

Thanks, Hope, for sharing you studio life, space and experiences with us! You are surely an inspiration to working artist-mommies everywhere!

You can see more of Hope’s work on her website, The Little Blue Chair, and in her Etsy Shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/THElittleBLUECHAIR.

She also has a Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/LETTERPRESSANDSUCH.

Weekend Travel Journal: From Ohio to Detroit

I finally gave in and decided not to force myself to carry around the beautiful, but gigantic pretentious sketchbook I’ve been working in as of late. I’m still drawing in it at home, but it’s too much to lug around all the time. I have, instead, opted for a small folio Blake constructed in the Japanese Stab binding style for my travel sketches.

Here are a few recent doodles in it starting with some views from the laundry mat and segueing into sketches made during our visit this past weekend to the fantastic Detroit Institute of the Arts. DIA is huge! And it has a really wide ranging collection, plus some great contemporary exhibitions and a theater. We saw ancient art from all around the world as well as samples from pretty much the whole of Western art history and a great collection of Shirin Neshat‘s photography and video work that had some interactive components.

Our trip to Detroit on Friday was made in honor of my 28th birthday. We ate lots of good food (mostly meat!) and saw a tremendous amount of art. And, best of all, Detroit’s only 1:20 away! So I definitely see more trips in our future. As per usual, Blake and I spend countless hours at museums and never seem to make it through it all! So I know DIA deserves another visit, and I’m sure there are plenty of other worthy museums in Detroit that require our attention, as well.

They Say It’s Your Birthday: From the Self Embarrassment File

Birth, April 21st, 1985

So, it feels self-indulgent to waste this time and go through my old photos and try to identify at least one for each year of my life. But I did it anyway. I told Blake I was working on this post, and I didn’t know why I was doing it, but that it felt a bit narcissistic. He told me it was okay to be a bit narcissistic because I’m an artist. Maybe it’s not “okay,” but it is, perhaps, “inevitable.” As an artist, I guess it’s a good idea to take a look at the lens every now and again. Dust it off. Check for scratches.

Perhaps, I should say that I am being more self analytical, investigative and just curious about the question of “how have I changed on the outside?” The inside is another matter entirely. Yet, I do feel that my core is the same from as early as I can remember. My painting/drawing professor Sandy said that we make art about the same core things our whole lives, even if the way we represent them changes. Since making art is as much or more a part of myself as any other daily activity, I feel the same holds true for my overall character. But I can hope and try to get better with age.

Good things about getting older: perspective, more even keel, happier, snarkier and husband.

Bad things about getting older: miss friends, varicose veins, move too much, summers will never be the same.

Soundtrack for this post.

A lot of these photographs are funny to me now. Most of the self portrait shots are from times when I was feeling down for one reason or another. I seem to enjoy glaring a lot. And when I’m not glaring, I’m squinting to smile. I developed my glare pretty early on, as far as glares go. My first word was something akin to “no,” after all.

Some of them were taken for school projects/paintings/drawings. I still have some gaps to fill in in this timeline. Dates are estimated, and most of the images are pulled from my Flickr stream, which I started in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina to share photos of our damaged home/neighborhood/city/hearts with friends and family elsewhere.

Middle school and early high school seem to be largely missing from this timeline. As is most of elementary school. I’d have to go through old photo albums at my mom’s home in Georgia and scan a lot of things to fill in those gaps. I’m not very good at remembering how old I am in most images of little me–or elementary or middle or high school me, for that matter. At least my birth year conveniently predicted my grade level for a while, which made things a bit easier to remember (i.e. in 1993, I started 3rd grade; in 1996, I started 6th grade.)

My actual birthday is on Sunday, April 21st. Right smack in the middle of Earth Day and Hitler’s birthday. I’ll be 28. On Friday, we’re helping BGSU students screen print bandanas for a local elementary school’s field day. Then we’re headed up to Detroit for a nice meal and to stay in a beautiful art deco hotel that Blake got a room in for almost nothing. We’re going to explore museums/galleries while we’re there and on the way home.

The Early Years: 0-3

 

 

I used to make sculptures in the back yard out of bricks and sticks.

The Early Years: 3-5ish

6 Years

7-9 (?) Years

10-11 Years

I had to pee really badly when they took this photo. Didn’t realize until afterwards how much I show my feelings on my face!

12-13 Years

14-15 Years

15-17 (?) Years

My first car.

Senior Prom.

18 Years

Oh, college dorm room bathroom. And long hair. Never again, long hair!

And then this happened…

When I caught myself on fire freshman year of college. Here, and elsewhere…

19 Years

20 Years

21 Years

22 Years

23 Years

24 Years

25 Years

26 Years

27 Years

28 Years

In Other News…

I’ve been busy working on my many mini jobs: working on a website for a photographer, packaging and dropping work off to sell at art-a-site! gallery in downtown Bowling Green, working on getting a Chandler and Price tabletop press up and running at Les Cheneaux Design (pics coming soon,) making a new falcon linoleum block print (the Bowling Green State University mascot animal,) and crafting/finding/photographing a plethora of new goodies for our recently revived Etsy shop. Here’s a few samples:

See, No Evil Here Woodcut Print

Maps Travel Journal

Ankylosaurus Lithograph with Watercolor

Oh! And I’m starting a new crochet wall hanging project I was commissioned to do. Pics of that coming soon, too!

Kitchen Printshop Project, Part III: A Peek into Ann Flowers’ Studio

Okay, so it’s not just “Ann Flowers,” it’s “Ann Flowers Gosser” now. But “Ann Flowers” is just so cute! She was even a “flower girl” at my wedding. Obviously, over-qualified for the job, but thankfully she still agreed to do it! So, she’ll always be “Flowers” to me. But that “Gosser” guy seems pretty cool… He built her flat files!

For this continuation of my Kitchen Printshop: Peeks into others’ home shops, I’ve got some pictures of Ann’s home studio. Ann is an amazing, hard-working and overall crazy-nice person. We met at Frogman’s Print and Paper workshop and shared our anxieties about open portfolio, not posting enough on Etsy, and general art-nerd-breakdowns.

Ann is constantly inspiring me with her blog, where she features “studio tours” of other artists spaces (obviously stealing that one!,) updates on her art-making, Etsy treasuries and other Etsy stuff (her shop: http://abeautifulparty.blogspot.com/) and other posts about artists she likes, popular culture, and her adorable bunny rabbits.

In addition to sending me some pics of her space, Ann was also kind enough to answer some questions I sent her, So I’ll post those below with her responses. Enjoy!

1. Do you miss the sunlight in your studio? Or do you prefer not being around too many windows? (I know I can get distracted looking outside sometimes!)

My last studio had a window and while it was nice to have that kind of light it made me so restless! I would sit and try to work but I would feel guilty like I needed to be taking advantage of the nice weather and go for a bike ride. But if I went on a bike ride I would feel guilty and think I should be in my studio working! It was a never ending cycle. Now I have a yard so I just go outside and work when I need the sun.

2. What do you usually watch/listen to while you work?

Lately I have been watching a lot of true crime shows while I work. It’s making me so paranoid! I try to listen to podcasts when I can and music when I feel like singing loud! My poor husband’s office is next to my studio do he gets subjected to a lot of rap concerts. : )

3. Do you work best in a cluttered environment or an organized environment?

I definitely work best in an organized environment. Unfortunately it’s rare that my studio is organized, although I guess there is some sort of organization beyond the clutter. I wish I could have a housekeeper just for my studio….and the rest of my house…

4. If you could go anywhere in the world to do a studio residency, where would you go?

I would go anywhere as long as all my best art friends were there. When I am with you and Blake and all the art gang I truly feel invincible. I’m still waiting for us to start that artist commune we always talk about. I guess it would be cool if it (the art commune) was in Sweden or Australia. I’m liking a lot of the arts that are coming out of those places right now.

5. Does it always look like a birthday party in your studio!? It’s so cheery!

Yes!! It truly does. My whole house looks like it’s just waiting for the party guests to arrive. Balloons and banners have always been my favorite decorations so why just use them at party time?

6. How much time do you get to spend in your studio? Do you have a regular schedule? Or just go in when you can/when you get the urge?

I wish I could organize a regular schedule for myself. I’m just in there when I can be. The nice thing is that I always want to be in there so as long as I’m not at my day job you can usually find me making a yarn Pom Pom or gluing tissue paper to boxes somewhere in the house.

Thanks so much for sharing, Ann!

P.S. This is our 101^st post!

The Little Civic That Could

Eek! Just spent $500 in repairs on the old civic, but I think it was money well spent. The nice men at the garage did a bunch of the work for free since I was already going in deep on repairs on such an old vehicle and getting 4 new tires. I think I’ll follow the Car Talk advice and take them some brownies, following, of course, the proper brownie to mechanic ratio.

The car is a 1997, and it’s been with me since 2001 or 2002. Before that, it belonged to my fantastic Aunt Pe. It’s lived in California, Washington D.C./Virginia, the country of Panama in Central America, Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky and now Ohio. It has over 207,000 miles on it, and it still runs pretty well.

After Uncle Cole passed away, Aunt Pe wanted to hang onto his Jeep and so she passed the Civic on to me. At the time, I was driving a 1984 white Volvo station wagon. It was a good around town car, but it probably wouldn’t have been able to stand the trips between Louisiana and Georgia that I started taking all the time once I went off to college at Tulane. Plus, we found out the Volvo’s undercarriage was completely rusted out. Mom ended up donating it to an artist friend who was taking off for New Mexico or something to start a new life in a Teepee. No joke.

All I really remember about the woman is that she had a daughter and she was only wearing one hoop earring. I think I spent the whole time we talked to her just starring at it. Wearing just one hoop earring seemed pretty damn cool to me.

I digress. In any case, fixing a few of the creaks in the Civic today has made me even more conscious of the other noises going on, but hopefully I can get to them at some point. Blake and I would be just fine with 1 car most of the time, but since I’m still applying for jobs all over the country and we might have to live apart for a short while if I get one of them, it’s good to have a back-up vehicle.

The body is a mess from people having wrecks with it while it was parked (I’ve thankfully never been in a wreck myself.) Hit and run types of things when I lived near a bar in New Orleans. The windshield is spattered with tiny cracks from highway driving from Baton Rouge to New Orleans behind trucks for years, and it developed an obnoxious mysterious leak just into the passenger side floor a few months ago. Thankfully, I believe I found the source of the leak (the windshield and/or behind the side view mirror on the passenger side) and have sealed it up.

I’ll probably give it a good cleaning this week inside and out. I feel I owe it that!

I certainly didn’t intend for this whole post to be about the Civic, but I guess I’ve blabbered on just about long enough for now. It really has been a good car. It was my only vehicle from 2001-2011 when Blake and I got the Kia Soul together. It made countless trips from New Orleans to Georgia, and went all over the place for printmaking conferences including to Chicago, Kansas City, etc. Later, it became a commuter vehicle for bi-weekly trips between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and sometimes Lafayette, Louisiana.

Blake and I shared the Civic for all of our driving for the last several years of that time period after his Toyota was totaled by a driver not paying attention in New Orleans. Thankfully, Blake wasn’t badly injured and the insurance paid out, but they didn’t pay enough to replace the Toyota. It’s another car that would have lasted forever if not for that unfortunate turn of events. At the time, we were really struggling, so I told Blake we should just share the Civic and save the insurance $ for a down payment on a new car later, when we really needed it.

The summer we finally decided it was time to get a second car (the Kia,) the civic had a ton of breakdowns, exploding radiator coolant and stranding us in all manner of tiny, auto-shop-less towns across the country. Blake even made a series of Prints about it called Our Summer Adventure.

These are “No Prints” and Screen Monotypes, processes he learned while studying with the very sweet and talented Lynwood Kreneck at Frogman’s Print and Paper Workshop.

It is such a nice feeling when we get in the Kia to go on a long trip and we don’t have to wonder if we’re going to break down. I probably shouldn’t be so paranoid about the Civic, but I think it’s just at that point in its life when pretty much every part on it has had its share of bumps and scrapes and general wear and tear. The worst part of it all is that we’ve had some bad luck with Firestone mechanics and the Civic–especially with our distributor cap, which we had put on incorrectly twice. This most recent issue with the Civic was also a related issue where a wire just came loose.

Hopefully, through these most recent repairs, I’ve found a mechanic in town to trust with the Civic upkeep. At least until we move again, which could be anytime and to anywhere. I feel like, at this point, when it does die, I should give the civic some kind of fantastic funeral. Send it off to sea on a burning pyre…

In the meantime, hang in there, Civic. Hang in there just a little while longer.

Kitchen Printshop Project, Part II: A Peek Into Hope’s Studio

Vandercook Universal

Although I do have great access to a letterpress in town, I wanted to have the ability to print a little bit at home, too. I decided to start a Printshop in my kitchen. I shared some pics of my Kitchen Printshop Project at the end of last month.

I then asked some friends to share pics of their home shops. My friends Hope Amico in Oakland, California and Ann Flowers in Dekalb, Illinois got back to me with some pics of their great spaces! I’ll share Hope’s here with you first. She also made a post about her shop on her blog, here: http://gutwrenchpress.blogspot.com/2013/03/shop-tour.html.

I met Hope when we were both studying Printmaking at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. I was always impressed by how much she got done! She runs a great monthly Postcard mailing list, and she always seemed busy printing up a storm on the letterpress, sewing, and working in her sketchbooks.

You can sign up for her “Keep Writing” Postcard subscription here: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr. For just $2.50 a month, you get a postcard custom made by Hope mailed directly to your home!

You can see more of Hope’s wares in her Etsy shop, Gutwrench: https://www.etsy.com/shop/gutwrench

Type cabinet and ipod docking station. Gotta have the tunes!

Hope’s Printshop Story:

A year ago, most of my studio was in storage boxes in a suburb of New Orleans and I was in an apartment in Milan with 3 other students, printing on a Gocco press while they slept.  I knew I was moving to the Bay Area when I returned to the US but the other details were unclear.

Inking station

A friend of a friend was also making the cross country move, with a Vandercook Universal One. I was a printmaker with a press and they were looking for housing to share. That September, our moving trucks met in Oakland and we signed the lease on a corner of land that included 3 buildings, notably a beautiful refinished garage with skylights.

Prints in Progress

It took us a few months to unpack and test the press and to accept that our shop would be a work-in-progress. The shop doubles as a music practice space too and motorscycle-parts-storage. Slowly we arrange, work, arrange.

Future silkscreen and papermaking area

Overall, we are pretty lucky. We have a large wooden workbench for inking and spreading our assortment of unorganized furniture. We have lots of room to grow and beautiful type to use. On sunny days, and most days are sunny, we can open the garage door a little for a sliver of light. Ben is in school and I work 2 or 3 jobs so we print about one day a week on average. This summer I suspect there will be some more thoughtful organizing. I have papermaking supplies and some silkscreen materials too. I have been focusing on making monthly postcards and occasional custom jobs, so we arrange things as needs arise.

Hope’s studio, expanding desk space

When I’m not printing, I work in here. This is where I keep projects-in-process, materials, ideas, and books. Even in here, the music equipment shares space. I could probably line my walls with shelves and fill them with hoarded paper, finished journals, postcards. Once a week I clean it up but it naturally returns to chaos.We’ve only been here six months, but I can usually find what I am looking for. This is also the bedroom I share with the ever-patient Andy, whose guitar sneaks into the photos. My work has been creeping across the room threatening to swallow his desk for years. Even with so much space, supplies expand infinitely. Flat spaces become workspaces. The kitchen table is another place for cutting paper, folding while watching movies. Sinks have dishsoap and lava soap. Working at home.

I’ll post again soon with pics from Ann Flower’s lovely shop! I’d love to see more of y’all’s home work spaces if you’re willing to share!

Orange Barrel on Etsy + Blake’s New Website Design

I started an Etsy shop back in 2009, posted a bunch of items, and made a few sales. It was fun! A great way to clean out our inventory of prints to make room for new ones! However, through grad school and the years of working multiple, time-hog jobs afterwards, I largely ignored the shop.

When I first started, I named the shop “Nonchalant Peach,” which is a username I often use for myself–a sort of inside joke because I am in no way, form or fashion “nonchalant.” Major Spaz-Mokey, is more like it! And the “peach” is for my Georgia origins.

In any case, as my relationship with Blake blossomed into our eventual marriage, we also developed a professional partnership, Orange Barrel Industries. Through O.B.I., we organize group exhibitions for the Southern Graphics Council Conference every year and we usually organize other shows, portfolios and events, as well. This year, we already had a group exhibition of “Key” blocks and layers called “MilwauKEY” at SGCI 2013 in Milwaukee, WI and we worked with a variety of institutions in the Nashville area to present a mini-conference of our own called the Nashville Print Revival.

As our relationship grew into a partnership on a variety of levels, I soon converted the shop from selling my personal prints to promoting both of our works. Unfortunately, at the time, changing an Etsy shop name was a non-existent option. All a seller could do was to start a new shop and hope to redirect customers. I didn’t want to lose our reviews and any minimal following we’d attained, so we stuck with the “Nonchalant Peach” for a while. I did go ahead a reserve another shop name, “orange barrels,” however. By the time Etsy users were able to change names, they still couldn’t combine shops, so by reserving my shop name of “orange barrels,” I’d effectively barred myself from ever being able to use it.

Yesterday, I decided “the hell with it, what am I waiting for??” I converted “nonchalantpeach” to “orange barrel” singular. Not that any of this matters… but it’s all a part of trying to make us a bit more cohesive.

I read a great article on the Etsy Blog about “branding.” A lot of it seems silly, but I want to improve, so I went through with it, anyway. I made a list of 20 (okay, more like 40!) terms to describe our shop–what it is, what I want it to be, what we want others to think about it. Then, I reduced the list to 10 and then to 5 terms. The final 5 I’m still not sure about… but it did give me some things to think about.

relevant hand-crafted ecological prints with personality

I’ll probably never be fully successful with Etsy because more than wanting to make a “product” of some kind, I want to make quirky little artworks. I do make some art pieces that are more “product-like” than others, but they all still consume a lot of time and contain a lot of personal touches to them. If I were a real buisness-woman, I’d probably bend my work to be more salable, but instead, I feel like I’m just going to keep putting my stuff out there and looking for the right audience! I guess my audience would be people with a sense of humor who care about my use of recycled materials (let nothing go to waste!) and who appreciate hand-crafted, professional prints. We do have our MFAs, after all! We went through years of training to do what we do, and I hope it shows in what we make.

Anyway, Etsy, I’m ignoring you no more! I revamped the look, went through some “branding” exercises and photographed and posted some new items, such as these mini semi-blank notebooks:

And in Orange:

April Showers!

I also posted a one-of-a-kind version of my new linoleum cut print, Tea & A Set for just $20! I printed this at Les Cheneaux Design on their Vandercook 2 Proof Press.

The Tea & A Set was a commission request from my mother for a friend’s son’s wedding. All she told me was that they “like Tea,” and this is what I came up with. You can see some sketches of my ideas in this earlier post and an image of the carved block here. I love doing little commission works like that! Just leave me a comment with your email if you’d ever like to request one!

We also still carry fine art prints in our shop and will add some of our hand screen printed, embroidered T-Shirts soon. I just need to find some models to photograph them on! Or a good way to set them up on the wall.

In other recent Webby news, Blake and I just redesigned his website, http://blakeanthonysanders.com/, and got it posted! Here’s a couple of screen shots of the design. Drawings appear over the dino forms on the left when you hover on them. Thanks to the free Jquery Javascript library I just learned about, I can do all kinds of neat stuff like that for our sites now.

Google Mapping My C.V., Part II

A few days ago, I turned the exhibitions list from my curriculum vitae into a Google map. It was so much fun, I decided to add in print collections around the globe that have my work in them as well as input my professional experience.

I put the finished product up on my “Press” Page on my website as an interactive C.V.

View Larger Map

KEY

• Exhibitions
• Collections Containing My Prints
• Professional Teaching Experience, University Level
• Additional Professional Experience

You can easily create your own maps on Google. Go here to learn how: http://support.google.com/maps/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=62843.

“Fail Harder,” and Other Thoughts From My Big, Pretentious Sketchbook

So, have any of  you Mad Men fans out there seen the documentary Art & Copy? I found it at our local library a couple of days ago and really enjoyed watching it. They interview a variety of ad agency creatives about the business and their career, honing in occasionally on  big campaigns such as Nike’s Just Do It, which began as a quote from a guy on death row, and the now ubiquitous Got Milk?, which almost didn’t make it pass the grammarians.

You can definitely see the genesis of “Don Draper,” “Peggy Olsen” and others in a lot of the men and women interviewed. And it was full of wonderful little tidbits that are inspirational for designers and artists alike. Please forgive my slight paraphrasing in these quotes because I couldn’t write fast enough, but one of my favorites was,

“I’d rather deal with a tyrant any day than with a committee. Committees are, as a general rule, not willing to take chances… the whole point of the committee being there is to share the blame if something goes wrong.”

Since art school/art education/school in general is so rife with committees, I found the quote above particularly truthful.

I also enjoyed the statement that,

“Great advertising almost always starts with something true…”

This was said about the Got Milk? campaign. The previous campaign, Milk: It does a body good, ran commercials that involved athletes running a marathon and then gulping down a glass of milk–which is a terrible idea! Instead, Got Milk? succeeded because it was a common sentiment/statement for that obnoxious moment when you’ve poured out a bowl of cereal, carefully sliced up strawberries, and then realize you have no milk. Damn!

The idea of a seed of truth being the genesis for a great ad applies in works of art as well. I’m constantly questioning what my work is about, if it gets any message across, and what it does (if anything) besides being a messenger.

As usual, I’ll overload you with a few more paraphrased quotes from the movie below, interspersed with images from my recent sketchbooking in the biggest, most pretentious sketchbook ever. This sketchbook is beautiful but giant! It was a gift, and it’s filled with high-quality handmade watercolor. It’s bigger than my torso!

It’s well bound, and it should be a joy, but I wish it were a bit more portable–it barely fits in my messenger bag. Plus, it’s a pain to drag it everywhere and pull it out whenever I have a little thought or note I need to write down. I feel like I should have a foot long pencil to go with it, or something. Basically, it makes me look like the biggest full-of-myself capital “A” ARTIST every time I pull it out. And you never feel like what you’re drawing or writing is good enough for the paper. I was almost tempted to cut all the paper out and use it for more finished drawings/paintings, but I resisted. I’ll get through this book. And the next one I work in will be the size of an index card and filled with shitty, thin paper that causes each page to bleed onto the next.

“Fail Harder.”

“Most creative people are so damn insecure that they want to think they know everything but they know deep in their hearts they’re just in deep trouble from the minute they get up in the morning. So if you can tell them, ‘that’s the way you’re supposed to be,’ it’s just kind of liberating.”

“Fear is a very powerful depressive–it’s a business of rejection. Things are getting killed all the time by you, by your partner, your client…etc”

“I felt like I was a little boy who saw the emperor naked…In art school, I saw the ugliness, and I just had to fix it. It’s a curse.”

“Creative people need a duality of feeling secure enough that they can be risky and put themselves to work…”

And In Other News…

Here are some of Blake’s recent demo prints from his Introduction to Printmaking course at Bowling Green State University. In these whimsical prints, Blake is showing various Monoprinting processes.

And the best part, the leftovers on newsprint: