Agenda

I'm nearly ready for 2008. My year-end rituals include setting up the new calendar and organizing greeting cards by month. I buy too many. So if you get a birthday card from me it's probably in this photo. But at this stage I'm more pleased with the sense of order (thank you Russel + Hazel and Your M.O.) than I am with the enticing artwork. It's the crispness of the New Year that propels me forward. January will come and go like it always does, but this last week of December is like getting ready for a big event. I'm ironed, polished, and ready to be entertained.

Journey Book

I bought this hand-made book from lovelydesign.com. I've been using it the last few years as Postcards to Myself, a journey book wherein I write my travel itineraries on postcards and mail them back to myself. Though I always pack it, I seem to be too lazy to take my camera with me on excursions. Instead, I've taken to collecting paper ephemera, then gluing them into my journey book when I return. I fashion pockets to tuck my postcards into, like this one from Chez Panisse where we ate last December while staying with Lupé and Levi in San Francisco. I'm desperate to travel again ... it's been a year since that vacation. So I turn back to my journey book to remember previous trips: Atlanta, Seattle, Victoria B.C. I have room left in the book. Just need a ticket to anywhere.

Reverence for the Leaves

Time to share a treasure. Three years after graduation I finally had the courage to attempt to send Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple as well as my favorite poet, a series of paintings I did as a student based upon her work. The assignment was to make a stencil and use it over and over to create a series of paintings with a nice relationship to each other. I made a stencil from a leaf I found, and then created conceptual paintings based upon poem fragments from Alice Walker's anthology Her Blue Body Everything We Know. My series is titled Reverence for the Leaves. Though it took a lot of phone calls and being shuffled around, I was surprised how easy it was to get connected to her assistant, whom I unfortunately woke up one morning. Nevertheless, she gave me her address, and I sent a copy of the series to Ms. Walker care of her assistant—uncertain she'd ever actually see it. Shortly after Valentines Day, 1998, I received not only a card back from Alice Walker herself, but it was a handmade card on construction paper with a photo she took in Cuba taped to the front. Flattered beyond belief, I share it here. 

Letterpressed

Sept. 2002. After picking up my wedding announcements made by a letterpress craftsman in Provo, UT, I dropped by my Alma Mater to catch an illustration exhibit. There were cases of old metal type stored in the back lobby. I was mesmerized and stole a letter V. A theft. A memento. A taxation. Oct. 2002. Honeymooning in Bar Harbor, ME, I called a craftsman I read about in a magazine who makes shadowbox collages with actual wood type.  I thought it would be a fun wedding gift, but they never responded. Nov. 2007. We dropped by a consignment shop that had miscellaneous metal and wood type and I had to get more. A blue rubber band is less attractive than a shadowbox but the V has company now, and to keep it sentimental I picked out our new house number. Since I'm currently in love with ligatures I also had to get the double f. 

McSweeney's Collection Complete!

I'm thrilled to have finally completed my McSweeney's Quarterly Concern collection. It took me a long time to start. I actually remember skimming the first few issues and thinking this is unique; yet not really liking the stories. I actually recall holding boxed issue #4 (the most collectible one) and still not buying it. Seven years later I paid $100 for it. Some collections make you suffer. But McSweeney's also inspires. I am so jealous of Dave Eggers' graphic design achievements on top of his literary success. Just last night, randomly, I was thumbing through the current Print magazine and they had an article on McSwys knock-offs. It was very interesting because McSwys borrowed from older design and text standards, but somehow modernized them. So are copycats truly plagiarizing? Or has McSwys developed into a new idiom? Anyway, from my first purchase in Seattle to the used copies bought from Powell's in Portland, and local Ken Sander's bookstore ... I am caught up! So now I'm keeping a McSweeney's diary beginning with issue No. 1 and I'm going to re-read them all and record the good parts, as well as thoughts on McSwys. That way when I want a good read, I'll know what to skip over and where to indulge.

Green Study

Looks like I've fallen susceptible to current marketing trends in the same shade of green. It began with Mrs. Meyer's lemon verbena laundry products and has culminated in me painting my laundry room the same color, courtesy of Yolo Colorhouse's "Leaf 07." Along the way I have beefed up my Russel+Hazel armada (punctuated by Bob's Your Uncle sticky bookmarkers.) Le Creuset's dutch oven is flanked by numerous other kitchen supplies culled from my favorite local haunt: Hip & Humble. Makes Me Happy pocket notebook by Red Horseshoe. Cooking Light's annual recipes from 2004. Laundry bin by Restoration Hardware. Towel by Target. Suave's Lime Verbena lotion. Golden delicious apple from Utah's finest grocer: Harmons. Will the green madness cease now that I have documented it?

Music as Tree Rings

Each move requires re-establishing the music catalogue. This time around I realized what a snapshot in time the medium represents. I suppose we could carbon-date backward through eight-track to phonograph and realize they demark distinct periods in history. I happen to have the Indigo Girls on both tape and CD; but has OK GO been on anything but MP3? So I realized my cassettes represent basically 1985 (age 12: first tape ... Anne Murray's A Little Good News) to 1998 (Great Expectations soundtrack ... discount rack ... only wanted the Tori Amos songs.) Anyway, I found myself making a bar chart on the floor. Analysis informs me: Queensryche is the solitary Q; I never bought ZZ Top; and that precious Anne Murray collection must be what pushed the M's above all else.