So I picked a very gloomy Wednesday in October to go to the Lincoln Museum in Springfield, IL. It’s hard to schedule a weekend around a trip to Springfield, so this was a perfect excuse to finally get up to the museum and check it out. I’ve always heard good things about this particular museum, and it did not disappoint. Other highlights from the day: crappy antique malls, orange scones, podcasts, driving along the Illinois River roads, and capping off the night making steamed Mussels. The following images are all part of the documentation that went into my keynote presentation… in sequence. They may not make sense out of context, but here they are anyway.

Jan 28th marks the first Pecha Kucha night in St. Louis. Finally, St. Louis is on the PK Map along with hundreds of other global cities. To answer a few of your questions: 1) No, I’m not exactly sure how to say it and I’m sure in STL we’ll probably say it wrong anyway and 2) It’s a unique presentation style event that’s focused on creativity, each presenter gets 20 slides for 20 seconds each to share their story. Its a great format to get a lot of info from a lot of interesting people in one night… or a great format to make really boring or sales-y presentations end quick. No real rules, though it’s not meant to promote a business directly, but more of an idea.

The lineup is set and the venue is in place, now the people just need to come. I was part of a larger group that helped get this going here, for the first event I helped recruit a couple presenters and did a quick poster. Even did my first silkscreening and printed about 50 and put them up around town. Printing was done at the studio of the fine people at All Along Press.

The event is free, on the 28th of this month. Get there early as it is limited to the first 200 people. More information is available on the pkstl.com site!

1. Fever Ray, Self-titled

Click here to view the embedded video.

Honorable Mention:
Cheval Sombre, Self-Titled
Washed Out, Life of Leisure
Wilco, Wilco (The Album)
Danger Mouse & Sparklehorse

Song of the Year:
Atlas Sound, Quick Canal (w/ Laetitia Sadier)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Abandoned Barn in Brussels, IL
Holga

One of the best things about 2009 for me has got to be my discovery of the area around me. Seems weird to say this after living here nearly all of my life. As a child I rarely left the neighborhood around my home, as a teen it was primarily the communities around me, in college it was the entire city, and post-college it was pretty much all over the US and some trips to Europe. I seemed to skip that area just outside my wider home radius.

On a drive back from Kentucky this summer my wife and I took the extremely long way home, coming home mostly up route 3 in southern Illinois. During the drive, I couldn’t stop thinking about why we both had never made it down there before. It just felt like we had discovered some lost region that was accessible only on a 2-3 hour drive, some under appreciated region that people forget when they trash the area for being flat. That’s where I’ve been going nearly every weekend that I can during the last 2 months. Not only the regions, parks and trails of Southern Illinois near Carbondale… but the area just north of St. Louis/St. Charles, like Calhoun County.

An equal amount of updates to probably occur at jdxpl.tumblr.com, more image based. This will be a collection of latest and old work, design and photos… but not all.

I’ve also been pretty busy the last month helping put together the annual ArtFix event for Rebuilding Together - St. Louis. I designed the identity at TOKY a couple of years back and have now continued on helping the event through being part of the Art committee. This year I helped on the web site and helped gather together many of the artists for this years event, all of which I’m very excited about. I’ll even be contributing a holga print, and will be posting more on that soon. All of the money raised from the event goes to help elderly and disabled people whose homes are in need of repair, the last couple of years have been wildly successful, and looking forward to another great year.

If you’re close to the area: pick up tickets at the site.

I spent my 34th birthday in an old farm house in the middle of nowhere, Kentucky. The goal was for the wife and I to pack up the car with some food, books and the dog — to spend the weekend making things we don’t normally make, reading things we don’t normally read and spending some time on a lake, which we don’t normally do. I was looking for a place within about 3 hours drive and preferably somewhere where cell service was poor, I ended up finding the perfect spot (on vrbo.com) about 10 minutes away from Lake Barkley near a town called Cadiz, KY.

It was advertised with the tag “No France for You This Year, Come to Our Bohemian Home in Ky”, which sold me. Loads of charm, modern furniture, great art and a great collection of books in the Library. Only drawback was that it was a dry county, but we came prepared. Seems in this town largely populated by Mennonites,  that there is a vote coming up whether or not to allow alcohol sales. I wonder how it’ll turn out, but based on the signs in people’s yards of just “VOTE NO”, it seems like they’re going to stay dry.

Mexico, 2007

-

Things are getting back to normal, it no longer takes an hour to type a few paragraphs. Maybe it’s the difficulty typing that explains why I’ve had a sudden interest in twitter. Much more frequent updates on there from me.

Lots of work getting done these days, just not yet sure how best to present it. This includes some work on my new Imperial Craftsman 5 x 8 Letterpress. I’ll also be contributing some work to the 3rd Annual Art Fix Art Auction coming up in November. More information on this will be coming up as well, as in addition to doing work I’m helping print tickets and recruit artists for the event.

At the hospital for most of the night. Head and neck checked out OK (had I not had a helmet I’m pretty convinced i’d be in a coma or worse). I broke the left wrist, which needed to be re-broken at the hospital, and sprained and bruised my right shoulder pretty bad. Shoulder hurts the most. Not having one good arm pretty much made me immobile for four days. That and the percocet dosage limited me to the television to pass the time, where I zoned out watching more television in the last 4 days that I probably have this year so far. We kept Hollywood video in business for another week or so (they really still charge 5$ for a new release??). TV watched included: old Westerns, several cooking shows, The Wrestler, Deadliest Catch marathon, too many cop/criminal reality shows and the entire season of True Blood. I actually watched a few minutes of this show called ‘Miami Social” or something which follows these rich Miami thirty-somethings around with their problems, I can’t believe how terrible these people are and how quickly I hated them, even while on percocet.

Alright so, I’m back at work and off the heavy-hitting pain meds. Looking forward to a smaller cast and shoulder rehab in the coming weeks… as well as shopping for a very powerful front-light for my bike.

Oh and here’s a pic Geoff took when he came to the scene to pick up my bike (thanks Geoff). This is my wife Dawn peeking in to the ambulance where I was waiting to be carted off to.

Click the image above to see the Holga selects from just that region, or click here to see more from Greece from last September. Highly recommended vacation, and it’s definatley on the agenda to go back next year barring anything unexpected.

Very first photo from the trip, after 14 hours of flight and a hectic transport to the hotel.

Just got back from a week long vacation in sleepy St. Simon’s Island, Georgia. First real family vacation I can remember. Most of the ‘vacations’ growing up involved packing the family into a car once a month for a trip to the Grandparent’s who lived in Hannibal, MO.

The shots above sum up the trip: lots of kids, lots of bikes, lots of heat. Overall it was a great time, and Holga shots are in development at the moment.

More information can be found here.
I’m looking forward to see what everyone got — see you there.

The AIGA St. Louis Chapter Annual Meeting/20-20 Show seemed to be a hit, great turnout and everyone seemed pretty excited about all aspects of the event. I printed 20 letterpress posters on Kirsten’s Vandercook that were given away at the event (along with 20 other local designers/illustrators). I am planning on releasing the extras and test prints that I printed for cheap-purchase on etsy in a few weeks. Shots from the event and my work can be seen here.

For the past 5 years I have been casually looking for a small letterpress. Tabletop presses are hard to find, and when you do see them, the prices are astronomical and keep climbing. Printing this job for the AIGA pushed my search from a casual search to a very involved one, and within about 2 weeks of scouring a few sites daily, I finally found one that was in a weekend-driving distance. So I’m heading to Denver in a couple of weeks to bring it home. It’s a fully-restored 5 x 8 Imperial, and if this takes off for me like I hope then the next hunt is for the beloved Vandercook.

Here she is:

Also in big news, two of the sites I worked on last year: Dan Flavin: Constructed Light and The Light Project both were selected for the AIGA National 365 Annual and Design Archives, — the Flavin site also won a National Addy, but it hasn’t been announced yet if its gold or silver. The last AIGA National award for me was the FK Photo site way back in 2005. I’ve always held certain awards and publications in high regards, AIGA National being one of them, so I’m very honored and happy for everyone who was involved in these sites.

Listening to:
Lots of things, its been a pretty good year for new music. But here’s the list I jotted down to remind myself which albums I really wanted to take in an upcoming weekend of 26 hours in a car: american analog set (hard to find bsides), the wooden birds, papercuts (new), pains of being pure at heart, fever ray, jens lekman, crystal stilts (ep), here we go magic, deerhunter (new ep), grandaddy (old), miles benjamin anthony robinson, lotus plaza.

Reading:
In slow motion: Gun Germs & Steel and The Age of the Unthinkable.

Going to:
Denver (see above) in car and in 3 days.
The coast of Georgia & Savannah, for the first ever family vacation.

Thinking about:
Making some hand-drawn type as eps sets.
Playing some washers.
Buying this waterproof lumix.
Not spending any more time than I need to in a hot attic behind a computer screen.
iPhone camera apps.
Cleaning up this blog.
Lakes.

Dealing with:
Being a landlord… or attempting to. There’s nothing fun about taking applications, running credit, rejecting people (the worst), showing property, and dealing with no-shows. Especially when you and your wife don’t really have the time to do it in the most organized and effective way.
Seasonal Allergies.
Water leaking into my house and out from under my toilet.

Sneak peek at some Letterpress posters I designed and printed a couple of weeks back for the upcoming 20:20 project for the AIGA St. Louis Chapter. 20 designers/artists/ilustrators were asked to design 20 posters which will be available at the chapters 20th anniversary event.

I’ll post better shots after the event, as well as linking to some prints and test prints i’ll put up for sale on etsy after the event is over. The event is May 7th at FK Photo Studio in the LBD, for more information on the event: click here.

Wish List: This House

Visit the Blog

Other non-conference highlights from the trip:
Navigating through Teabaggers on arrival
Tata Cuban Cafe
&
Dave Churchman’s Letterpress Warehouse in West Indianapolis. Over 30 years of accumulating (and rotating) wood and metal type, letterpress equipment as well as cuts and caps. My quest for a pilot press of my very own was halted when I found out how much they are now going for (thanks etsy). Kirsten made out well. A few pics follow, more can be seen here.

Speaking of… We just launched a site for the Old Masters exhibit which is still on display at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis. A while back we launched the kiosk, and now that the content and shoots for the exhibit have been finalized, the site has launched. Screens below, view the full site at oldmasters.pulitzerarts.org.

Accident from an old Diana roll.

A recent trip with the Diana turned out to produce a blank roll of film, which is disappointing after I had thought there would  have been some great shots. More to come.

Going through the archives this afternoon. Found a still from a video that never was.