Countdown to Grassroots: Two days..

Chicken Chokers are also playing this week in the alley at Felicia's Atomic Lounge from 5:30- 9:00 p.m. on Friday. If you cant make the Pourhouse or the Sunday gig, this might be a good opportunity to see the Chokers and get their CD. Have to get a poster going for them for placement at Felicias. I am thinking a less quiet colorway to shift out a little.

Ordered up a nice new epson maintenance tank and matte black cartridge yesterday to complete the outputting of the posters for Grassroots. Also got fiberboard flat envelopes for the prints from Uline (not the standard, Browncor) as they were backordered everywhere else. I am asking for people to register their prints so we can keep track of the edition and also begin to create a list of people that like this sort of thing.

Back on the Shady Grove illustration. I have done something new--which is the grouping of all the midtones into one shape, the shadows into one shape and the high highlights into one shape on another layer, so I can turn them off and on as I go...which makes the doing and editing far more pleasant as I do not engage all the parts and have them move around every time I add something new...so you fix as you go...which is tiresome. The Cornell illustration is at press....and came back as they wanted me to give it a reinforced black (remember this way back). So, I changed the black to 100%K, 60% C, 40% Y, 40%M which will give us a ton more dimension in the final process printing. My original hope was to use a super matte printing ink that then we would dry trap a flat/matte varnish on just the black area (spot) to really go somewhere...but I have revised this detail as I am instead printing cards for myself by creating 2 pms plates that switch out during the job. Should be nice to have a cute card to send to my clients....and if there are left overs, sell next year. Send me your address, and I will add you to my list!

I am thinking of an illustration of Dick Cheney for 911. I truly hope this man in the future, gets put in jail along with the other clown for, frankly, crimes and misdemeanors. Lets remember Nixon was pardoned--but if he hadnt been, he would have gone to jail for essentially, breaking and entering. Kid's stuff compared to this crap.

Also have been looking at reference photos of women who become suicide bombers. Such beautiful and pure girls who, in their unwavering belief, carry out these heinous bombings, bearing the ammo with the belief they are sacrificing their lives for a far more noble goal. And often, their families do not support this change and their final sacrifice. I have been thinking about these people--and the little boys (fifth graders etc) and the women. It is all so tragic.

Big Week

Went up to Brockport to visit K for a few hours...the fam, Shady Grove and me. She was in tremendous spirits with nice friends, lovely studio space and art spaces in general and some pretty gorgeous work. She is studying drawing (they need to do 1000 drawings in the month they are there...no repeats, no real structure)...and she is churning away on that. She is also doing figure sculpture which is very formal and structured with the teaching around relationships of size etc. with the class all working on armatures with plasticine. Sometimes they work from a skeleton, sometimes from the model..and the work that was happening in that little studio was very much college level skill and product. Impressive. She has some very nice friends, all very much part of her tribe.

Thesis done. Bound. In shipping mode. Pictures go to SU tomorrow.
Done, done and done.

Grassroots on the upswing. Volunteers are all in place. Rabbit Run is filling up with folks lining up for a shot at the best camping spaces. Local buzz is that the bigger ticket price is to cover some of the more expensive talent from Australia etc. coming to the festival. Who knows.

Big happenings Wednesday night (Grassroots eve!):
--of course the Chokers at 8:30 at the Pourhouse
--The Talktomes, around 9:00 at the Rongo
--Aceto/Stiles Gallery open that evening too
Schedule it all in...

I betcha the "Wall of Beer" is up and ready to go at the Shure Save to all of our excitement. Never too much beer for this sort of fun.

Little bow to our fellow Tburger, Chris Wofford who is blogging about Tburg>>. It's brand new--and should be a nice slice into the cultural scene around here. Take a look and urge him on. The more the merrier round here.

Click on the poster to see it in a nicer resolution and sharpness.

Grassroots Updates

From the Ithaca Journal yesterday: TRUMANSBURG — The GrassRoots Festival began in 1990 as a small concert to benefit a local AIDS support group. Seventeen years later, it's listed as one of the 10 best outdoor music festivals in the country by USA Today.

Megan Romer, festival marketing director, said it was “a huge honor” to be named in the “10 Great” list by the newspaper on July 6.

“Especially to be mentioned in such company. I mean, the Newport Festival where Bob Dylan went electric, and the Santa Fe Opera Festival,” she said.
The other outdoor festivals picked by the paper were Tanglewood in Lenox, Mass., the Aspen Music Festival, the San Francisco Blues Festival, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, The Quebec City Summer Festival, Summerfest in Milwaukee, Wis., and the Kaslo Jazz Etc. Su

"Tom Clynes, author of “Music Festivals From Bach to Blues,” said of GrassRoots: “Four days and nights of African, zydeco, old-time Appalachian and rock bring the Finger Lakes region roaring into summer...With four stages and lots of room for dancing, the event has managed to maintain a volunteer-based, grass-roots feel while pulling in the top rank of musicians from several genres. A laid-back, dance-till-dawn mentality prevails among the thousands who attend.”

So there. Our little plateau on a top ten list. Who would have thought it?

We were having the usual at the Pourhouse to have the proprietor point at me...as she posted the Chokers poster on the mirror. So much postive feedback from our fellow bar patrons who wanted to know how they could get one, did we have tee shirts? etc...it was all very affirming. Who knows if it was the drink talking...but, I'll take it none the less. Chokers will be selling a commemorative poster at Grassroots...so the little epson that could is chugging away in the enterprise.

Speaking of the Chokers, Chris Wofford, a Pourhouse regular, wrote this wonderful article about them and their coming out with new work. Here is the entire article>>. Here is a little excerpt from his great paper:

The Chokers play their brand of old-time music with a rare energy and presence, often re-tooling old lyrics or casting them aside nearly completely. It's perhaps this counter-instinct to treat the material with stuffy reverence that makes the band so unique and immediate-sounding. Says Reidy in his bio, “We're not re-enactors, we're just trying to carry on ... I've always liked the old songs — mules and moonshine, love and death, trains and food, etc. — and the unadorned hard-edged voices that sing them on the old 78s.”

It's this hard edge and brisk humor that often attracts people to the Chokers. Their repertoire is a mile long, and through years and years of playing, they're pretty well dialed-in by now. The band's sound is marked by a driving four-man rhythm section, trademark ‘air-raid siren' vocals and what they call the “Big Boy Chorus” (all five Chokers singing out). But it's Reidy and Crumm who handle the bulk of lead vocal duty.

See. More wonderfulness from our hometown crowd. The picture above is by Becky Stocking--who covered them at the Great Blue Heron Festival earlier in July. I love the pink shirt and the composition. Come see them live, Sunday from 2:45-4 in the Dance Tent at Grassroots. Buy a tee shirt or a limited edition poster. It's worth the trip. Or see them Wednesday night at the Pourhouse.

Thesis is printed out. Binding today. Phew! We go up to Brockport to visit Ms K. tomorrow. Should be fun.

Later>>

next week: Pencil it in!

Vaporizer

Slugging away on a picture of Shady for a juried show sponsored by the Ithaca Art Trail and the local SPCA, otherwise known here at the Academy as the "Pound of Love". Show centers around artists and their dogs...and though I am not physically in the picture, I am there as I am the hand that is moving the wacom pen on the wacom tablet. Its fun and a push with this image as Shady is multicolored from lilac and lavender to red and blue...more often reading purple...But, she is highlights and shadows for me...a swirl of them...so that is what I am working on now. Maybe some high highlights will be added...maybe not. The type thing is a placeholder for some designed/hand lettered type (maybe scripty like some of the posters in the 20s) which will incorporate a squirrel and a pine cone...Shady's favorite things of all time. Holbein-ish.

I am crazed with love for Holbein. This Taschen book I have been reading and carrying around is great--readable and the pictures are big enough to really look at them. Another Hartford possible thesis is something to do with portraits in the style of Holbein...5 people ones and 5 animal ones. You will hear more later about that.

Next Tuesday, we leave the thesis work for Syracuse plus, leave 4 images for the "Art Barn" which is juried (jurist of one, I think) at the Grassroots Festival which is creeping up on us. I have an ad due for the Ithaca Journal...I was able to get the front cover ad (not expensive--AT ALL)for their special Grassroots circular. So front page coverage for all those folks going to Grassroots who need design and illustration work...or to confirm to those I work with that i am a bit more than mommy with a mouse(even though I am that!). I like the multiple whammy of local ad, art barn etc. Plus, with the added Art Trail engagement, I am getting my name out a little.

The Chokers just came back from playing at the Great Blue Heron Festival in western NY/ N.Western PA charged up for the next event, next Wednesday at the Pourhouse and then their feature on Sunday at Grassroots. Listen to the Chokers>> We are gunning out a teeshirt which will be close, but there is a great screenprinter in Ithaca who is very accomodating. Today is jump day on that and the ad.

It will be pedal to the metal on the thesis as the amended paper was submitted last week but our professor has some personal stuff happening...so we may be very close (very) on the last round, out put and wire-o binding. Nothing new with SU. Nothing whatsoever.And we havent gotten any idea about prework for the classes we are doing, so that is going to be last minute too...and rumor has it there is a book we will need to read. Jeez.

Hot hot and humid. Thunderstorm with lightning directly after Tburg won the game last night 11-9 taking them to the final games...to their delight. They played like big boys and a team. Tight. I miss K. We always have a nice time waiting through the sports thing...

Need to go and wake up A.