Update June 4, 2012: The next steps for the Goodie Monster are to find a home in a Portland area school, to make an impact at a local level directly with kids by providing a framework for eating healthily. Check out the Goodie Monster on Facebook, or contact Mark Jacobs for more information at mark@goodiemonster.com.
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At long last, Mark Jacobs and I have been hard at work the last few months working on figuring out the next steps for the Goodie Monster. Now, we are ready to raise money to make more Goodie Monsters and share more healthy snacks with people. We’re really excited about this and hope that you are to, so check out our campaign on Kickstarter.
Goodie Monster Plans Afoot
Last year my friend Mark and I made the first ever Goodie Monster. Since then, we have been planning, scheming, dreaming, plotting, and strategizing our next move. The last few months have been full of big ideas for what the future might hold for the Goodie Monster.
The long and the short of it is, we want to make more Goodie Monsters that will serve happy and healthy snack food to passerbys, and we have been working on making that come to fruition. Here is a sneak peek of some of our thoughts that culminated in our soon-to-be-launched Kickstarter Campaign. Stay tuned!
Will Return Momentarily
Blogging here at The Bureau will return momentarily, after I’ve moved continents and made a trip to the nearest IKEA. The next electronic transmission will be broadcast from Wonderful Copenhagen, so stay tuned!
The Bureau Goes Abroad
Portland, Oregon, is a city for creatives, and being born and raised in this pioneer state fills my heart with pride. From the wild nature and diverse landscapes to the laid-back bustle of a small big city making a quiet but reputable name for itself, there aren’t many places that could trump Portland as a place to call home.
But if ever there was a place to compete for my territorial pride, it would be Denmark. At first glance, you might be lured in by the pickled herring, but I assure you there is more to this land than stinky fish and long, cold winters. There is a social structure that, hopefully, enables security for the masses. There are traditions and a language that I grew up with but have slowly felt slipping away from me as I grow older. And of course, there is the majority of my family, firmly planted in the country from whence my mother came.
So, after many trips to the motherland over the past two years, I’ve decided to go Transatlantic for a year, give or take. Sure, I’ll miss many things about Oregon, but in return for my continent hopping I hope to be rewarded with new challenges and experiences that will make me a better designer, business owner, and participant in this world. Come March, I will have arrived in Copenhagen to start an adventure that I can’t wait to decipher. Literally.
What does this mean for The Bureau? The Bureau will continue abroad as it has here in the US: partnering with talented small businesses and design agencies alike to make meaningful and beautiful things together. Whether these partners are in Portland or Copenhagen or Timbuktu is not of concern to me.
One of the main reasons I quit my agency job two years ago to become an independent designer was the freedom that it affords. Working on a variety of projects, and working hard – but also taking time off and seeing other parts of the world. So, with passport in hand I am going to make good on the mantra of freelancers that ‘you can work from anywhere’. Be assured, The Bureau will thoroughly test that theory.
True, some projects require a designer to be on-site, but many do not. And a few in-person meetings or “did you see so and so at such and such” will be replaced by emails, Skype (isn’t technology great?), and a schedule on my end that accommodates U.S. working hours. Need a European correspondent on a project? Detailed in-person notes about the state of the siesta in Spain? I’m your girl. Plus, I promise to keep you updated on my growing collection of Danish buttons.
So, plan your next trip abroad to see Copenhagen and I will take you on a tour of a city rife with design, culture, and yes, stinky fish. Or follow along with my adventures here on my blog. And as anyone embarking on such a journey needs, wish me luck!
Rent My Spot in a Shared Studio Space
Want to fill in my seat while I’m away on European adventures? My desk is for rent as part of a 4-person shared studio space in downtown Portland, Oregon. Located in Chinatown, enjoy 3rd floor views of the city, giant windows, a building full of talent and a vintage globe for planning your own adventures. Interested? Contact Darin at darin@refreshmedia.com for more details.
SHARE: Interpretive Music Felt Collage Thingy
This Monday I spent the evening participating in an event called SHARE, organized by Kathleen Lane. I was excited to be invited, meet some new people, and spend time making something that wouldn’t involve staring at a computer screen.
The format of the event involves bringing together a group of creatives, giving them a one-word prompt, and then seeing what they make over the course of 2 hours that is related to the word. At the end, each person shares what they have made in a small, intimate setting that reminded me a bit of opening presents on Christmas eve: you never know what you’re going to get next, but more importantly you’re just thankful that you’re in good company.
I arrived at 6:30 to meet some of the other participants and eat some snacks (ginger chews can be long lasting and invigorating). After a few minutes of mingling, we received our prompt word: CRASH.
Immediately I thought of a new song I had been listening to called The Balcony by The Rumour Said Fire. There is a section towards the end of the song with some cymbals and base drums crashing. CRASH, I thought. This song sounds like crashing, but with other words. With my new framework of how to approach the prompt, I started listening to the song on my iPhone to see what I would find. After a few listens I decided to focus on the lyrics that felt like “crash” to me. These are the four phrases that I picked.
0:34 – So your mouth tastes like sunshine
1:15 – And the sound of your heartache
2:43 – The sound of when your hair falls down on the pillow late at night
3:03 – This song sounds like crashing, but with other words
3:06 – So take my hands love, there’s a burst inside our minds
After choosing the four phrases, I wanted to make a visual representation of them to put in the picture frames I had brought with me. So I sketched shapes that could be easily converted into a pattern for cutting felt pieces and making abstract images. It might seem convoluted, but at the time it made perfect sense inside my head. Plus, there wasn’t really time to stop and analyze it, which is part of what makes events like these so much fun. I spend most of my waking hours questioning and analyzing, but there was no room for that tonight!
When it came my turn to share I played the song, and as each phrase came up in the song I revealed the felt art and held up a piece of paper with the lyrics written on it. The less talking that I had to do, the better! Even though I felt very awkward presenting, people seemed to enjoy it, and one woman said she became verklempt. And indeed, she did look quite verklempt. I, too, feel verklempt sometimes.
And that is how the human brain works. Mystery solved.
Additional Notes
I did a little bit of preparation beforehand by gathering some materials to bring with me (2 hours isn’t much time to make something from scratch). My materials list included:
white paper*, black stiff paper, glue*, thin wooden rods, various scissors*, pens, brushes & acrylics, pipe cleaners, thread and needles, tape, 187 (+/-) googley eyes, 4 IKEA picture frames*, and a box full of felt*. I also had a few ideas of what I might make – a mobile, some flags, or something in a picture frame. I ended up using the items marked with a *, but my idea of making a mobile or flags flew out the window within 30 seconds of receiving the prompt.
Here are the 2 process pictures I managed to take. Otherwise I was furiously cutting felt while tapping my foot to that very catchy song.
Timing wise I spent about 25 minutes figuring out what lyrics to focus on, 25 minutes to sketch the designs I would use as patterns to cut the felt with, and 65 mintues cutting and assembling the felt pieces. Oh, and of course 5 minutes at the end to clean up my mess!
SHARE #14 participants included:
New Participants
Kate Berube, illustrator/author
Meg Drinkwater, designer/maker
Erin Gardner, designer/maker
Joan Hiller, painter
Mette Hornung Rankin, designer
Cymbalman, musician
Liz Scott, writer
Cara Ungar-Gutierrez, out loud thinker
Returning Participants
Jim Brunberg, musician
Tim Combs, artist
Trey Corkern, photographer
Kathleen Holt, writer
Giuseppe Lipari, painter/sculptor
Lorna Nakelle, painter
Leann O’Rourke, photographer
Liz Prato, writer
Nora Robertson, writer/poet
Laurence Sarrazin, designer
Mark Saltveit, comedian/palindromist
Seeing what everybody else created was fascinating; a diptych illustration of two crashes a person had been through, jewelry molds that had been mashed together, a man donning a cymbal outfit and playing a song, short stories about love & loss & finding, and man recording all sorts of sounds that he made a song out of, and last but not least a palindromist who created the singular version of the word oops – all within two hours. If you let yourself be free, interesting things will happen.
SHARE is organized by Margaret Malone and Kathleen Lane. Recaps of each SHARE event can be found on their blog.
Recycled Raindrops Update
Last month I posted about making some raindrops out of DEX/Yellow Pages for a paper show called Portland Paper City. The show was recently dismantled, so I gave my raindrops a second home hanging above my studio desk. I might be tempting the weather gods, but I wasn’t going to throw 6 gluesticks worth of work into the round file. Here are a few shots of the 7 large raindrops in a cluster.
Calling All Timbers Fans!
Recently I had the opportunity to spend a few days with Jelly Helm Studio working on two giant fan murals for the Portland Timbers. You’ve probably seen the official billboards and branding around town, and soon there will be a billboard featuring four fans chosen through popular vote by the general public.
When the namesake of the studio first told me about the project I had about 3,817 internal conniption fits thinking about the size of file it would generate, and then got down to it. Which meant placing photos of 1,200 soccer fans into two 10×15 foot and 7×21 foot murals.
To get into the right mindset, I wore my Timbers-themed outfit, held my own miniature photo shoot and did my best impersonation of a sports fan.
After spending a fair bit of time with the fan photos, the giant grid of Timbers support began to grow on me. I’m not a sports nut, but seeing the range of soccer enthusiasts, from grizzled grandpas to sweet little girls, showed off one of the better sides of sporting culture – solidarity. Here are a few of my favorites… Continue reading “Calling All Timbers Fans!”
Recycled Raindrops
In addition to some paper ponies, I also submitted some recycled raindrops to the community contribution show Portland Paper City. What possessed me to spend hours with a gluestick (well, six gluesticks) and a DEX/YellowPages, I do not know. But the result was nine 3D raindrops that float on a wall.
Continue reading “Recycled Raindrops”
Paper Ponies
Recently I submitted some 3D paper ponies to Portland Paper City, a collaborative art show. All around Portland there are old hitching rings in the sidewalks from days gone by. Tied to some of the hitching rings are toy horses and ponies, thanks to The Horse Project. Whenever I see them they make me smile, so when I was asked to contribute something “Portland” to the show it didn’t take me long to decide on these little curbside ponies. It didn’t hurt that between ages 6 and 16 I spent 98% of my waking hours drawing horses, thinking about horses, and riding horses. Yep, I’m a horse girl.
(click on the images to zoom)
Being a horse girl, you can bet that I researched this thoroughly. There is a great Flickr set called “All The Tiny Horses” from which I picked my charges. I hope to draw some more of the horses later, because frankly, I spent wayyyyy too many hours as a child developing my equine drawing skills to let it go to waste. Yes, and after that I’ll re-read all of Walter Farley’s books!
The process of putting my pony drawings into 3D was a challenge. After some prototypes and a short stint of being sidetracked by origami, I decided to put the ponies on display using an open-air type diorama with a built in stand. Below are the dioramas without the stand.
Here is a shot of Charging Steed mounted to the wall at the show.
