So, a crazy thing happened the other day... I finished Jane's book cover. Wooooooowooo! But, of course, I can't show you. You're just going to have to take my word for it. I will give you a teeny, tiny little glimpse of a small part of it.

Jane seems to like it. That's a relief. And, I just sent the publisher, Bryan at Sibling Rivalry Press, the file. He seems to like it, too. Two for two, unless you also count me. Then, it's three for three. I think this is a triumph.

Car Smashed

So, sometime after Jane and I returned home Sunday night (around 10:30 pm) after seeing Portlandia onstage at the Trocodero and before I left for work Monday morning (around 6:45 am), some citizens of the world decided that our car (named Easter Egg) housed something they just couldn't live without. I actually don't know if it was one person or dozen; I just know they broke out the passenger window and left the car an absolute mess.
Here's basically what I found:

In the top left of the photo, I wrote the the following:


Things they took:
1. Altoids tin with backup headphones in it
2. Bluetooth headset
3. USB car adapter
4. Small bottle of lotion
5. Probably some change (less than a dollar)

Things they didn't take:
1. Water bottle (Christmas present)
2. My turtle talisman that sits on the dash
3. My heart and paper crane amulets that
    hang from the rearview mirror
2. Coffee mug
3. Garden/Knife tool
4. Two blankets
5. Umbrella
6. Spare computer mouse
7. Two pairs of gloves
8. Audio cable for plugging in mp3 player
9. A bunch of CDs (they missed the third
    glove compartment)

Things they left behind:
1. The rock they used to break the window.
    (I still have the rock. I don’t know why.)
2. Broken glass everywhere. They broke the
    passenger window, but I found glass in
    driver’s side cupholder where the water
    bottle had been left the night before..
3. An absolute mess of google maps, insurance
    cards, registration information, various car
    manuals and maintenance receipts.
    (Who knew a couple of glove compartments
    held so much.)


I still have the rock. Like I said, I don't know why. I certainly didn't want to toss it back into the park, probably from whence it came (just so it could be used again to bash something). I also couldn't bring myself to throw it in the garbage can when I was at the car wash vacuuming out all the glass. I feel a weird urge to reclaim the rock. From or for what, I don't know. I think I'll put it in our garden this summer.

The Rock

New Year. More Photos.

I'm currently working on a book cover design for Jane Cassady. Her book, For the Comfort of Automated Phrases, is being published by Sibling Rivalry Press later this year. To help with that project, I've been collecting images, taking photos, looking at color palettes, for inspiration. Jane found this clock at the Philadelphia AIDS Thrift Shop. It's genius, though it doesn't work.

Inside the little area to the left of the clock face is a scene with two birds in front of some foliage.

No, this is not supposed to be a snow scene. That's years of accumulated dust! Both disgusting and oddly compelling. Anyway, I've taken about a hundred pictures of this clock trying to get a good picture of the clock face (reflective bubble glass/plastic=grrrr) and the clock as a whole itself. Here's a few of them.

Yes, I even put the clock in our tub to take some pictures. I'm not sure why, though I do love the weirdness of the photos. Anyway, the clock is the primary object I'm obsessing over right now as I try to put together this cover. But, it's not the only image/aesthetic cue. Here are a few others, some offered by Jane and others happened upon by myself.

The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths by Bruce Nauman

Close-up of part of the book cover for The Night Circus

Legend to Marcel Duchamp's The Large Glass

Umbrella cover from a Marimekko umbrella.

Still from opening sequence of The United States of Tara.

That's about it, for now. As I put together images and color schemes, I'll post some of the results--the good, the bad and the ugly.
Wish me luck.

 

Project 7

Hello,
Here's some Philadelphia photos, befores and afters. Someday soon, I'm hoping to get a new camera. In the meantime, my old camera and my phone camera do a decent enough job... Then, there I go, throwing in a little bit of drama.

Before

After

Before

After

Project 6

So, I took an extended vacation from this project. I've been working on this piece for a few days now. It's some absurdist digital collage using a photo I took.

I will probably add some more elements later, hopefully in the direction of making it more absurd. But, for now... yay, I'm finished.

Seriously Project 5 Terminated

Seriously. I say again, seriously. Project 5, I began with such high hopes. Such dreams. Such expectations. Crash and seriously burn, did I. Not that I thought mixing, mashing music was going to be easy, mind you. But, I discovered that I just don't have the extended ear for such an endeavor. I get two clips in and basically I'm done. It happened over and over and over again.
So, here's the shortened version of the train wrecks. I combined the music clips with some pics. Maybe that will help.
(To all of you mashers and mixers out there, cheers to you!!!)

So Far Behind Project 5 continued

As you may have noticed, Project 5 never reached a a conclusion. Basically, work kicked my behind this last week. And traffic stomped on my head.

So, the music project continues through this week... but I expect the payoff to be well worth the extra time and work. Knock on wood and fingers crossed.

(Also, I will double up on projects in a week in the near future to get back on track.)

In the meantime, check out these awesome cupcakes Jane made.

Then go check out her writing here.