Fashion gone awry (or "THAT'S RACIST")- a serious post.

Okay. So I thought it was pretty lame when American Apparel started carrying real live vintage items in their stores. I already have enough frustration in my life for the overpriced "thrift" stores that snatch up the best bets from the Salvation Armies and Goodwills of the world and resell them for more than it would cost to buy the brand new equivalent. I am all for nostalgia, but I am not going to pay more than I would for a new shirt for one that smells like my dead grandmother's closet. I also just think it is lazy design to literally repackage old stuff as your own. All I ever do as an artist/designer is steal from other people, but at least I have the courtesy to filter it through my own lens and make something new.

When I walked into the Scoop Men location in the meatpacking district (430 W. 14th St., New York, NY 10014) yesterday, I saw the sort of retro hipster stuff I have come to expect as the norm for NYC fashion. But Scoop Men is also selling used leather belts with new lacquered belt buckles featuring album covers and logos of 70's greats. I have been fixating on Out Of The Blue lately, so it caught my eye from a mile away and I had to investigate. At first I just thought it was a crime that Scoop was using the novelty of "vintage" to sell a shitty old belt for $300 to some dweeb who would probably only be able to name "Mr. Blue Sky" out of the ELO catalog and only under duress. And then I took a closer look at the belt itself:






Seriously, Scoop? Did no one in the process of this belt making it into the store kind of notice the Confederate flags all over it? This is New York, not Alabama, and I would have hoped that someone would have thought this was maybe a faux pas. I figured the odds of such an obscenely priced FAIL being sold were slim, so I came back today with a camera to document the disaster. Amirite?

Okay, I lied.

First another update- this one about my biggest project in the works.

I really need to get on the ball with the Sasquatch poster. I like what I've heard of The Pica Beats so far, and I'm crazy excited to get the chance to do a poster for them. The prospect of screen printing it is more than a little intimidating, but I am going to try and keep things relatively simple with just two colors. I want to give photo emulsion a try though, so I guess I'm going to be turning the bathroom into a darkroom for a day.

The general concept is still in flux, but my two main visual inspirations are the covers for a couple of my favorite EPs. I want to go for something slightly twee yet haunting, and so I immediately though of Belle & Sebastian's "3.. 6.. 9.. Seconds of Light" and My Bloody Valentine's "Glider."

No one writes about the woes of being an awkward teenage girl like Stuart Murdoch. I bought a reissue of this at about age 16, and I still remember all the words to "Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie." The liner notes had an eerie little story about a boy in a copy shop that tied into the grainy, blown out photo on the cover. It's one of my favorite B&S covers still, and I wish I had my copy here with me in Brooklyn so I could reread the story now. I have some photos from some recent springtime adventures I might try playing with in Photoshop as such. I want to make a sort of damask and then use that as the first layer of color for the photo.

This EP was my introduction to My Bloody Valentine, and I listened to it compulsively. I love that the couple kissing on the cover is so distorted and abstract that it was only after many cumulative hours of staring at the cover that I realized what it was. I have a photo in mind that I want to work with to a similar effect for the top layer of color. I've been doing some stuff lately with using a lot of tiny lines. It makes my eyes spin, but I like how some of it has been turning out. I'm thinking big and abstracted with swirly text in a deep blue....

Here is a portrait I did recently using the kind of lines I am talking about. I did this drawing of my friend Jazz for a flyer but then ended up reworking it as desktop wallpaper for my laptop. All of the swirls were done in Illustrator though, and for the poster I want to sketch and ink everything by hand and then go to a copy shop to get it resized for the screen.



Okay, now I'm really off to vector some skulls.

REBOOT

Busy busy busy. I want to start using this again to keep track of projects and help me start thinking about how I want to set up my future portfolio site. So here are some updates.

I've been doing some stuff lately for this kid's concert series- NYC bands cleaning up their lyrics and playing matinee shows for hipster parents and their offspring. The first flyer was kind of maddening to pull together (series artist's block + being mad sick), but I think it came out okay.



The series is being sponsored by CMJ now too, so I did a quick banner ad for the upcoming show. It was kind of rad to see something I did (even if it is just a dinky banner) on a legit website.



I am trying to come up with some ideas for a permanent logo at that size for the CMJ site. I was playing with some Craig McCraken-ish ideas for the first flyer that I ended up discarding, but I want to try and revive those for this. Or something at least. I drew a little monster guy in my sketchbook who I think is pretty cute, but I haven't found a job for him yet.

But first- vectoring some sad skulls!

Bad news, good news.

So I lost my café job. It is a bummer, but I will be able to scrape by for a while until I can at least find something part-time. I am not totally sold on another café job, but the hours were convenient. Except when they weren't. Having to get up at 5:45 every weekday morning was definitely a strain on my social life. I am also not too fond of being on my feet for eight hours straight or doing the same lame tasks ad nauseam. But this is why I am going back to school.

In awesome news, however, we finally got the new website up and running! aimeewilder.com is officially open for business. Buy some wallpaper or at least pass the link around. Fingers crossed!

I fail so hard at blogging. But at least it is because I have been crazy busy. Since my last post I got an awesome internship working with an amazing designer (Aimée Wilder), and that plus my regular job has been adding up to 12 hour work days. It's totally worth it though. I'm learning so much about both the design process and the business end of things. Aimée is so much fun to work with and is all about collaboration. It's so encouraging and inspiring. I can't wait until her new site is up and we can start selling wallpaper.

I've been trying to do a little freelance stuff on the side as well, but I've stopped hunting for jobs and have only done ones that have come to me (I don't really have the time for the craigslist scene and I don't want to get too bogged down).

Last week I did a flier for Jessie for her Slam Savannah project and another gig flier for Lieberman Management.

For the Slam Savannah flier I liked the action phrases of the copy Jessie sent me and wanted to make them really stand out. I thought about doing something playing off the word "slam," but then decided I wanted to do something more in an old school comic book style. I browsed around the internet looking at stuff like old Action Comics covers and some of the soap opera style newspaper comics (Mary Worth, Rex Morgan MD, etc.). I found some free fonts (DNW Comic Sans) and played around with some filters in Illustrator to get the Benday dot effect.

For the gig flier I ended up going with a similar vibe, but I did it in color and used vintage sewing patterns for inspiration. I was going for a 60s mod/psychedelic look and think it turned out okay. The lettering was a pain in the butt to do, but it was really the central focus of the flier so I couldn't skimp too much.

Now that I've finished both, I'm feeling a little listless, but I have so much to get done for my college applications I can't waste too much time taking a break.

New things.

I finally hooked up my new scanner. One less thing to be an excuse for why I am not being more productive. As a test, the first thing I scanned was this (acrylic and marker on cardboard):
There is some blurring around the top of the image, but this is infinitely better than the digital photo I took right after I finished painting it. I haven't really painted in years and never painted that much to begin with, but I have had a box of cheap acrylic paints sitting around for a while. I saved a ton of cardboard from when I bought my bed and finally decided to use some of it.

I have also been determined the last few days to do more freelance illustration and graphic design. I need things for my portfolio and more money so it is a win/win situation. Since my freelance activities had dropped from a trickle to nothing, even half a job is an improvement. Today I exchanged some emails about a job for a gig poster and did a quick design in Illustrator based on an old photo:

I am totally jumping the gun on this, but I like how it turned out. Fingers crossed. Even if it doesn't end up being used, I think it is a decent first try at a gig poster.

starting again

So I got a new job, a new internship, and a new apartment with three new roommates. I have two diverging plans for future education and employment and three months to put them into action. I am hoping that writing in this will help me to focus and keep track of what I am doing with my time.

On my walk to work I pass several clothing stores on 5th Avenue. Yesterday I noticed all the window displays had changed to the winter lines. I thought about the scene in The Time Machine (the 1960 original) where the scientist sees the passage of time through the changing of the dresses in the shop window across the street (you can see it here on youtube).

I need to make some progress, yo.