Memorial Day Weekend Road Trip

One extra day off the work week?  Oh my gosh, what to do! We quickly hatched a plan to do a one day road trip visiting the small towns of St. Peter, Mankato, and Janesville in pursuit of Coffee, Beer, Wine, and a Waterfall. I was eager to bust out my sketchbook on this outing and test my travel sketching skills. To my disappointment, those with me were not nearly as eager to sit and wait for me to finish my sketch.  Thus, this sketch was done roughly half on site, and half staring at a photograph on my iphone.  The sketch on the left hand side was our first stop at a local coffee shop in St. Peter, and the fermenters on the right are at a brewery in Mankato. I had visions of doing a sketch collage of every place we stopped at, perhaps a bit ambitious, but I am glad nonetheless that these still made it into my sketchbook.

Media:  Micron Pen, Watercolor Crayon, and Graphite

Below are some process photos:

Looking back, the woman in front is what I probably spent the most time sketching, while the man kept shifting and moving - being difficult. This half of the sketch I focused on being more "freeform" while the fermenters I drew in elevation with drafting lines etc. are more "architectural" in nature.

HVAC - an ode to Building Systems

In an attempt to actually "draw" what is on my mind, perhaps this is an ode to the extent that studying for the ARE's are consuming my life right now. Yes, not surprisingly Building Systems is my next test in June. As much as this test looks at the technical aspect of these systems, I can't help but look at these like a fun 3D maze that winds and intertwines itself around my building designs.

This drawing was done by documenting an older building and looking at all of the different systems that had built up over time in layers. The drawing tools used were Micron Pen and watercolor pencil.  The dark black came about by dipping the pencil in water first, and then drawing on the paper with it wet.  The effect was immediate - no need to build up colors to get a dark black, but drawing in this way did lend itself to a certain lack of control for better or worse.  The black dries up quickly and you can feel your pencil stop sliding on the paper and suddenly act more "crayon-like"



Sketching Sweeney's

Since I don't have the time right now to get back into the screenprinting studio (darn ARE's are consuming WAY TOO MUCH of my time) I've been looking to "Urban Sketching" to fill that creative artistic void that I love so much about architecture. Looking back, I've always kept a sketchbook at my side throughout different point in my life, observing the world around me.

Last weekend, as cold and dreary and miserable as it was, we (Chris and myself) took some time to walk over to Sweeney's for an afternoon beverage. I have to admit, this does happen to be one of our favorite places around the cities for a quick gathering with new beers as they become available. Plus, getting to know the wait-staff does make for a friendly conversation.

Daily Earrings

My first earring! My goal was to take a random object we had lying around and show how it could be made into an earring. These quickly became very popular and the second one disappeared.

Ball chain, key ring, and red wire earrings. These were inspired by a pair that a fellow designer/coworker made. I noticed now beautiful the ball chain looked just dangling and wanted to expand on that idea. The ball chain here is draped around the keyring and held in place by the red wire. The key to this earring is that you have to make sure the red wire is wrapped around the key ring and ball chain tightly!

Paper earrings! We had a stack of brightly colored paper lying around. I cut the paper into strips, and then into smaller rectangles (all the same size) and strung them on to the aluminum wire similar to the way I did the duct tape earrings (below).

What to do with all the spare bits and pieces of foam? The quality I love about foam the most is its tension. Here, I poked little holes through the foam, pushed just one ball from the ball chain through, and it held instantly! No glue required. I will say that this required a bit of patience to get the ball through the hole. 

 Duct Tape earrings! You really can do anything with duct tape! We had many beautiful colors of duct tape to play with, and we ran it as a special for a few days. These earrings were made by taping two sides of duct tape together (sticky sides) and poking aluminum wire through the duct tape. As a side note, a guest stole one of my earrings that I gave her to look at. These two images are actually different sides of the same earring.

My final pair of earrings. This was not a material we had on display, but we had a bunch of old record covers left over from our day of using old records. I cut different triangular shapes from the cover (these feature close ups of the artist's face) and then traced the same piece on to the back cover and glued the two pieces together. Finally, the shapes were linked with jump rings. We ran out of studs, so I had to use the only pair of clip on earrings I could find.

All of these earrings were made while working at summer fest as a part of my job as a Design Presenter with the Kohl's Mobile Design Lab with Discovery World. We teach design from everyday random objects and materials. Our focus for summer fest was wearables (anything you can wear, including accessories). As always, we use the cheapest, most random materials available.

Schlitz Park Site Model

A completed site model! This large scale site model was used by the client as a center piece for a press release on a new development.  The top photo was featured in the Daily Reporter the next morning, showing the client and the mayor discussing the development.

Materials: Wood, 1/32" Basswood (detail buildings), backpainted acrylic (River), and Syntex (topo).

The topo was CNC milled (and etched), all of the detailed buildings were laser cut, and the non detail buildings were cut by hand using a scroll saw.

Fragments and Refinements Exhibition Catalog

We are finally self published!!! Follow the link below to order your copy today of the Microcosm Studio Spring 2010 Fragments and Refinements Exhibition Catalog.
http://www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/2248596

SARUP Design Awards Submission

These are the three competition boards that I submitted for the end of year design awards at SARUP. In addition I also submitted a site model, model of the tower, a pronto plate print, screen print, and many 18" x 24" digital prints. This design won 2nd place in the thesis competition and these boads along with some of the prints will be on display in the fall for a show at the Gallery,