For the Love of Crayons

All crayons are hand cast by the artist, Christian Faur, creating custom colors to achieve these inconceivable gradations. Lovely.

From the artist:
My earliest memories of making art involve the use of wax crayons. I can still remember the pleasure of opening a new box of crayons: the distinct smell of the wax, the beautifully colored tips, everything still perfect and unused. Using the first crayon from a new box always gave me a slight pain. Through a novel technique that I have developed, I again find myself working with the familiar form of the crayon.

Because of the three-dimensional nature of the crayons, the individual surface images appear to change form as one moves about the gallery space. The images completely disappear when viewed from close up, allowing one to read the horizontally sequenced crayon text and to take in the beautifully colored crayon tips -- all the while being reminded of that first box of crayons.

My Husband, The Architect

The worlds of graphic design and architecture have so many delightful tangents that make my relationship with *boy's career — and his with mine — infinitely interesting. We speak the same language but work on completely different scales and schedules, allowing each of us a unique perspective on the other's work. Usually this dialogue consists of process issues as we each navigate the waters of making design manifest. However, this past week has been full of completions.

My projects begin, live, and end in the span of half a breath compared to *boy's work. As I assembled my portfolio last week and surveyed my completed projects from the last 2 years — over a dozen — the one project *boy has been working on since before we even met was finally drawing close to the finish line. In a way I feel like I've been on this years-long journey with him, remembering looking over his shoulder at a sketch-up model, a design in the making...

The first completed photos from the Hershey Cancer Center at Penn State:

Living in a Digital World

Photos by Hubert Blanz

Where The Wild Fonts Are

Oh, how I love to see people leave the box behind and embrace everything that can exist beyond it's boundaries. Simple, appropriate and really, really lovely hand-drafted type in the new trailer for Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are.














I can't wait to see this. Full trailer here.

Liver Doodles

Many of you know that Bacon is still very much a boy — despite all our best efforts to remedy that — due to a little liver irregularity. After two solid months of blood work and three different vets' opinions it looks like everything is fine and all of this might clear up on its own with a little vitamin supplement. But for now, Bacon remains the other man in the house and this is his throne.

Maybe all that sunshine is more than his liver can handle...

Celebrating A New Beginning

Its been a busy year so far for *boy and I — busy and stressful. I now have three jobs in full swing (the part-time day job, the escalating blog job and teaching two classes) and next week *boy's teaching begins atop a very heavy workload at the office. All this and Bacon still expects serious play time when we are home (or at least serious lap naps while we work).

It's one of those times in life that I'm sure we will remember for many years to come — newly married, working like crazy, tight budgets and watching with mouths agape at the way the world is unfolding around us. But when I woke up this morning I had a different feeling. I wasn't anxious or tense, and I didn't feel stressed or overwhelmed. As I got ready for work this morning I felt excited, almost giddy. Today is not only a new day, but a new beginning — a fresh start for each and every one of us.

There's a reason why a few million people flocked to our national mall this morning before the sun was even up and why tens of millions more around the world will be watching Washington today at noon. That reason is so much bigger than one man placing his hand on a book and repeating a handful of scripted words. That man represents an idea — a hope — that we can begin again, we can start fresh, we can come together and work for a better future.

Today is not about watching a man take an oath, its about being part of a nation focused on a single moment that none of us will ever forget. In the same way, we must all remain focused after the moment has passed...

A Practical Compliment

Since starting our part-time gig over at Apartment Therapy, I've really come to embrace this whole reading-posting-commenting world that is the blogosphere. I read interiors blogs and graphic blogs, food blogs and, yes — for a large portion of this year — wedding blogs. I even email the writers from time to time. I only found a few nuptial sites that I could even stomach, but A Practical Wedding quickly became my absolute favorite.

A few weeks ago, Meg posted a few pictures from our wedding and wrote some truly lovely things. You can read it here.