He hunted his cluttered store for a good 20 minutes reassuring me that it was an ashtray with the iconic horse-and-rider that Wyoming is known for. We even talked a bit about Frontier Days, also known as the ‘Gandaddy of em All,’ because it’s the largest rodeo in the country. I grew up with it just across town, and Big Red (the shop owner) took great delight in this.

You can imagine his disappointment when he finally found the ashtray and it had ‘Georgia’ scratched across it. And what am I to feel about Georgia fighting for cowboy credentials? Sorry Georgia. You can have peaches, but please keep away from horse-and-rider imagery. In the meantime, I’ll hold on to this ashtray for you.

Big Red is an interesting man, and if you live in the area I encourage you to find his Carrboro store. I’ve featured some of his designs on this site before. His wonderful photocopied poster for his store, Oddities and Such, is in my post about the hand-painted signs of Carrboro, as well as his open signs with clowns painted on them.

These letters were created during a logo design process this week, but since they won’t be used I thought they would look good here.

For a few weeks now, I’ve been collecting bread clips, and I’ve scanned them to  share here along with a couple of rubber bands. I enjoy the mundane things in life, and what better place to find them than the supermarket!

The bread clips are not actual size.

I came across a friendly forum where folks were discussing their favorites, and I jotted them down as they appealed to me. I figured I could read the backs of the covers if thy were even in stock at the store. (And they have an amazing selection at Vis Art!) When I read Julia the list, I made a quick one or two line illustration of the titles. I thought these were nifty, and maybe worth a bit more time. Below is my original sketch, and some quick digital sketches. All movies I still have not seen.

Keep in mind these are only rough drafts of sketches.

Since the space is exposed brick and plaster, we couldn’t apply the title of the show with vinyl letters as we usually do. We decided to make a “poster” that would have the title, and her explanation of the work. The work strays a bit from photography, her medium of choice, although it still involves the camera. Each is a layered drawing on transparent paper marked with ink, pencil, quache, and even clothe. (Read more about this work on Julia’s site.) She back-lit each drawing, photographed them, and printed them about twice the actual size of the original. The whole process is quite intensive, and my job was to make the poster that fit with the show.

Below is the outcome. The words fade out as you read, mimicing the layered work it represents. From a distance, it appears that the title is rising up.

Thanks to Dave Mello for taking these great pictures at the opening!

I’ve been practicing photography ever since, and spent all of my free time in high school focusing on it, although my resources were quite limited. After high school it would be over 5 years until I’d work in a darkroom again, and then it would be in the context of graphic design at RISD. Now it’s been almost another 5 years, and I am beginning to miss it.

My goal with the photograms below was to create depth through texture, something that typically absent in photograms. I held slides, negatives, plastic sleeves, fabric, glass, and sheets of printed paper at different heights above the exposed paper. Some of them are stronger than others, but as a set I think they are quite interesting.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of old graphics that I’ve taken lately:

This is the screen of the development server at Newfangled after a town power outage.

Here’s the Pac Man screen from the Orange County Social Club in Carrboro, and below is the Donkey Kong screen from the same machine:

Here’s the main screen of a pinball machine also at the OCSC.

Also check out:
Found Type: Providence, New York, D.C.
Kansas City: Aging Signage and Graffiti
Recent Photos From Around Carrboro
DC: Typography of a City
Found Type Photography
Hand-Painted Signs of Carrboro