i recently finished up a series of 13 labels for Blasted Church Vineyards in Canada. i worked with the fine folks at Brandever who masterminded the campaign. The labels tell the story behind the name of the vineyard.

The Blasted Church name is derived from the true story of a little wooden church, first built in 1848 in the gold mining town of Fairview.

At the turn of the 20th century, Fairview had a population of 2,000 and was known as the largest city north of San Francisco.
When the mine was depleted, people drifted away and the town declined.

By 1909, Fairview became a ghost town.

The church stood alone for nearly 20 years until a determined team of parishioners decided to relocate the church to Okanagan Falls.

Their plan called for a blast of explosives inside the church, in order to “loosen the nails”.

Save for losing the steeple, the plan succeeded.

Here is the dismantled church being moved.

Rebuilding the church.

The plan worked. In 1929, the church was given a new life in the community of Okanagan Falls – a stone’s throw from our vineyard.

This wine pays tribute to the commitment, passion, steadfastness, and vision of the people that moved this church over eighty years ago.

i was honored to be asked to speak to the entire art department at Taylor University here in Indiana at their Career Symposium yesterday. Nathan Warstler, a luthier and woodworker from Syracuse Indiana, spoke about his work that has spanned over 30 years, the first instrument he made was a Dulcimer with shell inlay that he put in with a knife!! Beautiful instruments, and amazing craft. talk about meticulous.

the other speaker was Scott Dombrowski, professor of art and digital media at Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois. Scott had inspiring advice on balancing work and family and creative passions, he has found a way to run them parallel to each other in his life. and he said he had 40+ chicken in his back yard, awesome!

then i got up and tried my best to ‘illustrate’ how my work from college to now (15yrs) has evolved, changed and developed. for better and worse. trying my best to show how even terrible failures can help you grow beyond expectations. 

i wanted to post a little bit more behind the scenes info on the book. in particular about the hand lettering that was done for the cover and for all the location names throughout the book. initially everyone wanted to find a way to integrate the visual style of vintage site-seeing postcards of days past.

in the end we went with a solution that complemented the complex illustrations without competing with the body copy of the book or the openness of the images. i hand lettered the location names with a map pen and Higgins ink on vellum to create the line art that was passed onto the designer Emily S. who keenly dropped in color to allow the lettering to fall right onto the page and complement the images and keep things visually appealing. here are a few close ups of the ink work. and i must admit there is something very satisfying feeling and hearing that pen nib drag across the surface of the paper.