a great big KIND thanks goes out to Nate Williams creator of the site Illustration Mundo ‘where illustration gets all the love’ for asking me to do a little interview for the site.

if you are not familiar with Illustration Mundo, be sure to look around. it is a great place to learn from a community of illustrators as well as find inspiration and interesting work in all sort of nooks and crannies.

every once in a while i get a request by the terrific art director Irene Gallo at TOR books to illustrate one of the short stories showcased on TOR.COM.

this time it was for a short story called The Cockroach Hat : A literary love story written by Terry Bisson

it is quite a fun little read that crack you up on your most ironic day.

here are some of the submitted sketches and the final piece.

it’s always a delight to work with Irene.

i am happy to announce that i was asked to submit a piece for the show  EARTH: FRAGILE PLANET that opens this friday June 4th at the Society of Illustrators. the exhibit will have over 100 powerful images from the world’s foremost illustrators, addressing the current environmental issues that we face today.

here is the image that will be in the show

along with The Seeder puppet

here he is being fitted for his crate. i know its a little ironic that a wooden crate had to be created in order for him to be shipped. but at least the crate will be able to be used a multitude of times.

i am not a big believer in having a statement alongside my work, but being that one was requested here is what i sent.

I no longer live on the small farm I was raised on and now that I have children of my own, I wonder how I can teach them all that I learned while planting and harvesting the fields. I wonder how I can instill in them the values of knowing where your food comes from, that you have to replenish what you take. I wonder how I can plant the right seeds in their minds and give them the foundation to nurture those seeds so they can one day share those seeds with others around them.

last week i was honored to be part of an event that took a look into the the idea of what illustrators and art directors are doing to expand their work beyond the traditional printed page. the panel consisted of Anita Kunz, Yuko Shimizu, Christoph Nieman, Bridgid McCarren Art Director of HOW magazine, and Tyler Darden Art Director of Virginia Living magazine.

having anita kunz introduce my work the way she did was a highlight of my career. she was a  huge inspiration in the beginning to me. Yuko clearly has an amazing ability to teach, and her personality just glows. Christoph is an entertainer! easy to talk to and has an insight and clarity that is admirable. it was good to see Brigid McCarren from HOW again and to hear her challenges of designing for designers put things into a different perspective for me. Tyler Darden is a gentleman who reinforced that well thought out, executed and designed promotions can cut thru the endless solicitations he receives and can make an impression.

i was told there were 700 students in attendance for the symposium…

i have to admit having lunch, diner and sharing a panel with the likes of that group made me feel a little out of my element but talking with all of them was pretty natural (even for this farmboy)

there were some good points brought up about collaboration and how many are built upon strong relationships and even friendships, and having your preparedness help put you in the best place when opportunity is ready to intersect with your work.

some good innovations were featured with such things as hanock piven’s face making app for the iphone to the innovative They might be giants business growth and the idea of taking content to the marketplace. i spoke on a few of the animation collaborations, along with mumpuppet, target giftcard, books, and specifically the artalog and the collaboration between Magnet Reps and Frank Sturges Reps. and i ended with an inprogress collaboration between myself and my son.

i also learned that savannah is not the town you want to forget to take a camera to… beautiful!

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.

The book was officially released last week on Feb 9th! you can pick up a copy of it wherever books are sold. as well as amazon.

here are a few of my daughters favorite pages.

Here is the book trailer that was put together for the book, provided by Random House.