As soon as I was considering life after high school, I had my heart set on Cooper Union. I wanted to make “cool looking shit”, I was good at it and CU was where the best in the world did it. Plus it was in Manhattan, my favorite place in the world and a 45 minute train ride. Plus it was free, and that to me was everything.

I could have afforded to pay for Pratt, or SVA, or RISD; I applied and got into all of them. My parents told me I could go anywhere; and considering my sister was at Amherst College, one of the most expensive schools in the world, and my brother ended up at Harvard, they weren’t kidding. But for me, it was the street-cred that getting into CU, where only 5% of the kids who think they’re good at making cool shit get in, that was so alluring.

I remember attending the info/interested students day thing, sitting in an auditorium, being handed a packet of instructions on cool shit I had to make to prove my worthiness, and hearing the MC, and oldish white dude who was probably pretty good at making cool shit, send us off with a “now go work your little butts off!”

Something about that rubbed me the wrong way. I got it; me the the hundred-odd other art nerds were a bunch of wannabees  and CU owed us nothing. I looked over the packet when I got home, and saw 5 or 6 assignments: draw the plans for a new invention that tells time, paint an interior space with only solid black shapes, render an object as it morphs from one thing to another, and a couple others.

And I let it sit there. I had no inspiration to do it; it felt forced, and I kept thinking of that asshole treating us like sheep, as I had come to think of him. Days flew by as they do, and the deadline was in a week. I panicked.

It must have also been a very hard time in my life, and other things were causing me stress—my brother Matt was a constant source of disruption, I was trying to make state qualifying times for the 50yard freestyle, I’m sure my romantic heart was being torn up by a variety of love interests, and none of my friends from the previous class were around at school; they were around though, distracting me with all the things we loved to do and no island of school time in common to do it. I missed classes and my grades suffered.

So, staring at the pile of assignment sheets, and in a fit of white hot frustration, I punched my bed. I thought I was punching the mattress, but that was just the sheet hanging over the wooden railing. I shattered two metacarpals in my right hand—my art hand. The cast that ended up there shortly afterward prohibited any of the deftness and agility I relied on in my making of cool shit. I did the best I could with my left, but the results were hurried, shaky, and incoherent.

I took the train in and dropped it off a few minutes before CU closed on deadline day, although I knew I was wasting my time. And I was; the rejection letter, probably written by the asshole MC, came a few weeks later. It’s been a source of regret my whole life.

I ended up at a variety of SUNY schools, sometimes making cool shit and sometimes blowing it off, but never really feeling like I was in the right place. Eventually things worked out, once I connected with the right people and found faculty who didn’t put up with my bullshit, and inspired me to actually work. Still, any time I see CU on a resume, or meet people who’ve gone there, I’m confronted with feelings of immense respect, burning jealousy, and nagging curiosity: why were they able work their little butts off when I couldn’t?

Went up to Canada with Nancy and her friend. Stopped at the grocery, got the guac stuff and some burger meat.Chased a few house wrens away. Cleaned the cottage up while the girls made guac. Went surfing at Pleasant, watched Nan and her bud get sweet rides. Got a ticket there and almost towed but that’s fine. My fault. Back to the cottage, ate some Mabel’s pizza, made some burgers. Checked in with the neighbors. Came home to a wide open Peace Bridge, no wait, no hassle. Sky was epic with clouds and light all day. Home now and idling until Twin Peaks. Let’s hope Audrey Horne finally shows up.

I have the app, I’ve played with it, made some icons, and I still don’t get it.

I think folks who use it a lot aren’t fluent html/css coders. For me, it’s a lot easier to do the things people say Sketch shines at directly in code.

Do you use Sketch? Do you consider yourself a fluent front-end coder? I’d love to know if I’m just doing it wrong.

is falling outside my Lyons office window.

 

Icons are everywhere. As the contexts within which we interpret content become more unpredictable, so does our reliance on iconography to communicate ideas and messages. The use of iconography has exploded as dissemination of information must reach a multitude of user contexts. Icons can summarize universal ideas and complex actions with a few shapes.

Icons undergo intense scrutiny. They clearly “work” or “don’t work”. If someone is confused by a message, icons are often to blame. An icon which is not understood may be assigned the undesirable label of “mystery meat”; the stuff found in the lore of public institutions tasked with filling countless sandwiches to feed cretinous populations.

What we are experiencing is the construction of a new, universal language. But instead of taking millennia to evolve, it’s happening as you read this post. Symbols that best express universal messages are hotly debated, not only regarding what index they carry (see Meggs’ History of Graphic Design), but on whether the style they carry is appropriate (google skeuomorphic design for more on this).

My question is, who has the loudest voice as this language is constructed? The answer may carry insights about who determines what, as well as how, we communicate.

This was one of the first techniques I learned when I began art school, back in fall ’89.

It was eye-opening. For the first time, I wasn’t responsible for every nuance that came along. The surface dictated what marks were left. Suddenly, I felt a sense of freedom from that burden of decision in art; micromanaging every line, discrediting hours of work based on unsound logic, those things were no longer mandatory.

I never recognized the role this technique played in my development as an image maker. Maybe the school I attended (SUNY Buffalo) was enamored with stuff built with frottage, or maybe it was the current “flavor of the day” in the academic art world. I never stopped using it, though.

These have been really fun to make and gouache is just the best medium IMHO. I made a bunch of prints of them at the local shop, and after a couple of shows sold quite a few. Contact me if you want one!

The longer you’ve been using an application, the less value you hold to the app developer as a user. Take Facebook. Once upon a time, it was a linear, flowing post stream. If you missed something, you missed it. Now, I have no idea where my posts go or who sees them or in what context. Facebook doesn’t give a dang about me; it’s catering to new users, trying to hook them. It doesn’t want new users to be confused. So it abandons behaviors and functionality that experienced users have become accustomed to, and absorbs whatever stuff the latest shiny hot flavor of the day social media platform might have.

It’s not just Facebook. I love Adobe products, but I feel like they’re trying harder and harder to compete with Sketch and the like. The reason Adobe software is so great is because it’s extremely powerful, and it takes a long, dedicated time to get good at. Lately though, Adobe products seem to be stripping away functionality that may seem daunting to new users, afraid that those users will head to more familiar territory.

Software should reward experienced users, not ostracize them.

Great show. Loved the sax, and seeing it live made me realize how hard it is to pull off solos like they did in the 80s. Not enough people there, which is a shame. We’re lucky they keep coming back and should support one of the most notable, iconic sounds out of that era.

Best month of the year. Each day is wide open. Seems like this June stretches on forever.

Vikings is one of my favorite shows. Great characters.

I’ve especially liked scenes with Harbard lately. He’s an amazing, intriguing character that embodies the mythology and superstition that were rampant in that time.

My favorite line of his came during the last show, “Possession is the opposite of love”. Can’t stop thinking about how true that is. Harbard loves all the women in the village, who are lonely as their husbands are off raiding. Alyssa, one of these women, gets irate, and that’s when Harbard tells her the quote.

I also watch the entertaining “Girls” on HBO. It’s basically an NC-17 version of “Friends”. All they do is try to possess everything–the city, their lifestyles, eachother. The show portrays a sense of this amazing friendship they share, and these idyllic lives they lead, but I can’t relate. First of all, no one lives like that. Shows like “Girls” and “Friends” celebrate possession. Characters that live like that are never happy in real life. They embrace the opposite of love, as Harbard says.