Let's Share: The Berkley Blog

Holiday Shows! Come stare at us!

We're going to be out and about in the Pacific Northwest over the next couple weeks selling our wares live and in person. If you stop by, I won't even be mad if you squint at my stomach looking for the baby bump. (It tends to fluctuate a bit at this point depending on how much burrito I have for dinner.)

First up, we'll be at the Portland West Elm + Etsy Handmade Holiday Workshop from 6-9pm in the Pearl (1201 NW Couch to be exact). Oh yeah -- that's TONIGHT!

We're selling alongside some other excellent local makers and you can make an ornament with Etsy. The Portland Rescue Mission also benefits from donations at the sale. Seeing as how it's First Thursday here in Portland, it's a perfect night to check out some galleries and see us along the way.

This weekend we'll be back in Seattle for the always excellent Urban Craft Uprising at the Seattle Center. You can find us near the front next to our pals Schmancy and Mucho Designs. 

And the following weekend we're back home in Portland for our grand finale of winter shows, Crafty Wonderland. 

(Featuring the poster art of one Ryan Berkley.)

We hope to see your smiling faces if you're around Portland or Seattle in the next couple weeks! 

Holiday release bonanza excitement times!

Hello old blog friends! 

Lookit! Words! New ones! Well, new to this page anyway. We're here! I'd like to promise to keep a little more active in our blog corner, even if it's not mega-life updates or hilarious epic rhyming poems. Wait. I'm not sure that we ever did that. Maybe if I just start with some exciting artsy updates this whole things will type itself more frequently. 

First of all, how was your summer and Halloween? Did you have a birthday in the last five months? We hope it was great! We were totally thinking of you. We were traveling almost all summer for adventure and craft shows and had so much fun, it's hard to think we've now been back in Portland for an entire month solid.

With the pleasantries out of the way, let's move on to new business. We've been rolling out a whole bunch of new designs to our Etsy site over the last month and we're going to keep them coming for the next few weeks. Here's the comprehensive list of what we've released so far:

 

"Top Three" Limited Edition print, 11x14". 

New banner packs!

Our first tote bag - "Wild"! (Hopefully first in a series.) 

[Hot insider tip: For more frequent updates, we're actually pretty current on our Facebook and Twitter pages. I should probably figure out how to put one of those linky thingies on the side of this blog but if I go figure it out now, this post will probably never get done. So, for now, please accept these old fashioned links: www.facebook.com/berkleyillustration and @berkleys on Twitter.] 

 Moose portrait

Cornelius the Moose never goes anywhere without his trusted avian confidant and life coach, Barry. When not helping Cornelius make important decisions, Barry makes himself comfortable reading Victorian literature and modern psychology journals. Cornelius and Barry also host a book group every Tuesday (but Barry always does most of the talking).

Red-Winged Blackbird portrait

While he may look quite serious, and even act a bit defensive while you approach him, this Red-Winged Blackbird is a family man at heart. If you peeked in the window of his marsh home, I wouldn't be surprised if you caught him using a cattail as a microphone to sing his kids to sleep.

Gentleman Beaver portrait

A true visionary in the architectural world of dam-building and beyond, this beaver made a name for himself with his post-post-modern wood dwellings and designs. A retrospective of his work will be shown at the Smithsonian this Spring, which will include a scale model of his famous "Creek Creature Backwards Dam".

Lady Beaver portrait

While you can't see it in this portrait, this lady has the most attractive smile you've ever seen on a beaver, or any large rodent for that matter. If you see her in person, make sure to tell a hilarious joke so she can impress you with her pearly oranges. It's quite breathtaking.

There it is, ladies and gents: the latest line-up. We'll have more coming and Ryan has been working behind the scenes on some other exciting projects for 2012 as well.

Oh...and speaking of behind the scenes and 2012, check out this newer drawing of Ryan's:

Whoops! I guess we have a mega-life update after all. A Baby Berkley is coming to a world near you this February! 

Eastward Renegade, ho!

We're about to jet off to New York City for a some urban hi-jinks and for the big Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn. The above is Ryan's approximation of our travel route.

Psych! It's actually one of the new prints we're bringing along with us and we're releasing it into the Etsy shop today as well. Ryan has been threatening for years to do a companion piece to the old-timey bike jump (below) and I'm so happy that it's finally here.

Together they make a nice little diptych. So what if it seems like they're about to crash into each other? I bet they'll swerve at the last second for maximum dramatic flare.

In addition to the new bikers, Renegade-goers can expect to find a new much-requested animal print, a new style of animal pennants, a special Sublime Stitching print pack, and a few new pillow designs. We previewed a couple of those at Renegade Austin but this time around we're adding the Black Bear to the line-up.

We'll be hanging out with the tandem bikers in booth number 200 on Bayard Street, rain or shine!

In additional to Renegade fun, we're going to go to a Yankees/Red Sox game (but we'll be rooting for the Red Sox. Shhhh...don't tell the Bronx!), visiting the new High Line park, dining at NYC's first vegan pop-up restaurant, taking in the McQueen exhibit at the Met, and hopefully biking around Brooklyn ourselves. I can't wait! I don't have to. Our plane leaves soon!

Work and life and Work/Life

Hi friends!
So much has been happening around these parts that the blog "to-write" list keeps getting longer but the time to do it gets shorter. We'll hit a couple bullet points now and hope to expand on things a little bit later in the week.

Our biggest news is that Ryan quit his full-time job in order to concentrate on art full time! He'd been employed at the same place for the last ten years so he's still adjusting to the reality that he doesn't have to schedule his drawing time in between dinner and sleeping. More on that, I'm sure, to come. On the afternoon he came home for good, Walker and his cousins each wrote him a note and gave him a dogpile of love.

And then, as if planned for optimal celebratory timing, the next day we flew to Hawaii. We will definitely have more on that later. It was our first visit there, let alone to any tropical climate, and I'm already watching flight prices for a return visit. We loved seeing the world at sea level and at 10,000 feet, all from the comfort of one small island.

When we brought our cconspicuously suntanned bodies back to the mainland, the good times kept rolling because our copy of Work/Life  was waiting for us.. 

Work/Life is a new directory of international illustrators published by the lovely folks of Uppercase and we're so grateful that Ryan was included among such incredible company. It's a great book for inspiration and odds are you'll find at least a few 'new favorite' artists. Each of the 100 illustrators included created a new piece specifically for the book and have a bio spread of their own inspirations and lives. Like this:

In conjunction with the book's release, we're going also going to release Ryan's new piece as a limited edition in our shop!

"After The Game" is availalble now as an 8x10" edition of 50, printed on the beautiful Hahnemuhle Bamboo warm-tone paper. You can find them right here. Mmmm grass hats....

The Whole Show

The Spectacularcade show opening last night was a grand old time and for once I remembered to actually take some photos documenting the event! I think you'll agree that Ryan's Kenny balloons added just the right burst of pizazz. (And I don't bust out the "p" word unless I think a situation is highly deserving.)

 And here are the rest of the pieces from the show (click on the image for a larger view):

Kill Screen

Slothzar

Frorg Invasion  (That's right, Frorg.)

 

Feats of Strength I

Feats of Strength II: Lunch Break

Photobooth

Impossible

You Can Do It

(Those are sold separately but I think they'd be perfect to hang next to each other - that way you'd always have the proper mantra ready to affirm your daily optimism level.)

 Rolling Thunder - A painted skee-ball in a mirrored trophy case, complete with "Kennywood" skee-ball tickets! 

The whole show is available at the Grass Hut website right over here.

Thanks to Bwana Spoons and the Grass Hut and everyone who came out and enjoyed a complimentary Chinese finger trap! We hope you all successfully unlocked your index fingers before the end of the night. 

Redemption

Hello! Just stopping to give you another sneak peek from "Spectacularcade" (opening tomorrow at the Grass Hut in case you missed the post below).

This one is called "Redemption":

I must say, I'm quite partial to this piece. I love the dual purpose of the name and I happen to love drawings that let me look around inside the scene for a while. (A holdover from the early influence of Richard Scarry, I'm sure.) Ryan is really knocking these out of the theme park and I'm so proud of him! 

Okay, we're off to hang the show and possibily stop at the party supply store to get some goodies for the opening. 

Spectacularcade opens on Thursday night!

We're busy behind the scenes this week putting together the final pieces for Ryan's solo show opening Thursday at the Grass Hut in Portland. The show will feature an assortment of carnival arcade characters including Kenny, Slothzar, and, of course, a quick cameo from Willie Nelson. If you are in town, come on down Thursday night to say hi. If you're not in town, the show will be be available soon on an internet near you.

Geographical tip: The Grass Hut is located at 20 NW 5th Ave inside Floating World Comics. 

Boomshakalaka

In case you've been waiting anxiously to hear, we had an excellent little retreat in the aforementioned cabin. That is, if you consider walking on deserted country roads, finding the world's cutest tiny pine cones, and dueling with forest bubbles the ingredients for excellence - and it just so happens that I do.

It was rainy most of the weekend which actually worked out quite well considering we had lots of work to do inside.  We were happy to spend our retreat time working on our pieces for the Boomshakalaka group show which opened at Land in Portland last week. The show, curated by one of Portland's nicest bearded fellows, Clifton Burt, revolved around 30 artists and designers interpreting the Portland Trail Blazers in whatever fashion they desired. (Ryan also participated in another Blazers themed show last month at the Compound Gallery. Who says artists and sports don't get along?) 

Ryan's cabin drawing station above, my embroidery spot below (not too shabby!).

We decided our contributions to the show would revolve around the theme of "Hypothetical Origins" or, a fake history of the Trail Blazers during pioneer times. 

We came up with:

A 19th century shadow puppet diagram:

A portrait of  an imagined Bill Walton ancestor:

A heated coin-toss for Portland's naming rights:

That one was actually based on the true story of the Portland Penny. From www.pdxhistory.com: "Portland got its name when Asa Lovejoy and Francis Pettygrove flipped a coin in 1845. Lovejoy was from Massachusetts and he wanted to name the new settlement Boston. Pettygrove was from Maine and wanted to name the new town Portland. Pettygrove won the coin toss two out of three times and the rest as they say is history."

Ryan drew all the above and I like how he stuck to such a limited color palette. It was somewhat unusual for him considering he generally enjoys experimenting with colors. (You should be able to click on all those to see larger sizes, by the way.)

As for me, I did an embroidered piece based also based on the Blazer's logo. 

I've been a Blazers fan since I was born (Maybe technically even before. My mom was pregnant with me for most of the 1977 championship season) and I have always imagined the logo as some kind of path.  I actually did a bit of web research to make sure this wasn't actually the case and as far as I can tell, the design was conceived as a graphic depicting five vs. five players. I was glad to finally get this image out of my brain and fingers.

As usual, I did a terrible job of documenting the opening but luckily Pat Castaldo is really good at such things. You can see some of his opening night shots here.

Now Ryan is hard at work putting together his solo show opening next week (!) at the Grass Hut in Portland. It's called "Spectacularcade" and revolves around the goings-on of a fictitious carnival arcade.

We'll have some sneak previews from that real soon!

New round things + contest winner!

Well shucks. Can we just start this blog post by saying how much we loved all your rhyming contest entries last week? We kept laughing to ourselves (in a good way) about how you were all so sweet and made rhymes about us and our goods. I was hoping for at least four rhymes about pizza and/or James Franco but I'm perfectly delighted over everything you came up with. 

So without further ado, the winner of the contest, picked using random.org, is the one lettered rhymesmith known as K. While the winning pick was totally random, you have to give her some props for her entry:

I find these smart dearlings astounding
As embroidery's clearly abounding!
I hope they'll be minesies
To give for Valentinesies!
So I find that my heart is pounding, 
With great anticipation, 
And much fixation,
It's the rhyming I find so confounding.

So I hope you don't think that I'm hounding.
Though I know that it has started sounding
Like I'm being coy
In a desperate ploy
So that gifts in my lap will be mounding.

But really I just keep expounding
For the wonderful prize is compounding
From not just stitching
But for the prints we are itching,
The unanimous vote is resounding!

Congratulations K. and thanks to everyone else for your entries! We like this contest stuff so I think we'll have more of these in the future.

Elsewhere, in the "new round things" department, we have a few little Etsy shop updates to share. 

One, we've added a couple more bottle opener designs: 

The Otter who seems to use "Tally Ho!" as his bottle opening catch phrase:

and the Marmoset who is apparently just as sweet as his button implies.

Two, we've finally finished a much-needed updated to our 1" button selection for our button packs. The bears, cats, and other old friends have been appropriately miniaturized for all your bookbag or jean jacket applications.

I think one of my favorite parts about doing that was making the circle chart above. Why is it that some things just look so spruced up when they're contained in a circle? 

Of course, this button project was entirely assisted and supervised by Walker, the super helper:

Ummm...wait. Walker - that's not helping, buddy.

We're going to take Walker and ourselves to a cottage in the woods for the rainy weekend. We're planning to listen to the river and work like crazy on projects for a couple upcoming shows.  This Sunday would have been my dad's 59th birthday, too, so the mini-escape will be good for all of us. We should have some pictures and drawings to show you when we're back.

Have a great weekend!

Embroidery Day + Contest!

While we haven't done many, Ryan and I really like collaborating on embroidery projects. Our tried and true blog followers [hi our moms!] might remember our Kenny from a show last year. I like to compare our process to comic book pencilers and inkers. Ryan does the initial sketch on fabric and then I get to whoop it up with stitches and colors. 

We just never seem to have time for to do a project on our own, so we're super thankful to our pal Pamela for "forcing" it upon us in a new group show opening tonight in Portland at Redux. The show is called "Lovesick" so we used this opportunity to feature our loving cardinal pair in stitches - something I've wanted to do for a while.

We're looking forward to seeing what everyone else came up with. It's always so interesting to see the differences in the way people do their stitches.

You probably already saw our other exciting embroidery news if you follow us our Facebook or Twitter pages, but it's definitely worth mentioning again. We are extra thrilled to have a new pattern available through Sublime Stitching!

[Please note that while the packaging proclaims, "This ain't your gramma's embroidery", we would be quite pleased if any gramma, or great-gramma for that matter, wanted to use one of these patterns. If you and your gramma do work on some patterns together, will you send us a photo?]

Jenny Hart, proprietress of Sublime Stitching and all around fantastic human being, did the translating of Ryan's drawings to embroidery ready patterns and we think she did a brilliant job. You can even get a little tutorial on floss-blending technique over at her blog here. *Hot insider tip* I used some floss-blending on the lady cardinal in the above!

***HERE IS THE CONTEST PART***

We're feeling like game show hosts today, so we're throwing a giveaway contest to celebrate all this animal stitchery!  Just leave a rhyming comment on this post and we'll pick a winner at random to receive one of the Sublime Stitching patterns as well as a 5x7 print of each of the animals in the kit for a little inspiration. Those whole deal looks something like this: 

Actually, it looks exactly like that. This is exactly what you'll get. Sound fun? We'll pick a winner next Friday, February 11th.