Let's Share: The Berkley Blog

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....

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!

Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back

Well, hello friends of 2011! It's so good to see you again. We have grand ambitions, schemes, and travels plotted for the upcoming year and it's about time we got back into spilling those beans to our little corner of the internet. 

Below is a highlight reel featuring high-tech freeze frames of life since we last saw you:

A photo super sleuth might detect that we've been to a couple Oregon beaches, San Francisco, Chicago, Washington D.C., Los Angeles (thrice, if you're keeping score), Seattle, Yosemite, Palm Springs, and other locales, including but not limited to our own house and the city we live in.

While I'd like to say we have just been busy for the last six months, the main reason this blog went on hiatus for so long was because my dad passed away rather unexpectedly last August, at age 58, due to complications from T-Cell Lymphoma. I've been trying and trying to write all the things I want to share about him and I haven't been allowing myself to blog about anything else until I said everything I had to say on that subject. Of course, putting that amount of pressure on myself has only made the words harder to come by. My dad was a man dedicated to the written word and as such,I feel compelled to use the right ones in memory of him.

I miss him all the time. 

He was a big reason we have an Etsy shop at all, in all kinds of ways.  It's incredibly  hard starting a new year without him. On top of every other Dad chore he excelled in, he was also my typo-catcher on this blog. So, for now, this one's for yuo dad;

~Lucy

While We Were Out Rapid Fire Update, Part I

Hi blog.

Remember me? 

Since I last typed in you, we went a bunch of places and did a bunch of stuff.  It was more exciting that I just made it seem. Would you like to know what was included in all those bunches?  Okay. Here is a whirlwind recap that in no way includes all the fun and adventures we've experienced. It's good to keep some things a mystery though, right? I think it will keep the fire in our relationship. 

 

First, we released some new animals that I never told you about. They were our "Shout-Out to Australia" trilogy, though I'm fairly certain Australian animals probably appeal more to non-Aussies. (I've even confirmed this with some actual Australians.) We have received so many nice orders and notes from our Australian friends over the past couple years that we wanted to do something nice for them. We looked into doing a helicopter drop of lollipops over the entire country but it was a bit cost prohibitive so animals ended up being our second place idea.

The Platypus:

 

The Koala:

  

And the Kangaroo mama:

  

I also think it's worth mentioning any time you and your friends go to get beehive hairdos together:

 

The gals and I swept it up for Chloe's birthday party in May. And while the updos were fun, I was almost as enthralled with the hair aftermath that came the next morning:

A few days after that we went to Austin. (I warned you this was rapid fire.)

 

We didn't have time to canoe all the way there so we settled for a brief afternoon row on Ladybird Lake. (Though, it sure looks like a river. I'm still confused about that. But doesn't Ryan look cute in a life jacket?)

 

We met the world's cutest skunk family at Uncommon Objects, everyone's favorite antique store. This picture is technically contraband - I think you're supposed to get permission to take photos there - but I was willing to risk antique jail for these guys. 

The reason we were in Austin at all was for their first ever Renegade Craft Fair. It was loads of fun, we met great people, and got lots of creative inspiration.

 

One such fun item was meeting the fellas of Public School and doing an impromptu interactive activity book.

 

They photographed the whole thing (because they are awesome) so if you are so inclined, you can check it out right here.

In somewhat lamer news, we visited the Whole Foods flagship store and it. is. GINORMOUS. (Being vegans we sometimes get a little nerdy with excitement over accommodating grocery establishments.) While this photo is terrible, we felt it was important enough to share:

 

THIS IS  ALL HUMMUS!!!!!!!!!

 

Some of this

 

This

 

And a new hat!

Maker Faire is pretty insane what with their giant rockets, Tesla coils, and traveling porches.

 

  

 I wish we'd had time to wander around and witness all the fantabulous contraptions more but Droids are impatient customers.  

 

(We were selling at Bazaar Bizarre inside of Maker Faire alongside our pals Cathy and Nicole of  Bossanova Baby and Vinyl Frontier. Good times.)

Of course, it's pretty much impossible to sum up an eight day trip to New York so this is going to be the ridiculously abbreviated version.

After having lived in NYC when I was little and visiting tons of times since then, I had never been to see the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island in person.  Up close, she looks some thing like this:

 

We couldn't get a good look at her face from our angle, but luckily the museum inside had an artist's rendering of  what we were missing:

 

Elsewhere in the city, we went to the American Folk Art Museum for the first time and really regretted not having been there sooner. 

 

The museum is full of well curated and fascinating pieces but Ryan and I really went out of minds in the Henry Darger exhibit (above). 

Like Austin, our main purpose of this trip was for the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn. It was an outdoor show and we did some battle with the wind and a bit of rain but overall it was really fun and we met lots of cute gals and guys like these ladies:

One of my favorite parts of sitting in our booth is watching people sort out which animals they like and which go together. The above ladies did a fabulous job modeling this scenario without being asked!

And, of course, what trip to New York would be complete without Ryan adding to his collection (that  he just started on this trip) of photographs with supporting players of Late Night TV shows?

 

End Part I.

Part II coming soon!

Ye Olde Seattle Trip

I'm getting a real reputation with myself for lousy photographic documentation at Ryan's art openings. We had a lot of fun at the Bluebottle opening a couple weeks ago. It was the first show by new owner, Jessie, and she and her husband Danny and their two pugs could not have been sweeter hosts.

 

Here Ryan chats with (or ignores) three of Seattle's finest ladies.

 

And here Ryan's broods again while posing between a black bear and some kittens in t-shirts.  

You can buy some of the original art online here.  Prints will be rolling into the Etsy shop over the next couple months as well.  

While we were in town, we stopped by for a long overdue visit to my cousin friend's third grade class.  Actually, it was three third-grade classes total.  The kids were familiar with Ryan's work and he promised them a drawing lesson using the school mascot, a bobcat, as a model.

 

 

 

We couldn't believe how wonderful each and every drawing was!  Thanks to Mrs. Cherian and all the third graders at Blackwell Elementary for the opportunity to have so much fun drawing during class!   

The kids even insisted on procuring our autographs first thing and, as you can see above, we are now noted famous people.  I hope the paparazzi doesn't catch wind of this! 

Tonight! This weekend! Last weekend!

Tonight!

 

Ryan's new animal show, "Sophisticated Menagerie II" opens at the Bluebottle in Seattle.  We'll be there from 5-8 for the good times. You can get a sneak peek of the show online here.

This weekend!

 

 

 

Ryan has three pieces in the "Tiny Art" show at Gallery Meltdown in Los Angeles. Everybody had to keep things under 3x3" and Ryan kept the theme low to the ground.

Last weekend!

 

"Glory Days" for Balls Out II at the Grass Hut. Don't look too close if you are my grandma.
 
   

 

Our first collaborative embroidery piece debuted at Redux.  It was so much fun to do that we're definitely seeing more in the future.  

 

...and meanwhile, our trip to the woods was pretty fantastic.    

Coast to coast!

Oh, hey there.  Long time no see.  Let's recap this thing numerical list style!

1.  Remember Chicago?  We were there two weeks ago? Well, it was awesome.  It looked like this:

2.  We decided two weeks is long enough to be back home so we're off to Washington, DC tomorrow for Crafty Bastards on Saturday.  Why not come visit us if you live in the greater DC area?  We're debuting two animals at the show who will make their way to Etsy upon our return.  They are very stubborn and won't have it any other way.

The only time Ryan and I have been in DC together was in 2002.  It looked like this:

It was the Fourth of July and we were paddle boating outside the Jefferson Memorial.  One of us was wearing a Transformers hat.  Does it get more American than that?  [Side note: Looking through my DC photo album, and at these photos above, I realize that I am a much better photographer than I was seven years ago. I am looking forward to proving this to President Obama.]  

3.  It so happens that at the exact same time as Crafty Bastards, but all the way back on our west coast, Ryan is part of a group show called, "A Murder Of Crows" at the Gallery in Meltdown Comics in Los Angeles. That's this Saturday (October 3rd).  Unless we master the arts of cloning and teleportation in the next 96 hours, we won't be there but Ryan's art is represented alongside such art luminaries as Julianna Swaney and Steve Weissman.  Each artist had to represent a group of animals based on an alphabetical venery assignment.  Ryan had the task of "A Dray Of Squirrels".  Would you like a sneak preview?  Okay, here goes:

That reminds me - If you didn't get a chance to take a look at Ryan's recent collection of "Champion Festival" art, check it out here.

Home again, home again

We're home from the California tour!  We're still working on the re-entry to regular life so until we can get a proper update together, feel free to make up your own story from these preview photos:

I'll Take New York

Obviously it's not easy to sum up a week's adventures in New York City because it's taken me almost a week to write anything about it.  Suffice to say, we love New York and if it wasn't for this whole pesky desire to have more than one bedroom, a yard, and no trash on our property...  Oh wait, I found a discarded crockpot in our wildflower patch last week.  Strike that last one.  I guess we'll just stay in Portland for now.

Here is the edited NYC daily diary recap:

We called numbers for Polish instructions we couldn't understand

Ryan found his dream graffiti

We got the cutest bill in the entire world

"Seven happy blueberry"!  (Or maybe this was only cute because our table had consumed seven of these happy blueberries.)

We battled rain without an umbrella thinking we were tough Portlanders but really we just kind of looked like soaked rats.

Went to Renegade with our friends Bossanova Baby and Arcane Arts and had beautiful weather and amazing crowds.

Thanks to all the awesome shoppers who came by!  We can't wait to do the Los Angeles and San Francisco Renegades next month.  [More Renegade photos here]

Went to the Natural History Museum

which gave us lots of inspiration for the future and I also found my new favorite animal ever:

(too bad it existed millions of years ago).

And then on the way home we got stuck at the airport for five hours and didn't get home until 3am west coast time.  I slept for 85% of the next day.

Oh yes, one other thing you might be interested in from our visit to Chinatown.  We got our auras photographed!  Check. It. Out.

As you can plainly see, we're both really busy but we have success coming our way and I have a pain below my waist (which is obviously that stupid knee that I hurt a couple months ago).

Okay, that was definitely a really abbreviated version of the trip but it will have to do for now.  I need to make room for lots more announcements in the upcoming days!  If you'd like to see more photos of the entire trip, though, please go here.