Good News, New Stuff and Things to Share

First, the good news. Start­ing June 21^st I will no longer be unem­ployed! After more than 8 months of incon­sis­tent income, over­whelm­ing stress and gen­eral eco­nomic slumps — I will rejoin the work­ing class. Awe­some, and I have 3 weeks off until then to work on odds and ends with­out dwelling on the future.

I put up this weeks mix­tape. You can lis­ten to it, or down­load it on the side­bar to the right. Um, the lan­guage is NSFW. But so is leav­ing the win­dow open. I guess try it out with head­phones first before you start a dance party in the office. This will be a weekly thing, unless I find it to be too much to keep up on. For now, no prob­lem on that front. Enjoy.

30 Days of Cre­ativ­ity starts today. I made a mix to kick things off. I have a few ideas in my head and sketch pad that I am going to try and get more devel­oped. One of them includes a remodel exper­i­ment for my family’s house down in Flo­rence, Ore­gon.  It’s a really great mid-century ranch style house. Some other things will show up here before or after that. This 30 day project will be my moti­va­tion to really kick my port­fo­lio into high gear.

“30 Days of Cre­ativ­ity is a social ini­tia­tive encour­ag­ing peo­ple to cre­ate stuff, any­thing, every day for 30 days.

This is your excuse to buy that tub of Play­dough, unbox your Erec­tor set, or dust off your Holga. You might be work­ing on one huge project for 30 days straight. Maybe you are cre­at­ing some­thing new thing every day. (That’s the best way to par­tic­i­pate!) It could be as sim­ple as tak­ing a pic­ture of your out­fit for 30 days to some­thing as involved as a writ­ing a song or mak­ing a movie every day.” — MAKE Mag­a­zine Blog

#30daysofcreativity — A How To Guide from 30 Days of Cre­ativ­ity on Vimeo.

Finally, some­thing to share. I’ve been try­ing to share at least one project/design a week that inspires me. Today I am shar­ring the Palmyra House located in Nandgaon, Maha­rash­tra, India. This has been fea­tured on a few archi­tec­ture blogs. So it may look famil­iar. It was designed by Stu­dio Mum­bai Archi­tects.

What I like most about it is the inte­rior use of very dark and rich woods, along with nat­ural stone and con­crete ele­ments. It has a strong tex­tural aes­thetic — almost rough look­ing. Still though, the end expe­ri­ence that I observed from the images it that the the house has a quiet and soft feel­ing. The house has great East­ern Asian design ele­ments as well, to unify the mod­ern design with tra­di­tional fin­ishes. More images and obser­va­tions are avail­able over at Con­tem­po­rist.

Jun 01, 2010 | Architecture, Art, Film, Interior, Music, Personal, Work | Leave A Comment »

Time to Share

I went to the open house yes­ter­day for the house I had been work­ing on ear­lier this year. Of course I for­got my cam­era. It looked great with fur­ni­ture though, I swear. I am still busy look­ing for work, but I wanted to take a break and share some things that I’d come across over the weekend.

This first video is some proper reuse/adaptation to the fore­clo­sures and eco­nomic dumps of these crazy times. This may be a lit­tle con­tro­ver­sial depend­ing on how you look at it. I grew up skate­board­ing, and see no harm done. What do you think? If you are watch­ing at work, be care­ful. The lan­guage is NSFW.

Can­non­ball from Cal­i­for­nia is a place. on Vimeo.

This next item is a fan­tas­tic com­bi­na­tion of mod­ern archi­tec­ture and near per­fect inte­gra­tion into the house’s sur­round­ing land­scape. I call this suc­cess. Beau­ti­ful tex­tures, stun­ning lines, and so many inter­est­ing focal points. I would love to be a part of a project like this some­day. This gets me going.

Los Molles House / Olt­mann Ahlers W. + Olt­mann Ahlers G. + dRN Arqui­tec­tos — Source: Arch Daily

(more…)

May 17, 2010 | Architecture, Design, Film, Interior, Sustainable, Work | Leave A Comment »

What’s Next?

I fin­ished up work on the house restora­tion project I was work­ing on. Every­one did a fan­tas­tic job, and it shows. I’ll post pic­tures as soon as I can. It was a tremen­dous learn­ing expe­ri­ence, and I enjoyed every bit of it. Except for paint­ing ceilings.

Walk­ing is awe­some! Now that I am carless/liberated I have come to enjoy Port­land more than ever. There are so many great spots and neigh­bor­hoods that by car you will never see. I walk every­where now, occa­sion­ally tak­ing the bus for trips greater than 3–4 miles. Before, when I had a car the idea of walk­ing more than 1/4 mile seem­ing daunt­ing and inef­fi­cient. But really, I can walk 3 miles in less than an hour. So pretty much any­thing I need is within that scope. And I’ve lost 10lbs. I’ve been with­out wheels for 4 months now and I don’t miss it at all. Traf­fic is loud, really loud! We need to find a way to leave the auto­mo­bile behind. I’m encour­aged now it can be done.

I made a short video of the woods that are behind my child­hood home. I spent whole sum­mers in these acres and there are so many great mem­o­ries of adven­tures had. It is the first video I’ve edited and the cam­era work is not up to par. But I think the sound does a good job of cap­tur­ing what I remem­ber about the years I spent in what we called “The Field”.

This is an aer­ial shot of the loca­tion of “The Field”. Now renamed Spring­wa­ter. “A” is my old house.

May 06, 2010 | Film, Personal, Sustainable, Travel, Work | Leave A Comment »

Still Keeping On

I’ve been busy lately, which is why noth­ing new has gone up here recently. So what have I been up to? Work. Just as I typed my desire for work, sit­u­a­tions present themselves.

First, I’ve been fin­ish­ing up some revi­sions for the Whole Foods project I was work­ing on last month. Sec­ondly, I’ve had the oppor­tu­nity to work on restor­ing a 1890’s era house that a friend of mine pur­chased. No design work though, just good ol’ back break­ing labor! This is turn­ing out to be a very reward­ing and edu­ca­tional project, work­ing close with the Gen­eral Con­trac­tor and ask­ing ques­tions on the blood and guts of a restora­tion project from the man build­ing it. They didn’t teach me this stuff in school, and a good deal of this expe­ri­ence should go toward help­ing me be a bet­ter designer. The bad part is there isn’t much work left that I can do.

Last week I had another inter­view with Net­flix for a call cen­ter posi­tion. I found out today they went another direc­tion, which I guess has a pos­i­tive out­come. I needed more expe­ri­ence inter­view­ing, cause I know I don’t make the best first impression.

So well, it’s back to the grind of Craigslist and the land of lost resumes. Hey, at least I can pay half my bills this month. Right? The ques­tion is though, what the hell am I qual­i­fied to do now? It seems all I hear back is I am overqual­i­fied for the oppor­tu­ni­ties avail­able at the moment. The work I do want, which I am qual­i­fied for isn’t avail­able because of the great eco­nomic slump we are in. Even then, I am only entry level at this point and there is bet­ter expe­ri­ence in the tal­ent pool right now. Meh.

On to other stuff, and what my fel­low peers in the unem­ployed design­ers sub­cul­ture have been up to…

My friend Colin just fin­ished his book Pedes­trian. It can be pur­chased here. Colin is my typog­ra­phy and design critic, who has count­less times torn apart my own attempts at graphic and print media. And I lis­ten and respect every nag he has about my work because of things like this. Pedes­trian is a very strong mixed media project.

How about some music? I want to start a pod­cast of sorts called “Per­ma­nent Solu­tion”, I’ll try and dis­ci­pline myself to get that going this week­end. Mean­while, I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the release by Cast Spells titled “Bright Works and Baton”. This is a track off that called “A Badge”. Cool.

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Jan 26, 2010 | Art, Design, Graphic, Music, Personal, Typography, Work | Leave A Comment »

Stay Positive

I’ve been stay­ing busy lately, but I am really hop­ing this unem­ploy­ment stint comes to an end. I’m com­pletely broke, and well I sup­pose it could be worse. But the fear of being home­less is way too close for com­fort, so I really need some good news soon. I had no idea I would be hit this hard by fol­low­ing my goals, get­ting an edu­ca­tion and try­ing to find real suc­cess before 30. I am two months away from 30. Ini­tially my goal was to com­plete my edu­ca­tion before I turned 30 — done. My new goal is to be apart of some­thing real, with a great team around me and mak­ing good money too. Two months until this dead­line. Stay positive.

This is a flat out stun­ning film done by Alex Roman. All com­puter mod­eled and ren­dered. If you watch it, do it right and go here to see it in HD. I should learn Maya. Speechless.

I saw two great films this week, thanks to a gen­er­ous Regal gift card from my fam­ily. Up in the Air is the truth. Made me feel a lit­tle less alone dur­ing this eco­nomic cri­sis thing. Go see it, go alone.

Yes­ter­day I saw Youth in Revolt. Holy hell this is the best Michael Cera movie yet, and it will be truly dif­fi­cult for him to top it. Great humor, out­stand­ing rebel­lious actions, and an all around well writ­ten screen play.

Stay pos­i­tive.

Jan 09, 2010 | Architecture, Film, Personal, Work | Leave A Comment »

Bah! Humbug!

The hol­i­day sea­son has been par­tic­u­larly good to me this sea­son. That being said, and of no real choice of my own, I no longer have a car. I am happy how­ever to shed my car­bon fueled addic­tion and see where this chal­lenge takes me. It does makes job hunt­ing a bit more dif­fi­cult because I have to limit my searches to those located near pub­lic transit.

Speak­ing of the job hunt, my inter­view last week was unsuc­cess­ful. The job really wasn’t in my impact mar­ket. I am get­ting really antsy to con­tribute and start whit­tling away at the goals I have tar­geted. I have a fear of being trapped in a dead and uncre­ative job where I have no chance at accom­plish­ing what I want to do in life. I know I’ve only been out of school for 3 months, but I’m not where I thought I was going to be. So deter­mi­na­tion must take me to where I need to be, I just hope it hap­pens soon.

I have been con­tin­u­ing on some older work. The first being the “Con­rad House” that you can see a pre­view of on the front page slideshow. This is a design I am work­ing on for a friend, as more of a dream home. It was a project I started on my 2^nd year of school that I am now revis­ing and cre­at­ing some ren­der­ings for. So that has been keep­ing me busy. If you don’t like wait­ing, or you want to get a deeper look the image is below.

I’ve also been work­ing on a bar that was in another project in one of my stu­dios from school. Which is below. It was part of a resort hotel in Whistler, BC. I am really happy with the result, but I’d love to get some­one else’s thoughts.

I head down to Flo­rence on Thurs­day for the Christ­mas week­end to spend time with the fam­ily. This is the first time in years that we have all been together. Look­ing for­ward to it. Then it is back to get­ting a job, and being some­where com­fort­able again. And hon­estly that is all I really want from 2010; com­fort and happiness.

This songs sums things up pretty good right now. It’s Iron Chic, off their newest EP. Which can be pur­chased here.

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Dec 22, 2009 | Architecture, Design, Interior, Music, Work | Leave A Comment »

Weekend manifest

So things around here are about 95% done. I’ve done quite a bit of work over the past week. I just have some fine tun­ing and var­i­ous small tweaks left to do. I cre­ated a new logo this morn­ing and a new back­ground ear­lier in the week. The Port­fo­lio page is up, but needs some changes to the func­tion and inter­ac­tion of the images, and some more sta­tic images.

This isn’t a sports blog, so I will spare my opin­ion on a few things. But, I have to say — it is hard to be a Blazer fan. I am not a huge “luck” guy, I think that good things come from good deci­sions. How­ever, when your coach is injured some­thing isn’t right. It will be inter­est­ing to see how this team bounces back from all the injuries. New York is show­ing it’s pos­si­ble to play well well with lim­ited resources, and this Blazer team has bat­tled back and shown tough­ness in the past. I’m still a Blazer fan, and I don’t see that chang­ing any­time soon. I just wish it would be a lit­tle easier.

This is a print by Vasco Mourao, only 10 were made. I would be stoked to get my hands on one of them. I love the depth and weight of it. I must of spent a half hour just star­ring at it. The print is I bet quite a mind blow­ing visual experience.

I still have about a days worth of work left at CDS. I’ve been doing SketchUp work for a Whole Foods store pro­posal in Cal­i­for­nia. If they like it there might be more work for me. It feels great doing some­thing that I have fun with. If I can I’ll post some ren­der­ings of the store.

One quick rant: I really wish the Food Net­work had a veg­e­tar­ian show. I am a huge Food Net­work fan, but it really lacks veg­e­tar­ian pro­gram­ming. What would it take to get a well pro­duced, fun veg friendly pro­gram? Please?

Dec 06, 2009 | Art, Blazers, Design, Interior, Sports, Vegetarian Food, Work | Leave A Comment »

Monday workday

Well Thanks­giv­ing is over, my stom­ach needs a break from all the food. We got our Christ­mas tree set up yes­ter­day, the guys I live with love this time a year, so the spirit is a lit­tle con­ta­gious.  I think we need a few more orna­ments for the tree though.

I start work tomor­row with CDS, which should take about a week to com­plete the project. After that I will be focus­ing all my atten­tion on find­ing more design work, hope­fully land­ing a full time posi­tion before the end of the year. At least that’s how my goals are writ­ten out.

Instructables.com has posted plans for con­vert­ing burnt out light bulbs into ter­rar­i­ums. I have been intrigued by ter­rar­i­ums lately because of their scale, they give back a lit­tle bit of the out­doors where ever you put one. If I have time this week I want to make one of these. There are two burnt out bulbs in the garage just ask­ing for a renewed lease on life. The link for the instruc­tions are here.

It’s small things like this that can really make a dif­fer­ence in our con­nec­tion with the out­side. Kind of makes me want to crawl inside and explore.

I have more work to do on the site today. Port­fo­lio should be up and final­ized by the end of today. I will also be play­ing with a few other func­tions of the site to clean up some for­mat­ting that is bug­ging me. I also need to find a bet­ter link­ing sys­tem to con­nect me bet­ter with other sites I use. So we’ll see how it turns out.

Nov 30, 2009 | Design, Interior, Sustainable, Work | Leave A Comment »