get the message?

Supporting the reduce, reuse, recycle agenda is one good thing. Making the point effectively is another. 


This new piece from GOOD magazine hits the message home the way I like it most - strong and straight from the hip.

look again, what's in your hand?

We don't have television or cable, so I'm late to discover the Old Spice advert campaign, but I've long been an admirer of the firm, Wieden and Kennedy, who produced it.  Totally brill.  And not computer generated.  Just straight up creativity.

To hear how they made the movies, visit this link to Tech Burrito's thorough coverage, including two videos. The first video show's G4's Attack of the Show interviewing the scrumptious talented actor, Isaiah Mustafa, and the second video by TWiT Netcast walks through bit-by-bit the "I'm on a Horse" piece with the creatives, Craig Allen and Eric Kallman. 

It's so refreshing and inspiring to see work produced with so much commitment to creativity.  


Well done W&K!

And go Isaiah!

living patio, part 5

thyme in our living patio

I want to give a plug (ha, get it?) for my source for plug trays, Mountain Valley Growers.  I have been xeriscape and organic gardening for years now. I buy almost all of our plants and trees from local nurseries and prefer plants that have been raised in my region rather than shipped.  I also favor native plants except in the case of this patio.

When I have order something in bulk that I cannot count on locally, Mountain Valley has become my go to place.  They are certified organic growers out of Squaw Valley, California and have a decent website for study or shopping. They were super conscientious about sending thyme plants (especially to Montana) properly and at a time when they wouldn't just melt away in a mail truck from the heat or freeze (since I got them in April).  

I was very impressed by the health of the plugs and am pleased with how they are maturing.  Yay!

spinning plates

After months of work, we are beta testing our new iPhone app, Stinky Maps.  It has been so much fun for me imagining, planning, outlining, constructing, discovering and reshaping apps.  I love learning new materials and methods. I like what it does to my head - from the tingly sense of discovery to the burning pressure of unknowns.  Making iPhone apps has been a fantastic challenge and humble journey.  

Stinky Maps has been especially liberating because it is all our own and not for a client.  (Though so far we have been fortunate at salty snack studios to work with delightful and creative clients.)  It's been a playful collaboration between Bruce and I, swapping ideas and putting them in motion.

So, here it goes. Finally we are in the home stretch launching Stinky Maps.  Setting it loose on the world won't mean it is done.  We'll continue to add features, rearrange the app and recreate it.  In this way, it's like most of my studio work.  It never truly ends. Most of my sculptures, installations and videos have an ongoing status.  The trick, of course, is keeping up when you get so many plates spinning. If it turns out that I'm spinning too many then something inevitably drops and I keep going. That's always been my studio management process.  I wonder when I look back later what will still be in my hands and what I drop.

Some people wanted to know what some of the sounds would be on the Stinky Maps app, so I made a little sample video of the audio and a few graphics.

Stinky Maps sounds from salty snack studios on Vimeo.

See the Stinky Maps website for more images and updates.     stinkymaps.blogspot.com/

Mildred Pierce

My friend, Kate, recently announced that her favorite movie ever is "Mildred Pierce".  It had been years since I had seen it, so this week we watched it.  Made in 1945, this B/W movie is based on the hard-boiled novel by James M. Cain and directed by Michael Curtiz.  

Kate is right to love this movie.  For starters, the opening sequence launches the story with bold composition and mystery. Ernest Haller's cinematography is outstanding. The film has classic Noir elements, a flashback story structure, plot twists and melodramatic performances between a mother and daughter. The undertones of a feminist and anti-feminist struggle is rich, creepy and ultimately unresolved. The movie features powerhouse Joan Crawford who won her only Oscar for this role, plus one of my absolute favorite supporting actresses, Eve Arden.

With a tagline of "A Mother's Love Leads to Murder,"  obviously, many suggest the film to mothers, daughters and women for some kind of parenting cautionary tale.  I see caution for the precursor stage of love or marriage and for either gender. Regardless, the film is a great mysterious ride.  

Oh, and one more reason to see the film is in preparation for coming theatrical movie releases. Currently, HBO is remaking "Mildred Pierce" with Kate Winslet.  I greatly admire Winslet and wish her a lot, a lot, a LOT of luck since Crawford's are humongous shoes to fill on this role.  

learning at Linda's

So how was the rest of the day at Linda's?  Fabulous of course!  It was way more than the just the demise of my PD150 and plans to capture moving pictures of Linda in the kitchen. (See my post, 'keep learning.') Luckily my Canon PowerShot G6, which I am nuts about and almost always have on me, made it possible for me take a few still pictures. Whew!

First of all, Linda and her husband Bill have a fantastic ranchette that is fun to just hang around and soak in all the characters, like Elvis who is a bit like me and hates to miss out on anything.

  

Wine to start the visit.

Linda casually showed us all the steps and we took turns pitching in.  She makes everything look so easy.

Um, Linda also prepared a tart and other delectables for snacking while we prepared the tortilla espanolas.

This is the Tortilla Espanola - a simple, hearty dish made mostly of potato and eggs.  

Linda is a fabulous pastry chef as well as an over-achiever in many other areas.  Fortunately for us, she generously shares her mastery as she did this day.  I think she calls this Avalanche Cake.  Chocolate, caramel and peanuts.  When you cut into it, the caramel floods down the sides, like an avalanche.

First and foremost, Linda is a fantastic painter.  We became friends through our art first, then our mutual love of good food and wine. Linda's art draws heavily on her experiences in her garden producing food for the table. Her perspective is rich and bold which comes out beautifully in her art.  And she has a big bawdy laugh that I love.

When she gets a website together, I'll link to it.  In the mean time, she has a piece you can see on Ask Art.  This summer Organic Gardening Magazine is visiting her garden and studio, so watch for a coming spread on Linda there, too.

keep learning

When Bruce and I started salty snack studios we each had our own camera.  He came slinging a great little Canon and I brought a Sony PD150 that I bought when I was getting a second MFA, this time in Media Arts, around 2002 or 2003.  (I can't remember exactly.) Anyway, it's a solid work-horse of a camera.  I definitely recommend it.  

A few years ago, we invested in a Panasonic video camera with a great lens that would shoot SD & HD, to tape or memory cards and hard drives.  (The PD150 only shoots SD/standard definition to tape.)  The footage has been fantastic, of course, and I do NOT miss digitizing tapes.  Obviously, our Sony and Canon became 'back-up' cameras.  I have to say though that during one shoot of a rock band show in a bar, the PD150 totally surprised us as the back up.  (Watch this little teaser that uses footage from both cameras.) Since getting the new camera, I have been a techni-chicken. I have completely depended on Bruce with the settings on the Panasonic.  Even when I am the one shooting, I ask Bruce to check settings for me.  I don't trust myself with it.

A couple of months ago, I was shooting video of my friend, Linda, making Tortilla Espanola with the PD150.    Linda is a fantastic chef and artist who once lived in Spain, so I organized a cooking lesson party with her for some friends and me. We drove to her home about a half hour from Missoula for the occasion. I took the PD150 because I know my way around my old PD150 grey mare pretty well. I planned to do all of the shooting plus let Bruce relax and enjoy the party. 

Within the first few minutes of the Tortilla Espanola Party, my camera screen was red.  People's faces, the background and everything was bright red. We adjusted settings and played around but it was a total bust. Apparently the chip died or something.  Something.  Something that once sent to the shop we learned it would cost so much to repair that I might as well get a new camera.  I'm sad to report that we put her down.  

The main thing about that PD150, is that you could really count on it.  Until you couldn't, apparently. The buttons were in all the right places or something because I found it incredibly easy to use.  I have a lot of distinct memories shooting with it, too. Moments of intuitive clarity staring into water through it's lens.  Walking around alone at dusty estate sales in rural Montana. I clamped it to ladders and hung it out of cars.  Once, Valerie and I forgot to shut the back door of the mini-SUV and I nearly lost it zipping down a highway in Polson.  I had accidentally left it recording, too, so I have the footage of carpet with audio of Valerie and I chattering to prove it.

Nothing like a piece of technology forcing you to move on and learn something new.  Now I must warm up to the Panasonic, find all the right buttons on it and get shooting again.  That's the thing.  Since shifting into the world of technology and away from natural materials and methods, I am constantly forced to let things go in a totally new way.  Not a better or worse way, just an unexpected way.  And my PD150 was the start of that discovery.

(photo, Shane Graff)

Here I am looking through the lens of the Panasonic and planning a shot in Burbank last year.  Bruce had already tweaked the numbers.

See the next post, 'learning at Linda's,' for part 2 of the story.

saying it out loud

It's so important for a person to speak their mind, don't you think?  

For the times when you can't find the real someone to direct your voice or when it just isn't polite,  the website Dear Blank Please Blank offers a refreshing way for people to speak up without (hopefully) hurting anyone's feelings.  In fact, the site helps turn grievances into a humorous note.  Literally.  

When you go there, be sure to go to the Moderator section and weigh in on what entries make it to their front page.  Oh, and write your own!  (Let me know if you do!)

living patio, part 4

Remember the main garden project I started last year?  It's really coming together!  In May and early June I did about a million squats planting more thyme plugs to fill out the gaps in the grid.  I couldn't plant all four flats very quickly so I nursed them along inside on our kitchen counters and the bay window of my studio until the last one was in the ground.

Yard work is the main way I get exercise, so believe it or not, the squats are a good thing.  (The very word exercise is so foreign to me that I misspelled it half a dozen times here - and I am a good speller - before finally looking it up.)  Go ahead and start making puns now cause, yes, it also took a lot of time.  Once I had a system down, though, they went in the ground pretty fast.

I planted all creeping thyme varieties so they won't get too tall and trip people walking across it. I planted  woolly, lemon balm, some Reiter's, paprika and nutmeg, giving a  variety of different flowers and scents plus softening the grid aesthetic a touch.  Lemon is on the far outer edge so we get it's fresh smell in the last few steps across the patio on our way to the driveway. Lemon also flowers heavily creating a bright white edge to the grid. I put woolly thyme in the most trafficked areas and places that get the most sun or snow.  Basically, in my observation, woolly can take a beating in all seasons and still look pretty good even if it doesn't bloom or offer much aroma.  And considering those points a possible plus, I also planted woolly in spots closer to sitting areas so as to not attract bees right under your seat!

The plugs are less than two fingers around, so I used a small wood plant marker (almost as big as a tongue depressor) to pop them out of the plug tray.  My long heavy Japanese garden knife (the most amazing garden tool ever) poked perfect holes for me to pop the plugs into the ground.  Notice the 5 gallon pot under the tray?  It's left over from a tree I bought from a nursery last year.  I save a stack of these buckets, especially the big ones, and drag them around to hold debris when I'm weeding.  They are handy for transplanting spreaders that I can give away to  friends, too.  (Here, the pot serves as a lightweight table to minimize some of the bending.)

I top dressed all the planted plugs with soil pep to keep the roots cool and weeds down.  Remember the soakers are in between most of the pavers, so it has really taken off.  And it's been raining a lot here, too, which is giving this patio a fabulous start!  Yippee!  (Stay tuned for more current photos soon.)