Were moving our Letterpress Studio!

We have rented a space in historic Boulder Creek, CA a cute little community in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The goal is to have a space closer to home to work out of as an office and workshop space. Since it has a frontage with foot traffic theres an opportunity to also have a little retail space. We also are collaborating with a friend and coworker who lives here in the Boulder Creek area as a remote office which means there will be people to collaborate with in the space. I find this exciting because I tend to work better in a collaborative setting and it can get lonely in the studio sometimes.

The space is 450sf and had been occupied by the previous tenant, a jewelry shop called The Blind Pilot, for over 30 years. When we fist saw the place it was filled with fixtures made of old wood and glass. It was dark and smelled of incense. At first I thought maybe I could use these and just build off of what was there. But they wanted us to buy the wood fixtures... which were old and funky.. and I soon realized that we were going to need to probably rearrange the space and start over.

So the first step was demoing the space: 

Checkout this old fuse box circa 1880s

Ray and Ed surveying the project

As we pulled off the carpeting and wall coverings there were a few surprises we weren't prepared for. 

One was that the floors were toast:

 

And we also found out that there was a nice redwood ceiling above the lowered ceiling tiles. So we decided to open up the vertical space and show off the original architecture.

Stay tuned for more updates!!

Before

After

Klim Type Foundry

I just stumbled on this gem of a type foundry that might just shake the $$ out of my frugal pockets. Its very rare that I feel so strongly about a font to invest in it...but I really enjoy the following cuts.

• Calibre:

• Pitch:
• 
  
  
  
  • 
    

• Newzald:
  
  
  
  
  
  • 
    

enjoy:

https://klim.co.nz

New Studio

New Studio

We are happy to announce that we have successfully found a space for our letterpress studio. Its located in the live oak neighborhood in Santa Cruz. We are having an open house every first friday of the month..so drop by and see whats printing!

The dilivery went pretty smooth and nobody cried. 

but the press didnt fit through the door frame so we had to cut a hole in the wall. Its all patched up now and looks fantastic. But we can never leave!

5 Reasons to Get up Early on a Saturday!

Farmers Market - Living in California we are very blessed with the riches of our states bounty. When Saturday rolls around and the cubbards are bare I grab my cloth bags and head to the local farmers market. Its important to get there early.

1. find parking 

2. beat the crowds

3. get the eggs before they run out

4. have your pick of the best produce.

Garage Sales - One of my favorite activities is garage sailing. Its a great way to get to know your community and furnish your house on a budget. But its also important to get there early before all the good stuff is gone. Plus most of the time people hosting the sale are still in a pretty decent mood and might be easier to haggle with.

Morning Sex - We try to be present in our relationships ..but sometimes life has a way of interrupting intimacy…specially after a long hard day. Saturday mornings are a great time to spend some quality time with your significant other with out the pressure of having to rush somewhere else. 

Personal projects - We are all so busy with work and family duties during the week that the last thing you want to do is adding more work for yourself. We all have personal life goals and home projects that a put aside due to procrastination, exhaustion and just plan laziness. Instead of sleeping in till noon on Saturday…carve out a little time for yourself to get a few of those items on your to do list crossed off.

Brunch w/out Waiting - If you and your friends are not too tired from going out the night before then perhaps brunch is in order. But there is nothing more annoying then waiting in line at your favorite breakfast joint for an hour just to sit down and nurse a hangover. The trick is to show up earlier. Most people are still sleeping in and you can beat the crowds, get a great parking spot, and sit and order yourself that mimosa thats been calling your name all week. 

Koa doesnt read blogs.

Walker Watercolors

Watercolor Explorations
for
Walker

Man I wish I had this in Art/Design School ... super brilliant!

Bucket Lists

I love lists...they make all those anxiety noises in my head go away. Specially before bed. But theres one list that might have to be treated a bit differently...the bucket list. Its more of a list of goals or tasks that motivates us to grow or explore life outside of our comforts. So heres a few things that I would like to accomplish before i get to old and tied down to do so.

1. See the aurora borealis north or south.

2. Travel the road less traveled: Travel down the loneliest road. Hwy 50... SF to NY.

3. Visit Alaska: *see number 1

California Ash

I made this

Keep ( insert city name ) Weird

You know what is not weird? Boosterism.

 

the secret club of the internet wiz kid

I miss a time when the internet was only accessible by the few who understood how it functioned. A time when I felt like the only one in my family or group of friends that could easily navigate, create and manipulate. My peers would come and ask me for help to troubleshoot their SEO or build them a website or look up something on the search engines. I felt so empowered. Now everyone has a blog, there own website, and can google it. I feel like I was stripped of my title as technological prodigy and no longer apart of the secret club of the internet wiz kids.

whale house

Barcelona Honeymoon

The trip was long. Separated seating charts. Broken entertainment system. Only our imaginations and elusive 10 min naps.  22 hours. 3 flights. Lay over in Heathrow... 5 hours in a luxury consumerist prison. My eyes burning in protest. Lots of turbulence.

Despite the travel trials and tribulations we made it here to Barcelona in one peice. Our flat is everything the pictures boasted. A 2 bedroom penthouse apartment along the El Born districts side streets. Our host has vacated for the week on a motorcycle trip across France. His french roommate comes and goes and is as illusive as are the locals. Their conversations brief, light and fragile as if any moment it were to fall apart into pieces.

We sleep a lot. The hours melt away in the hot muggy evening as we listen to the echoing chatter from the paseo...of dogs barking, streets washed clean, scooters, glass bottles rolling along the stone curbs, the young people laughing and singing unfamiliar tunes that pour out of the bars and overflowing into the night sky.

We take breaks from the apartment and walk down the allies they call streets looking for nowhere to go in particular. Trying to avoid the traps set for tourists and stumbling upon bits of ancient history. Our favourite haunt is the church of Santa Maria del Mar. Its impressive construction swallowed by the apartments that surround it. Its cool inside and relatively accessible with looming columns supporting a canopy of stone. The cavernous temple creates a chamber of sound that can move the most hardened cynics.

calarts end of the year show

The Jealous Designer

I look at a many things and keep an insatiable design appetite for well considered works. Motion graphics, print, branding, typography, you name it.

Jealousy.  It begins in the reservoir of my soul and wells up till its in the back of my throat like taunting nausea. Not for love nor for the conventional materialistic kind.... but pure envy. Envy that wells up from the least likly of sources. I have had this uncontrollable urge to consume visual content and especially feed my addiction for design. The only problem is that this over exposure of visual nourishment results in a form of dissatisfaction in my own work. Perhaps this is what keeps me going and motivated to grow. But I feel like its a race to nowhere and that these hopeless emotions will devour me. Thats when I have to shut it off. Recharge. Because the fear of failure is always on my back and If  I let it...it will swallow me whole.

Meet the Kluge letterpress

KLUGE from Northern Lights on Vimeo.

i could totally live here

Happy New Year!

NHope 2011 will bring you new beginnings and promising prospects.

Its going to be a busy year....planning a wedding, making new friends, keeping up with old ones, travels, graduations, and babies. So we keep on trucking ... looking over the next horizon to see what we can see.

much luck in the new year and cant wait for the projects that await.

<3 ash

The Borough of Trees

Gail-Marie Boykewich

www.gailboykewich.com

In a small studio in the New Jersey heartland she illuminates vignettes of the surreal and the banal, crossing over the two realities with such fluidity who is to think that these subjects are not members of your own family. Her aesthetic touches on the folk art traditions but with such sophistication it turns it on its head. A bright vernacular yet her melancholy subjects eyes see to feel like portals into another world.

Albert and Alexi 

Acrylic

Danny the Canadian Postman
Acrylic

Hilcrest Cafe
Acrylic

Blue Box

Wooden 3d Diorama

Twinning
Acrylic on printed fabric

Lucid Living

Miwa Matreyek

http://www.semihemisphere.com

CalArts Experimental Animation Alumni 2007

Miwa Matreyek is an animator, designer, and multi-media artist working in Los Angeles. She creates animated short films as well as works that integrate animation and live performance/installation via projection. Matreyek is interested in how animation transforms when it is combined with body and space (and vice-versa) and takes on a more physical and present quality, while body and space take on a more fantastical quality. On one hand, Matreyek's performance can be viewed as a cinematic experience taking place on a screen. On the other hand, what is seen on the screen is a collapsed product of multiple layers of animation, objects and body, rhythmically unfolding. Her work exists in a juxtaposition of illusion and non-illusion.

 

Using animation, projections and her own moving shadow, Miwa Matreyek performs a gorgeous, meditative piece about inner and outer discovery. With music from Anna Oxygen, Mirah, Caroline Lufkin and Mileece.

strange fruit

My Family - 2010 Cut & Paste from Ashley Cunningham on Vimeo.

Exquisite Corpse

David A Smith - Sign Artist from Danny Cooke

more exquisitness found here:

http://www.workingformorework.com

Before and After: Outdoor Living

After

Before

When I moved up to the bay area I was looking to furnish my new place with items on the free section of craigslist. I came across the following items:

Steamer Trunk found in work colleagues garage (not vintage...but after a few damp days it began to create its own patina.)

Hide-Away couch- found on the curb and after reupholstering with fabric almost donated by an Ikea sale ..it became a perfect out door seating arrangement.

Eucalyptus Logs - found in friends backyard and are now perfect end tables / cat scratching post.

Special Thanks to Lauren Henley for her help and design skills..including her awesome help with the upholstery!

making future magic

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London

robots dont have mothers

 

Pen and Ink abstract illustration created for a
series on artificial life circa 2005

my reel

My reel from 2009 which needs to be updated but ill go 

ahead and feature since I dont know when the 2010 version will be compleated.

check back soon.

beard band

Pen and Ink illustration for the band "the Union Line" a visiting artist series poster for iTunes at Apple in Cupertino, CA 2010

by 

me.