This poster is just one of many reasons for the slow blogging schedule these days. Sorry about that. Lots of work, but little time to show it!

This is a poster that I designed and illustrated for the University of Georgia Band Department. Several pieces on the concert are sea themed, so that definitely informed the design process.

First off, there is now a Facebook page for Designojek and I’d love to see everyone on there. Feel free to drop me a note or post something interesting for everyone to see. Of course, you can do that in the comments on here as well.

Also, I’ve started up a Twitter account at http://www.twitter.com/Designojek. Lots of daily quirkiness, so feel free to follow along.

In my last post on color slide film, I showed a few images that I had shot about 5 years ago. Here are a few more from that series and it’s made me want to go out and buy some more slide film and give it another whirl.

I recently came across a series of photos that I shot about five years ago and used a couple years later for an improvised jazz piece. They were all shot on color slide film (Kodachrome, I believe) and when I pulled out the slides, I was pleasantly surprised with how they looked! They are more along the lines of the type of photography I’ve been wanting to shoot lately. These images are pulled directly from the scanner with no image altering at all. The colors are really amazing and there is definitely a quality there that you can’t get with digital. I’ll post a few here and a some more in the next few days. Enjoy!

This is a poster for the upcoming Lawrence Chamber Orchestra Young Artists Concert on Sunday, April 26th and 2:00 p.m. The concert will feature the very talented flutist JoAnn Doll performing the C.P.E. Bach Concerto in D Minor for Flute and Orchestra.

I was really excited to work on the artwork for the newest CD release from oboist Margaret Marco entitled Hidden Gems: Oboe Sonatas of the French Baroque. It’s a recording that fills a very specific niche in the recorded oboe repertoire, but it’s a great album and if you like baroque music, it’s a wonderful addition to any music collection.

From the liner notes:

It is possible that the works on this CD have not been performed for 400 years. This is the first professional recording of these charming, evocatively colorful and, until now, cloistered sonatas. Not published in modern editions, the original prints of these works reside in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris where hundreds of such works from the Baroque period remain inaccessible to most oboists.

You can listen to samples and pick up a copy of the album on iTunes or CDBaby.

We’re in full Spring mode here in Kansas with thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes rolling in last night! No damage, fortunately, but I hope it’s not a sign of more to come. I spent most of last week in Connecticut which is a beautiful state and you can drive it top to bottom in a couple of hours. That’s a strange concept for those of us out in the Midwest!

With the arrival of Spring comes a new crop of concerts at KU and this is a poster I did for the upcoming KU Wind Ensemble performance on Monday, March 30th. It’s a great ensemble, so check it out if you love live music.

In a very loose connection to St. Patrick’s Day, I wanted to point out an interesting marketing effort by General Mills in which they are bringing back the old school cereal boxes of days past. The Kix box is something else!

Happy St. Patrick’s day everyone and have a wonderful time!

In the “culture of the remix” that we are currently experiencing, there are some pretty fascinating and creative things going on. The appropriating of other visual elements to create new work can be seen in streets all over the world. This technique was taken further into the public eye when, in 2008, street artist Shepard Fairey became world famous (infamous?) with his graphic of Barack Obama taken from an AP photograph.

In the popular musical world, there are “mashup” artists like Girl Talk who take all kinds of different music and mix it together (check out Feed the Animals). However, this is not a new technique as DJ Shadow pioneered this on his critically acclaimed debut album Endtroducing….. in 1996.

This past week, a new website launched that really caught my eye. Thru You is the creation of Israeli musician and producer, Ophir Kutiel, aka Kutiman. He’s taken a number of unrelated YouTube videos and compiled them together to create some really amazing pieces. You just have to see it to get the full effect and I was completely impressed.

Of course, all of these different interpretations of these mediums bring a lot of questions to the surface which I can’t quickly cover here, but like them or not, they are starting to shape the culture that we live in. Feel free to weigh in and share your thoughts!

I’m thinking about trying to expand this blog to allow me to post a bit more frequently and to include some more inspiration from around the internet as well as some more images and thoughts of my own. Most likely, this will mean shorter posts that are easier to digest in addition to the work that I’ve been showcasing already. We’ll give it a try and see how it goes and feel free to let me know what you think in the comments!

So, with that in mind, I’ve been looking at a lot of architecture and interior design lately. I’m sure it’s because Spring is around the corner and it makes me want to start some projects around my own home! I know very little about architecture, but here are a few things that I enjoyed looking at:

• The Glass House by Philip Johnson
• The Farnsworth House by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
• An amazing computer generated tour of Fallingwater by Frank Lloyd Wright
• Dwell magazine just did a redesign of their website and they expanded their slideshow section.
• A Wikipedia entry on the architecture of Kansas City.

If you missed it earlier, I did a studio tour of a Studio 804 project midway through production that you might also find interesting.

This is the poster I did for the University Dance Company’s upcoming concerts on April 16th and 17th at 7:30 p.m. at the Lied Center of Kansas. If you haven’t seen them before, it’s definitely worth your while to make it over to see them.

They will be performing The Fugue by renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp.

From the press release:

The Fugue, originally choreographed in 1970, represents the start of a new direction in the Tharpian canon. Since its creation, this trio has become a Tharp classic, in which the rigorously plotted choreography draws audiences inside its intriguing workings. Set to the percussive beat of the dancer’s own feet on a miked floor, The Fugue’s primary phrase of movement is a 20-count theme that one, two and/or three of its dancers variously execute by way of reversals, inversions, and resequencings, all shaded by individually graded “attacks and coordinations.”

Since I’m not a dancer, I wasn’t familiar with her work and in doing some research, I came across this video of her talking about motivation and creativity that I found pretty interesting.

Sorry for the brief hiatus from posting. It’s been an extremely busy month with work and there was also a baby born along the way, so I haven’t had much time to post!

That being said, I wanted to showcase a poster I just finished for the 2009 University of Kansas Jazz Festival. This year will feature trombonist John Fedchock as well as the KU Jazz Ensemble I playing the Rolling Stones Big Band Project with saxophonist Tim Ries and pianist Matt Harris. The dates are March 6-7, so mark your calendars!

For the first studio tour of 2009, I visited the workspace of artist and illustrator, Lora Jost. I first met Lora when we worked together on a poster for the River City Reading Festival and I was so amazed by her illustration that I asked if I could visit her studio to see her workspace and more of her beautiful art. Lora uses several unique techniques in creating her work including scratchboard, ceramic mosaic, and collage. Her pieces draw from personal experiences and collected stories which are depicted with elements of beauty, whimsy, darkness, and joy. From her artist statement:

“I am drawn to experiences that are mundane, whimsical, and socially urgent. I like to mix these themes, and find how they link in spirit. I hope that viewers will identify with the stories my pictures tell. I hope that my art, in some small way, deepens our collective appreciation and compassion for each other and for life itself.”

Before moving to the studio, I wanted to show some of Lora’s artwork first. These black and white pieces were all done using scratchboard which is incredible to me! It is a very time intensive process, but Lora is able to etch extremely fine lines into the surface that create wonderful texture and a wide tonal range. I think these are fun to look at from a distance, but also very close up to appreciate the intricate detail of each line.

I asked Lora to show a little bit of her process on creating these. They generally start out as a pencil sketch before moving on to the scratchboard.

Using a variety of sharp instruments, she slowly scratches away the dark surface to reveal the white board underneath. It takes a very steady hand and a lot of patience to carve out the final image.

Some of Lora’s art is more child/family oriented and inspired by her experiences as a mother.

Her son has gone through some phases of art making as well and there are stacks of his drawings which were a lot of fun to see.

Lora has done a number of commissions and one that many people in Lawrence may have seen was for the KU Endowment Association. I love the colors in this piece! You can see the original art on the right and the printed version on the left.

The endowment piece shows a mixture of the scratchboard work and also some collaged elements which is another medium that she frequently uses.

This piece is a combination of paint, photography and thread. There are a lot of layers in her work and I like the effect of transparency that she uses.

A detail of the previous photo . . .

. . . and another. Although not necessarily a theme throughout all of her work, elements from nature and organic shapes and lines often appear in her pieces.

I also really enjoy her use of hand written type to help convey the story within the work.

This new piece was one of the highlights of a recent exhibit at the Lawrence Percolator gallery. Lora told me that she wasn’t sure if people would actually read the text or not, but it turns out that most people took the time and I encourage you to as well since it’s beautifully written.

This work is based on another personal story involving a police helicopter that hovered over her neighborhood one night.

In her studio, Lora has a great wall space for hanging her artwork. Although each piece tells an individual story, it’s neat to step back and see a large group of it all together.

She has an amazing art studio that was built as a second floor addition to her home. The windows and gallery lighting make it a bright workspace that welcomes creativity.

Lots of room for reference material and an office.

I always enjoy seeing the inspiration on studio walls.

The variety of materials that Lora has at her disposal is amazing and she has found very creative ways to put them to use.

She has also created a number of mosaics using broken ceramic pieces. Most of the bits come from dishware and mugs found at garage sales and thrift stores which give her a huge range of colors to work with. What a great way to reuse discarded and unwanted items!

After roughly sketching out the image on board, the tiles are glued into place one piece at a time until the final piece is completed.

The results are beautiful! Again, these works are fun to look at from a distance, but also up close where you can see the individual textures and patterns in each tile.

A huge thanks to Lora for inviting me over to look at her studio. I had a great time! You can see more of her artwork on her website at www.lorajost.org and also over at the Lawrence Arts Center. In addition to her artwork, Lora is also an educator and writer so be sure and check out the book Kansas Murals: A Traveler’s Guide, a book that she co-authored with muralist Dave Loewenstein (available on amazon.com).