I’m writing (“blogging”) on behalf of Jacqueline. She’s been busy shooting lately. I’m not going to tell you what she’s been shooting, I’ll let her do that, but I will say that it’s great. Also, she began to explain it herself but she’s been so busy she didn’t even have time to finish the post:

If so, I have a piece in a show today (February 22) at Park Life (220 Clement Street). It’s a silent auction to raise funds for the printing of the next issue of First Person Magazine. Check it out.

While reading an article on Muriel Cooper in the current issue of Dot Dot Dot, I was reminded of a great online archive of posters designed by Muriel’s colleague Jacqueline Casey. See the archive here, and two of my favorites below.

The article’s description of MIT’s Visible Language Workshop also reminded me of my first and second introductions to graphic design. First was in high school (in 1997) where my “graphic arts” professor Jim Schoof taught us typography by hand cutting letters into rubber, and creating “layouts” by arranging compositions on a stat camera. The end result had us creating multiples on a small AB Dick single color offset press. Mr. Schoof and his press were also responsible for designing and producing every piece of material for our entire school disctrict (K-12). Second was at Pratt (in 2001) where I had the honor of landing a job at the Communication Design Department’s imaging center; a lab of computers, photocopiers, scanners and plotters. Thanks to an amazing supervisor, all of the employees of the lab used it after hours as a studio, where we benefitted from experimenting with the machines we could never afford on our own. 

Last night (or sometime early this morning) I dreamt that I had been arrested and, along with the arresting officer, placed in a taxi cab headed for central bookings. I was wearing a suit and appeared to be in L.A., or somewhere equally open, flat and sunny. On the way to the precinct, or bookings, or wherever we were headed, the cop asked the cab driver to stop at a gas station so he could get a drink. At that point, I pulled $90 out of my suit pants, handed it to the cabbie, and asked him to head for the beach. 

The drive to the beach was great, and after arriving at Coney Island, or maybe Venice Beach, I kicked off my shoes and enjoyed the sand. I started worrying that the cop I escaped would be able to track me down, even though the license he recorded was out of date. In the midst of this train of thought I found myself back in my apartment, running to lock the door after hearing the sound of footsteps. After securing the door, I looked through the peephole and saw it was Jacqueline coming home, not the cops. Relieved, I let her in, and still scared that they’d eventually find me, I sat down on the couch, began to explain and woke up.

After that dream, I had another that started with me sitting in a living room in Cincinnati looking out a large bay window at an above ground pool that took up the entire neighboring lawn. It had attracted quite a crowd of onlookers. I became aware of the neighbor’s plan to euthanize their dog (a Jack Russell) by exploding him over the pool, and watched in horror as they did just that. At the sound of applause and cheer, I turned away, closed the blinds and, again, woke up.