Here is my new t-shirt design. Identify Lincoln.


Shirt can be viewed/bought here.

Some new odd building of various flavors from my recent trip to Western New York.

A student bought these policemen from "the Dollar Tree next to Walmart"




The Chinese make the best toys.

"Whats up with those pants, and their lack of bone structure? Why's that dude so skinny?"

Just another failure in manhood...an excessively neck oriented beard.

Rediscover the magic.

Don't get no better.







These are a few sketches from a recently uncovered sketchbook, circa age 11. I see the talent. Boom-wow!

New work for Pulled Resources

Here are a few images on our recent project in the Todd Gallery at Middle Tennessee State University. Knowing that we had a designated and oddly formed space, we decided to tap into the unending supply of cardboard from the University Center located just east of the Todd Art Building. With this material we constructed the structure of a typical suburban home.


Also make sure to check out the ever-changing www.pulledresources.org

New comic....egg

I know what you're asking yourself. What kind of name is Egg for....anything? It's a name not fit for man nor beast. Maybe. Maybe you're right. But for a book? Well, you'll have to read to find out.

To find out more click here.


You'll be able to get Egg no. 1 for your very own by one of two ingenious methods:

1. Go to Comixpress.com and order twelve copies (it's not up quite yet, but soon--I'll keep you posted).
   
2. Come meet me at the Alternative Press Expo here in San Francisco in a few weeks and I'll gladly sell you one.

Interstate geography #2

The legend of Monte Romaima has inspired books, movies, and legendary tales of cryptozoology. This inaccessible, and therefore unaltered landscape, was believed to hold species that had become extinct elsewhere in the world. Now, throughout the Sunbelt, homages to this mystic local can be seen in equally unaccessible locations, like this one in Nashville, TN.

An exercise in semiotics

Sometimes the right interpretation, and therefor meaning, of a sign is based on the grander context of its use.

Subdivision name generator

Although this could be expanded...its tragically true.

First, follow the directions to generate 25 random names for possible subdivisions

Second, pick any two word option from the list and put it into Google, preferably with quotation marks. Guarantee a real subdivision pops up.

You can move in today.

Sustainable mining reclamation....

The problem with most design projects is their impracticality. This design by University of Kentucky architecture students and the Center for Sustainable Cities provides a solution to many environmental concerns surrounding strip mines as well as deep mines along Appalachian hilltops .
The problem with this design (more info found here) is a fundamental, LeCorbusier-like, disconnect between the architectural students and the community's needs. I grew up in a small, outmoded coal town in Southwest Virginia and nobody I remember would have chosen to live in apartment style buildings. It's a community of proud farm owners and nature lovers (self proclaimed and problematic I know), citizens who want houses that are private and the ability to do what they want with their land. Often that land has been passed down for generations.

Christopher Alexander describes good design as "the goodness of fit" between form and context. The tenancies of most people I knew in my home town, and the type of clients this proposal would target, would fall under the idea of "context", anything that puts a force on the "form".

Most towns were founded in strategic places throughout the world, be it proximity to a river for travel or sustenance or at a certain valley along a trading route. Coincidentally, most mines have an inverse relationship to convenience and comfort. Most deep mines in SWVA were out of the way, remote. (Although stripmines are smaller, more common and more often located close to homes and town centers.)

The final argument in this story centers on the the lack of a need for a new town design in a region without much economical future. No one would trade in their hometown for progress. Just look at the arguments generated around the idea of school consolidation in Wise County Virginia.

Here is a quote to from the above article to exemplify the self preservation and self identity localized in the community you live in:

"Peggy Jordan-Austin of St. Paul said towns stripped of their high schools would shrivel and die and asked the board to “preserve the town of St. Paul.” Ann Gregory of St. Paul, a former member of the board, urged board members to hold public hearings on the issue in all six communities."

Ze frank explains Las Vegas.

I'm no sports racer but I do think this is an accurate and intelligent account of Las Vegas and the idea of the context of place.


Also make sure to check out the entries from the next two days as his stay in Vegas continues.

"Newfangled" tree house design.

Not only is he good with his hands ..he's a snappy dresser too.

His name is Mark Madson, and his motto is that "I'm 48 years old, with the body of a 24 year old, and the imagination of a 12 year old that has not realized the boundaries of reality!"

Here is the link to his website describing the treehouse and some other interests.

American chestnuts used to restore strip mines in Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky...

PIONEER, Tenn. (AP) — In a double-barreled approach to environmental restoration, Appalachian mountains scarred by strip-mining are being planted with American chestnut trees, a species that has been all but wiped out in the U.S. by a...

July, 1970, somewhere in Pennsylvania perhaps

This is a compilation of two slides I bought at a flea market in Pittsburgh. Something about its iconic 1970's late 1960's feel I find fascinating.

Its suburban banality.