These are some titles I drew and animated for this crazy film for the German wing of Yabla (where I work). Because I don’t speak German, I have no idea what’s going on,  but it has something to do with clones, talking bunnies and telephones covered in tin foil. It is sure to be an instant classic.

I’ve had this chair since 1995. Bought at at yard sale in Flagstaff Arizona.

This is from Design*Sponge, one of my favorite websites. I think it even has directions how to make it here. 

Not a pug…just one who poops cupcakes.

I took my park to University of California San Diego. All of the pieces barely fit into a 15 passenger van including 3 passengers (the band) and the driver (me!). The gallery was perfect for it and all the students seemed to enjoy — they all climbed the ladders and ate the cupcakes and blew on the horns. The lawn was a particular favorite.  Lots of kinks left to work out, but everything is operational.

The Dr. Seuss Library at UCSD

On October 7th I’m taking my installation, along with my band to San Diego for a show at UCSD, home of the Theodor Geisel Seuss Library. I’m real excited to be anywhere that has anything to do with Dr. Seuss. I’m actually thinking/hoping that that’s why the chose me — because of how naturally Whoville my trees are.

Anyway, I’ll be in AZ for a week beforehand, and then in San Diego and Mission Viejo. If you know anyone around there who either 1) has a venue that will support a 200 square foot lawn, 4 climbable trees, a kiosk and a loud rock band, please let me know. On the other hand, if you know someone who has a living room and a handful of friends and wants a house show complete with cupcake tree and teensy acoustic band, you should also let me know.

Anyway, I’m considering visiting Dr Seuss’ grave while I’m there. Is that weird?

Update: I just found out from findagrave.com that his ashes are scattered. How nice for him. I don’t know how I feel about findagrave.com, however. Slightly creepy or slightly awesome? The scales have not yet tipped for me.

Yesterday I got this fun illustration gig, which turned into more of a “put stuff on the scanner” gig, but before I got to the scanner I was trying to take pix of stuff with my dopey camera. It mostly didn’t work, but I liked this photo pretty well.

This weekend I decided I wanted to learn crochet, because I want to work with plarn on the next tree I’m making. After a few bad starts and more than a few expletives I came up with this beanie. Unfortunately, the beanie only looks regular from this angle–from other angles your visual take-away is BEGINNING CROCHET.

My sister gave me a copy of Willa Cather’s Death Comes to the Archbishop and I just stayed up waaay too late to finish it (Here’s a tip: don’t exercise at 10:30 pm. You won’t be able to sleep). I never did read a Willa Cather novel before, but I’m going to try some others now. I like her plain-spoken style and sympathy for a variety of characters. One thing that strikes me about this novel: though it lacks an antagonist (at least a steady one), it’s still a page turner. You want to know everything about these characters and their landscape. On second thought, the desert sometimes fills the role of antagonist, and at times takes over as ingénue. Yeah, it’s pretty slick how the desert ends up a bona fide character here. I guess this is true of the land in most Western novels of the period, but still- -neat trick.

Thumbs up, Willa. I’m a fan.

Here are a few blogs I’ve been digging:

My friend Laura’s blog Cloverland Farm talks about a wide variety of stuff from her life including Ethiopian Adoption, crafting, reading books, and all sorts of etc. She’s a good writer and I’m always amazed at the wide variety of things she’s become an expert on. Her blog turns me on to all sorts of things including good movies and fun stuff to make like this handbag made of plastic grocery bag yarn.

I just discovered dooce. I know, I’m a little late…seems like everyone in the universe knows about this blog, and they should; it’s interesting, well written, and has great photos. A slice of life blog, if you will.

My sister Peggie just started a blog. She’s very handy with a turn of phrase, that one. I’m excited to watch this one grow. Go Peggie. Write more.

Here is a detail of the Horn Tree. This mother is pretty hard to photograph.

The idea here is that the mouthpieces of the horns grow out of the copper tubing at approximately mouth level. When the horns are blown (and the proper sound is made), the light bulbs (which are suspended from copper tubing overhead) light up. The tree was engineered so that some bulbs light up at some frequencies, and others light up at other frequencies, see? So that if you blow a high note a certain bank of lights go on, and if you blow a low note another bank of lights goes on. Make sense? No? Well here’s a video to explain:

And here’s another picture–a little blurry, but you can get the idea:

My dad helped me to engineer the base (so that it wouldn’t fall over) and then he had to leave, So my friend Mark took over to help with the engineering of the light bulbs–that is, making the light bulbs turn on when the horns are blown. Turns out he knew of this fun thing called a Color Organ. It’s the device that makes those awesome light banks from the seventies function. Don’t know what I’m talking about? I think you do:

Nowadays you can buy a printed circuit board kit that controls the lights. Thank God that Mark knew how to 1) order it and, 2) solder the damn thing together.

The PCB is almost as interesting as the horn tree, really. It looks like three little robot guys with three little robot drums getting ready for a drum circle:

Here’s a wee video of Ken and Mark testing the color organ:

One more thing I’d like to note: Caralie and I felt very proud of ourselves because we learned how to attach plugs and sockets to electrical wire. Here’s a picture of us doing a victory dance:

Did you know that electrical wire is made of latex? I didn’t. One bad side effect of working with this stuff all day (I learned to use a wire stripper!) is that my latex allergy has been upgraded from mild to relatively severe. Now I’m allergic to all sorts of things. I’m even allergic to my iPod headphones. Sheesh.