Highly productive yesterday. Made an appt. with a friend who is a buyer at the Museum who has her finger on the pulse of what folks are buying and pricepoint at the GlassMarket, a huge glass emporium at the Museum of Glass. Plans are to develop a series of products (illustration based) to be sandblasted on stock blanks (a la Steuben) or on glass hurricane candle enclosures, bottles etc. and do limited run products to start with. Focused, illustration base, potential for breaking even/profit....certainly worth the toe in the water. Also have a few calls out to see who can help me with this on the production side. People are out there looking for stuff to do...so hey, might as well tap the resources.
Also contacted Boxcar Press (Syracuse), Pressed 55 (Philadelphia) and our little Pioneer Printing (in Interlaken) to have them quote some basic jobs in letterpress. I am learning about how this process works (do you want to buy the plate from one company and give to another? or buy the plate and use your own press (not where I want to go), or quote the entire job?)> I am curious about how much black density they can hold (have sent them a valentine in black for reference) and now do we specify depth of the imprint. More today on that. Surprisingly, I found that Briar Press (on my resource list) was a phenomenal source for boutique and not so boutique letterpress shops. More to learn on that front. In the same vein, I need to relink up with the independant engravers that are local (Meaning Buffalo to Albany and points south) as this is another instrument I want to be able to play in the future. Have done engraving jobs for business cards and the like, but how bout a gorgeous spot illustration engraved or embossed with 28kt gold leaf? Ooooooh.
I started a mini business plan for a music project I have been enlisted to help out with and used Google Docs for the writing. Nice! Not only was I working on the document, but so was the other author and Erich all at the same time--a bit disconcerting as it felt and seemed like there were ghosts in the machine as the cursor jumped around unbidden, filling in paragraphs, correcting spelling, adding names--an electronic ouiji board. The plan has become more focused with prices and detail that many piece could be peeled out of the entirety. However, Great tool, easy to use and it lives in the electronic cloud so its accessible everywhere and the aspect of collaborative projects are just that much easier. Kitty has even done slide shows on it to great success.
I am joining the Society of Illustrators LA as it will allow me to save a little dough on the entry fees, allow me some promotional space on their site and to support illustration in another venue. Need to finalize the paperwork and the check for the entry fees and for the membership today.
Also, hopefully Don Hair, the tree man, will arrive for a walk down Camp Street to talk about the dead trees by the side of the road and how he can help us take them down and possibly turn them into firewood. There are three enormous piles of sticks, wood, debris that need to be chipped (thanks to Kitty, Alex and Nigel's huge efforts around clearing miles of privet in various forms of development, tree limbing up, and the picking up of wood in all ranges of sizes). So, Don has a lot of topline work to do before we get into the more indepth stuff that is so worth doing. But, just maintaining the topline is good as it proves the import when we get these torrential downpours with wind shears and in the last snow of the season which is warm enough to really pile on the trees and wires and break them. Now when we have these sorts of natural events, we get a few branches...but not a few trees. All good.
So, moving the needle a bit. We are doing a round trip to a college on Friday and then Mon>Wed another go round of schools. Need to wrap my head around that too.
The fair has opened in Tburg. Last night was the Demolition Derby prelims and Thursday is the local music night which we all have penciled in. Hank Roberts and Hubcap are also playing at the Pourhouse Thursday p.m.. The choices are wide and varied. Trumansburg Farmer's Market tonight--so we'll see if we can cruise by.
More later
