Water cooler

Peach tile, Q. Cassetti, Adboe Illustrator CS5I am taking a little break as the big machine is getting an Adobe Creative Suite upgrade (5.5) and as the computer whirrs and rattles, the blue band advances, I can chat a bit with you…an electronic coffee break.

I sit here in my tower, looking out over the back forty with brilliant green grass, forsythia and frosty daffodils. The stinky allium were horizontal and frozen the other day, and this morning, they were standing tall and back in order. We can only hope for moderate cold. How crazy is this weather? The deer are back in force.

Its been busy here with work work, Farmers Market work and my farmers work. I am always reluctant to talk about work/
work as its not right…but the other two, I am happy to chat a bit about.

The Trumansburg Farmers Market. We need to boost awareness, build excitement and get more people coming to the market. That is the “this year” challenge (and ongoing). Granted, we have limited funds, but I am the queen of getting a ton for your money. So, in that spirit, we are going to start to advertise in local journals and summertime rags Thank you Amelia (she found the typo!)(advertising is really inexpensive). Additionally, we are going to have a rack card that hopefully we will put in backpacks prior to school letting out ($110 for 5M pieces from BargainBasementPrinting.com). This rack card is going to promote the market along with the free live music that is offered for a fun summer night out on the town for the family. For a wider distribution, we are going to work with an artist who is very affordable and does distribution of her own rack cards, and for a fee will take ours around to wineries etc. where our summer visitors might be. Then there is the local distribution that I think we can, as board members, put out the cards. I am ordering PET recycled tote bags from Bulletin Bag (and, she says proudly, got a community/ non profit price on them) with our summertime slogan (yes, created by M. E….”Omnivore, Herbivore, Carnivore, Localvore! More for ‘Vors at the Trumansburg Farmers Market” Big/brassy and bold. We plan on selling the price with a bit of a markup, but also giving a bunch away (a drawing every farmers market, a drawing at the local foods lectures at the Library etc.). I am looking into small banners for Main Street. And then, we might be having a few Saturday Markets (to test the concept and maybe switch out the rules a bit to give the smaller/newer farmers a shot at selling some stuff). We are going to have a pumpkin event in October, maybe a Thanksgiving market as well as a Holiday market. So…lots to plan and promote.

Then there are my farmers. Love them. Love their independence and spirit. Love how their work, growing food delights them. I am within eyeshot of two of these new logotypes being completed. Another has a few more turns. And the cidery is having the work approved by the TTB. So…a few things on the horizon for now. I would love to share the process but I can only do that after their marks have been approved by them.

I am still making Farmers Market images of fruit and vegetables…making stand alone images and then wreaths and tiles from those elements…creating little collections of things.  I modified my asparagas image to show to Good Life Farm for their asparaganza (an event in May celebrating their enormous aparagas crop)—and I blundered by putting a grasshopper in the picture (fyi. as adorable as grasshoppers are, the Farmers can’t like t hem…at all…think the Bible and swarms of locusts). However, I picked up a few more tricks with warping text (never did that before) and using all the path offset, and path options in my new fave, the “appearance” panel. I am becoming a pretty good intermediate user….

There will be a set of 8 prints auctioned tomorrow at the Great Local Foods Network event at Regional Access in addition to those same 8 auctioned (probably silent) as separate images, and some Q. goody bags of stickers, tattoos, postcards and the like. Should be a fun event with music, raffles, and tons of great people.

The whirring has stopped. The disk is being ejected. Time to get back to the paying work.

noodgy

Peach, Q. Cassetti, 2012, Adobe Illustrator CS5Winter is back with us…after the faux spring forced our forsythia, all our daffodils and the big fat magnolia blossoms to pop. Now we have window shaking winds with wool tee shirts and extra sweaters which would have been ridiculous last week at the same time.

I met with a bunch of local foods people yesterday—our market manager at the Tburg Market, and wonderful Melissa from Good Life Farm. I also had a interesting meeting with members of the Chamber of Commerce—to figure out how the Tburg Farmers Market could figure into the Community Yard Sale (05.12). Thankfully, we got a little thinking about it earlier in the morning so I could be a bit more responsive than my normal dead wood between the ears self. I also had a nice chat with Mary Ellen Salmon, Salmon Pottery about her work, her marketing etc. Mary Ellen does beautifully textured work on simple and elegant forms….with all sorts of texture on texture/ color on color things.  The image below is a detail of a piece she did using buttons to press into the ceramics and then highlighting them with glaze. Pretty! Like little gems, little candies, little magical dreams. So I am charged up.

Detail of a pot from Mary Ellen Salmon, Trumansburg, NYDon’t mind me. I am just feeling a little cranky given all the noodgy people I have given information and direction to more than once who today, requested the same information and duplication of all the stuff I gave em before. I am not chilling on this and frankly wish sometimes, people could hold on, and be a bit more mature than what I am seeing. I am bored with redoing others work and nipping at others heels to get the stuff done I asked for once twice, three times. Tedium times ten. Okay. That’s off my chest. Sorry for that station break.

Today’s illustration breaks some of my rules…and am using gradients for my peach illustration, part of the Farmers market illustrations. There are more in the hopper…some beets, and a fennel illo.

 

Full Plate

Watermelon Wreath, Q. Casseti,2012, Adobe Illustrator CS5Spring slash Early Summer burst through the veil of March —confusing the trees, the green lily shoots, and pump peony blossoms, and me. I have been weather obsessed—reading tons of stuff online, the digital Farmers Almanac trying to make sense of this insame weather and what to expect…with really no answers but those of Rob which essentially was to go with the flow. That would be the right and easy thing, but I fight it. I like the change in weather…the frosty winters, the frozen springs, the gradual warming and then the delight in the blast of heat. This is all upsidedown and backwards. As someone who likes what she likes, she doesnt cotton well to these changes. However, my Rosemary plant from Atkins Farm in Amherst is digging the change as well as my rootbound orchid.

As a bow to early spring, I cleaned the science projects out of the fridge yesterday—and configured a bunch of things into a kale/couscous/vegetable stock soup, a double batch of biscotti (chocolate chip/almonds and toffee brittle), and cooked a brisket. Now we have stuff to eat, and space to store it. Wow. Productivity.

Sparkly Kitty is home to our delight. She is relishing sleeping in her own bed, eating soup and cookies, and just being in her home. We are doing the same. Kitty delights in everything…and we love her so much. Alex is being very funny…and so its great to be all four of us together in the car, at table together.

I have been heads down getting a ton of work out the door from a new Calendar for the Museum, to covers and branding for the big customer.

Lots of small local projects: There is a new local calendar (http://www.tburgevents.com): “Tburg Events was created by Trumansburg residents Peter McCracken, Flannery Hysjulien and Sarah Koski. Christopher Wofford brought our team together. I created their masthead and a printed postcard to be dropped off at various locations to update folks on this new service. The Great Local Foods Network benefit has a poster/website/ postcard and now rack card to promote the event and the background of this new organization (http://www.greatlocalfoodsnetwork.com). I am using scrap from my files for all of this work which is inspiring me to keep going as there is a place for all of this stuff (particularly as I am the art director/creative director) so I can plug and play as I go. My farmers and I keep at our projects as well as the local beverage producers….so more to come as they come to fruition. And then there is the Farmers Market—which I am very excited about and need to wrap my head around what it is that we are doing this season and getting the manpower behind doing it. Maybe a few emails today.

I am learning sooo much new with Adobe Illustrator these days. I have always used the pen tool…but never really engaged in learning all the cool stuff having to do with paths that are integral with the program and I delight in this new knowledge. The work is speeding up a bit…and I am happier with the results than you can imagine. I also have purchased two new plug ins for Illustrator recommended by the amazing Von Glitschka (aka the Vonster)—Inkscribe and Vector Scribe from Astute Graphics. These plug ins do not really make Illustrator any more inuititive, but allows the work to go more smoothly, more accurately and does some of the knitpicky stuff that just takes time and patience. I was watching a few tutorials yesterday, and plan on a few more today to get rolling with this. It will help with the illustration work, the graphic work and the logotypes which demand more precision/accuracy and smoothness.

So, all in all, things are good. Prince Dauntless will tread the boards this Thursday through Saturday with our having our last, yes last, Cast Party on Saturday. Kitty is home. Rob has a relatively “normal” week. And I have the standard plate of things to do, but with a lot of learning and trying. So, apart from this extrordinary and yet odd weather, things are as close to perfect as possible.