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I pulled an all-nighter working on this brochure design for Local Color. I gotta get a bunch printed and folded on Saturday so we can distribute them on Sunday at the Estate Sale. I really like how this came out!
 After a long day of webinars & work meetings, I was happy to end the day hanging out and painting with friends at Meeting of the Minds. That's where artists and non-artists meet up, are randomly paired, and paint a single canvas together. They're always a lot of fun and laid-back—a great way to end the night. Today I sent the confirmation emails to all the artists participating in Local Color's 31 Skull fundraiser this year. It thanked them all for signing up, gave instructions for picking up the skulls and information about how the fundraiser works. I also hung out at Local Color Keystone for a few hours as artists came to pick up their ceramic skulls. When artists arrived, I asked them to pose with a blank skull for a quick photo. Here are the pictures of me... I should have made this announcement sooner, but here it is. My exhibit at the Martin Luther King Library, originally scheduled for 2020 but postponed due to the pandemic, is now back on! I'll have my work on display from early October till late November. I'm very excited and a little bit nervous. This exhibit will be almost ten years to the day since my last solo show. Wish me luck!
Today I went to the Local Color Keystone studio to get some work done. I'd primarily been working from home these last couple of months. I was on the computer all day till I had to test some audio equipment. They have a couple of 12" speakers there, so I checked to make sure they worked when I plugged them into my DJ controller. They did! I also used my new mic for the first time. I'll be using them when I DJ/MC their Estate Sale on September 26. It should be a fun gig! Today I met with local artist & musician Ben Henderson, a Local Color member, to talk about music for Local Color's 31 Skulls fundraising campaign/event. Last week Ben recorded a sick 80s style synth recording and shared it on Instagram. I DM'd him and told him about my idea for promoting 31 Skulls like an 80s horror movie and that his music sounded perfect for it. Today I visited him at home and he recorded and produced a minute-long song in a couple of hours. Now I need to attach this audio to some video. I would love to film a campy 80s horror movie scene, complete with grainy footage, and use it in our fundraising campaign this year. I attached a snippet of the song below.  One of my big responsibilities at Local Color is running the upcoming 31 Skulls fundraiser. Last year was their first time doing it. Local Color commissioned artists to decorate ceramic skulls then awarded them as raffle prizes during their live-streamed Halloween event. I was one of the participating artists. We're commissioning artists again this year but doing a different event on Halloween weekend. (More details TBA) Tonight we sent out the artist invitation email with a form for them to fill out, and we've already received ten sign-ups! It's been so much work to get to this point, and we're barely getting started! The following month and a half are going to be busy and exciting! Wish us luck!  It's been almost 2 months, and I don't know why I waited this long to let everyone know that I took a contract job with Local Color as their Communications & Development person. I've been working with the amazing staff on the weekly and monthly newsletters, social media posts, and upcoming fundraisers. It's been a learning experience for all of us and I'm slowly starting to get in a groove. This is a paid gig till the end of the year but I'm also volunteering my time & services, like in a couple weeks, I'll be DJing & MCing their Estate Sale, to help artists in residence sell artwork before moving out of their current building. It should be a lot of fun and I hope a lot of people show up to support!   Today was great! I slept in after working the Street Mrkt event last night. Later on, I went to the local craft brewery, Narrative Fermentations, where local bad-ass artist, Patrick Hofmeister, is painting his latest mural. I had an alcoholic slushy from the bar and a fried chicken sandwich from Scratch Cookery food truck while I was there. Pretty damn good! Afterwards I went to The Arsenal art supply store & gallery in Japantown. I went to see the current exhibit by my friend Amy Brown and cousin Alyssarhaye. There was also a pop-up outside the store where a couple other artist buddies were selling their merch so I bought a few items to support them. I went home after and checked movie showtimes and bought a ticket to see Shang-Chi, the latest Marvel movie. I loved it! It was a perfect end to a good day! Another great event! My booth was in between two of my friend's booths, Jodi & Francisco, and it was a lot of fun talking and hanging with them. There was an adorable baby girl who walked into my booth and danced when I had my party lights on. I gave her a couple buttons and a high-five. I sold my last Medium San Jose shirt off the display and the rest of the black & blue ones so it's time to print some more. I'm considering doing something similar to the custom & pre-orders I recently did with my 1.0 shirts. Damn! I've so busy these last few weeks that I haven't done much prep, or even promoted, the event I'm vending at tomorrow night. It's the Street MRKT (part of the First Friday Art Walk) and I'm doing it again, 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM. It's on South First Street in Downtown San Jose between Reed St. and San Carlos St. I'll be setup somewhere near Miami Beach Club on the corner of San Salvador. I'm looking forward to seeing new and familiar faces while I'm out there!
After work today I met up with the Meeting of the Minds group for a fun painting session. It's a group of artists that get together once a month and are paired up at random and take turns painting a canvas. Tonight I was the odd man out, painting by myself until another artist arrived, Jessica. We both worked the canvas below.  My buddies and went hiking along the coast at Wilder Ranch State Park this morning. While we were there we saw a vulture eating away at a dead seal thru it's eyehole. Pretty fucking metal! Afterwards we went to a brewery in Capitola for beers and lunch then off to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk for more beers, deep fried Oreos, a train ride, bumper cars, & arcade games. After coming home I didn't have much energy to do anything else besides draw a couple new button designs on the iPad. I drew six of them last night. The plan is to have new buttons available for the next First Friday Street Mrkt in September.    I went to bed real late after the Street Mrkt event on Friday. Only got a few hours of sleep. Didn't drink any coffee. Was really tired from working and hiking so I stayed in bed and watched tv, and soon after I was out. Zzzz... I don't know how long I slept for but it had been 4 hours since my first missed call. I didn't get shit done today! I still have all the gear from Friday to organize & put away, and I need to count all my t-shirts and update my inventory online. I guess it'll have to wait till Sunday.  Another great event! I sold a few shirts and prints tonight, but most importantly, talked to people in person! I talked to friends (some who I haven't seen in years), people who had never seen my stuff before, folks who have. I even saw a guy wearing one of my pink & black San Jose shirts and asked if I could take his picture! I had missed vending so much! I can't wait to be back out there again, choppin' it up with folks, at the next two First Friday Street Mrkts in September and October!  Tonight I got all my black 1.0 shirts back from the printers, finished, and a few of the pre-orders & customs too. I'm still waiting on a shipment of blanks to arrive before I can take them to get printed. Today I also picked up the Frankie Mcfly USA maps I reordered in every colorway. I also printed some Frankie Mcflyers at home. All this is for Friday's Street Mrkt & Art Walk where I'll be vending my usual gear.  The second shipment of shirts arrived today! I took them, and the shipment that arrived yesterday, and dropped them off at Downtown Screen Printers. I'm still waiting on 5 more shirts to arrive but they're gonna start printing, the ones I already dropped off, tomorrow. I'm pretty stoked because now I'm back on track and should have my shirts for Friday's event and be able to ship out the custom & pre-orders next week.  I finally ordered all the blanks for the 1.0 reprints, pre-orders & customs. I'm afraid by the time they arrive and finally get printed it'll be after the First Friday Street Mrkt event on August 6th. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, hoping that I'll have them finished before then. We'll see. In other news... I sketched this thing below. There's also a time-lapse video below that.  I spent hours today looking for alternatives to the shirts I wasn't able to buy, either because they were out of stock or had to be bought by the case. Then I emailed those alternatives to everyone whose custom orders were affected. Now I'm waiting on their replies. Today was also my install appointment for two new tires. The old tires, one had a big crack in the sidewall, both had tread that was pretty low. While I waited on my tires I started researching my first assignment from work, using CRM (customer relationship management) software. At night I went to Meeting of the Minds, where artists get together then partner up to paint a canvas. I wasn't going to paint, just hang out, but then a local artist Chuck invited me to work on the canvas he'd been painting by himself. Busy day! Today on Instagram I uploaded pictures and video of the button display I built for my vendor booth. It was a last minute build. I made it the night before the Rose, White & Blue Parade event and I'm pretty happy how it came out. I bought a used frame from the Goodwill, yellow felt from Joann fabrics, hinge & back board from Home Depot, and I already had the scrap lumber & velcro at home. I'm going to leave it as-is for now, until it breaks or I come up with a better design, or solution, to display my buttons at events. I still need to count my t-shirts after yesterday's event but I think it's time to reprint some more. I'm almost all out of Small, Medium & Larges in most styles and certainly I missed out on a few sales for not having the sizes in stock. I even sold the SAN JOSE shirt on display because it was the last Small I had in that style. The next event I'm vending at is the first Friday in August. I hope I can be restocked by them.
It was more of a festival, since there wasn't a parade this year ,but it was awesome event nonetheless! It felt great to be out and talking to people after almost a year and a half of shutdown. I'd been missing it. Lots of people came to my booth to check out my stuff and I made a decent amount of sales. I can't wait to do it again next month for the First Friday Art Walk & Night Mrkt. I spent the day preparing for Sunday's Rose, White & Blue event. I pulled everything from my checklist of stuff, built a display for my buttons (pictured below) and framed all 5 FRANKIE MCFLY USA print colorways. Everything took longer than anticipated and I didn't do a full set up of my booth at home to see how it'll look. Hopefully there's no issues at the event tomorrow when I set up the new displays & merch for the first time. Either way it's gonna be fun and I can't wait to be out there. I flew in from Las Vegas this morning. My grandma is still here and she'd been working on the puzzle while I was gone so I jumped back in. We got a lot done tonight. Hopefully we finish it tomorrow because I need to use the tables we're doing the puzzle on. I'm going to work on my merch table setup for the Rose, White & Blue event this Sunday and figure out the best way to display my new prints and buttons along with my t-shirts.  The Valley Verde Mural Celebration event was so much fun! My buddy, Mario's mural looked great in it's new home, the live band made me want to dance, the vegan tacos were delicious, and the paint-by-numbers activity was hit! As soon as I started pouring paint, people were ready to go. They were painting during the whole event up until it was time to pack up. I didn't have to paint at all, it was great! The best part was seeing so many friends in-person at the event after being stuck at home for the last year and a half. I can't wait to do more fun stuff like this! I forgot to take a picture of the finished panel but the pictures below are of the map screenshot, my rough sketch, the original color mockup, the outlines with numbers, and final variation based on the paints I used.      |
Frankie Mcfly's
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