Moleman

Anybody in Chicago this weekend should run over to the Music Box Theatre for the advanced screening of The Mole Man of Belmont Avenue the movie co-written, and co-directed by my old friend Mike.

Merchant Street Day Two

Day two of the Music Fest was even better than day one. The weather started out overcast and we were worried about rain. By 3:00 all the clouds were gone and the blistering sun was beating down again. It didn't seem to stop people from coming out though. By sundown the place was packed with tons of serious dancers enjoying Chicago Afrobeat and Liquid Soul. Even the sloped lawn in front of the local stage was filled for Jaik Willis, Mykel Boyd, e3po and Poundcake. The final count of art and craft vendors is still up in the air, but I'm sure it was more than thirty, which was much better than we expected. We sold enough stuff to make it worthwhile and, more importantly, had a lot of opportunities to promote Feed. Best of all, Jessica made it back from Maine.

Merchant Street Day One

Despite the cloudless heat followed by sunburn followed by intense rain. The first day of music fest was pretty awesome. When the rain came in everybody rallied together to keep the show going. Joel Paterson and the Modern Sounds were totally awesome professionals, playing under the pavilion of the depot with no sound system. They just turned up their amps and serenaded the drunk dancers. Devon Allman canceled out, so when the rain let up their slot on the main stage was taken over by Red Buffalo who were scheduled for the second stage. In the end we had to cancel two performances from local bands, but I think it went over fine. Everybody who stayed during the rain seemed to be enjoying themselves and most of us were rewarded with free pizza from Parmesan's. Tonight I'm sleeping while covered in aloe. Tomorrow, we'll be back at it starting at noon and we're hoping for better weather.

Nicest Prints

A friend asked if I would enter some of my prints in an exhibition she organized at her church. I had a few framed prints sitting here anyway, so I brought them over today and then helped to hang everything.

After that, I started working on these business cards to pass out at the music fest this week end. They're two colors and hand screen-printed. I'm hoping to get some jobs designing and printing shirts and things for people and I thought this would be a good opportunity to start marketing myself. I registered a URL, for Nicest Prints and put up a really basic site. I actually already have a couple of jobs in the pipeline. Hopefully I'll get a few more.

Print Zero

My selection of prints from the Print Zero Exchange came in the mail today and I'm pretty happy with the ones I received. These kinds of open exchanges are something of a shot in the dark. There's no way to know what prints you'll receive or if you'll like them or not. My selection included prints from:

Margaret Ashman, Emily Bean, Pamela Fanelli, Wayne Henkel, Melody Knight Leary, Joshua McGarvey, David Mohallatee, Noah Overby, Karen Peters, Vicki Plahs-Brown, Charissa Schulze, Linda Whitney, and Prue MacDougall.

You can see these and all the rest of the entries at the Print Zero website.

Merchant Street

Surprisingly, I never really posted anything on here about what we're doing with Merchant Street Music Fest. A few months ago, at a Feed event, Michael and I were asked to help out with organizing this annual music festival put on by the city of Kankakee. Obviously we were flattered by the offer and have been meeting every Monday to work out the details. The festival has been a major event in Kankakee for the last nine or ten years. This year it is bigger than ever with two stages, at least thirty musical acts, a kid's activity zone, a bunch of food & drink vendors, and an arts & crafts fair.

The main stage will feature 13 bands including the Ploughboys, Liquid Soul, Devon Allman and his band Honeytribe, Joel Paterson and the Modern Sounds, and the Chicago Afrobeat Project. Feed was given the opportunity to book the second stage so it is filled with local and regional musicians like nikku neko, Sneaky Gene, Lupe Carroll, Pony Boy, Poundcake, lighttribe and tons more.

We've also organized the art and craft fair, inviting merchants like Acorn Design Source, Darling Clandestine, Hooptopia, the Swell Crafters of Kankakee, Lundmark Studios, and of course the Feed Team, among many others.

That's all happening next weekend, August 13th and 14th so mark your calendars. This event is absolutely FREE. More info can be found at merchantstreetmusicfest.com

Lil Bits

As of today the Littlest Print Exchange has 36 definite participants and another 13 just waiting on entry fees. That's a total of 49 artists. Just one more spot left to fill. I'm really starting to get into it now. This year the project seems to be much more international than last year with an exciting list of participants from the United Kingdom, Canada, India, Germany, Italy, Israel, Argentina, Edinburgh, Slovakia and the United States. The deadline for finished prints has been set for October 15th, 2010. We've already received editions from our two most industrious participants, Melody Leary and John Bergmeier. I don't really have an idea for my own submission but I need to get going on it. Then I need to produce packaging materials. I think there will be one or two little surprises as well that might take up some of my time.

Flush It Down

I spent the day printing a second run of Musicfest tees on brown shirts. These are intended to be given to the volunteers who have helped organize the event and who will be taking care of business on the day. I deleted the fountain element of the design to shorten the printing time since I had to double print the light tan ink on the dark shirt. I was hoping that my clothes dryer was hot enough to heat-set the ink, but some washout tests I did today proved that it definitely is not. It seems like I'm going to have to either iron every one of these shirts for 3-5 minutes or pop them in the oven a couple at a time. I'm not wild about either idea. As soon as I recoup the money I've been spending on printing equipment, I'm going to have to buy a flash dryer. Maybe I can find a cheap used one.