More Special Characters

This should be the last of the font, making a complete set. The next step will to make them into a "real" font I can type with. I had a good idea for another cardboard sculpture this morning, but it may take some time to do, so hang in there!

Numbers and Special Characters

Here are some numbers and special characters to go with the font I posted yesterday.

P.S. I also wanted to share a link to this really cool cardboard artists' website.

Alphabet

This alphabet is carved from rubber erasers. I made it to go in some of my machines which function as tiny printing presses. Today, I made some missing characters and scanned them all in. Hopefully, I'll be able to make a font out of them.

People-free photos

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I was looking through my photos the other day and I realized that many of them are people-free. They look a little like something from one of those fictional end-of-the-world scenarios I mentioned. They seem very calm and a little creepy so for today's post I'll curate a mini show.

Wednesday's Post

Oops! I just realized I forgot to post yesterday's post, so here it is! (I'm keeping up the borscht theme for one last entry. Today it's pen and ink directions.)

Yet More Fun With Borscht

Ok.. so that may not be the most appetizing title for a post, but I have another version of the Borscht recipe. This time it's only photos and no text. I think it looks a little like cheat codes for a video game.

More fun with borscht!

So I was checking out howtoons and thinking about information design and I decided to play with the Borscht recipe and show it in a few different ways. We've already tried glossy step-by-step photos so I thought a different way to approach it would be through the old tried and true recipe card. (Pictured is a box of recipes from my grandmother.) Here it is:

Borscht

There are a few reasons I decided it was appropriate to put this Borscht recipe up. The first reason is that Borscht is pretty tasty... but there's more! I love that Borscht is practical (cheap, filling, easy to make, all kinds of vitamins etc.) but it's not exacting. It's a bit like chowder is to us New Englanders, just toss in whatever you have on hand. I also love the cross cultural aspect of Borscht. My recipe is modeled on one from a friend who is Russian-American, but Borscht is originally Ukrainian and was historically eaten all over Eastern and Central Europe and today all over the world. I was on the civil rights team in high school and anytime we had to broach some important issue with the student body, we would start the discussion with some food. Food is a form of communication. Sometimes it works better than words and images.

The borscht I am making today also relates to my interests in Victoriana and fictional end of the world scenarios because it doesn't require refrigeration. All the food (with the exception of the sour cream garnish) is canned or freeze dried or from your root cellar. You don't need electricity. You could make this on your wood stove or camp stove or what have you. It makes me think of arctic explorers with their early canned goods and of the ad hoc meals from canned goods described in The Stand and seen in 28 Weeks Later. (I know it's a little weird that that pasta meal really stood out to me when the point of the scene was the zombies beating down the door, but I am always interested in what people eat after the world ends.)Anyway, Enough blather. On to the borscht!
To make the borscht, you will need:


A Medium Onion, chopped


A medium potato, chopped


Put them in a medium saucepan on a medium heat and add a small can of tomato paste.


Add a little water.


Once the onions begin to turn clear, add in a can of sauerkraut and stir.


Then, add in a can of beets and stir.


Now, add in a can of spinach and stir. Mix it all up and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.


Garnish as you like (I used sour cream and freeze dried chives) and enjoy!
If you don't eat it all in one sitting, it will freeze. It's good hot or cold. It's a beautiful red to brighten up your winter day and you can change the recipie to acomidate your needs. (You can use broth instead of water, or fresh veggies instead of canned or soy sour cream instead of the milk stuff. Toss in a carrot or rutabaga in place of the potato. The possibilities are endless! If you want to use fresh cabbage, it won't have the salty/ sour element the sauerkraut has, so I'd recommend adding a little salt and some lemon or vinegar. Also, when you use the canned veggies, don't drain them. Just put the water in the pot. It is a soup after all and that water has nutrients.) I'd also like to mention this post about photographing food that was one of the inspirations to do this recipe today. Thank you!

Fetid

I made this F out of cardboard. The f stands for fetid (like in that Noam Chomsky inspired poem I wrote a while back.)

Cabin

I made this letter C out of cardboard. The C stands for cabin (like the married cabin in the Noam Chomsky inspired poem I wrote earlier.)

Postcard

This postcard was originally going to be for Post Secret, but I didn't check the dimensions on their website before I made it and they're not quite right. So, this is an.. open secret? postcard.

Audrey Three Part Two

Basically, this is an experiment to see if I can marry some of my photo and small sculpture work with my drawings and paintings. I'm not sure how successful it is. It looks a little dated, like I just discovered the computer. I may try a different one later.

Audrey Three

I made this as a tribute to the Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors. I don't know that it has any deep meaning, but it was a valuable skill builder for me. The cardboard I used were promotional postcards for things that happened a few months ago.

A New Moleskin Chomsky Poem

Today's project is another collage made up to a random Chomsky sentence. The cassettes are Beta Max tapes). I'm also working on a more complicated project today, that will be up in a day or two!

Noam Chomsky Poem in Moleskin

I've been thinking about my Noam Chomsky poem from earlier, and I decided that wasn't random. The words I chose were probably connected in some, unconscious way, to whatever was going on at the time. I decided that the exercise would be more random and a little more true to form if I cut out a bunch of words and just selected one from the appropriate part of speech. So, I cut up a free local paper and sorted the words into parts of speech which I then made little pockets for in the pages of the Moleskin. Then, I pulled out words to fit Chomsky's sentence structure. The words I came up with actually seemed really fitting to the day (Valentine's day) so I just cut the date out of my day planner and taped it onto the page to illustrate.

Moleskin II

So I've started filling up the pages in the Moleskin. These are just a few of them that I think go well together. I got a Trikky as an early Valentine's Day gift, so the stickers came in the box and I had the title of a book "You Alone in the Maine Woods" in mind as I put them together.

Moleskin

I just saw these Moleskins on display in the Maine College of Art library. These notebooks were all kept by students in Margo Halverson's class. They didn't have a specific assignment, they just had to keep a Moleskin sketchbook. I have tried Moleskins in the past, and they just felt too tiny. I'm a bit more at home with a sketchbook the size of a college rule notebook, but I have to say these were great, and they looked like so much fun. I went down to the bookstore and picked one up. I did the cover today. It's watercolor paints, colored pencil and card stock gears that I got the templates for from Instructables. They do really turn, although they sometimes bind a bit.