Friday, August 28, 2009

Oh life...you move so fast

Tonight I have a screening in my hometown at the Milwaukee Art Museum. I'm really excited to be home for the week and it should be a fun time. Information on MAM After Dark is HERE. Next week, Austin here I come! Book signing at Domy and all sorts of RAD programing you can check out HERE.

Did I mention that Portugal is amazing....
beach about 35 minutes on the train outside of Porto

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Hello from Portugal!

With so much travel on my calendar it's hard to keep up, so here are some photos from the past few weeks of events. I am currently blogging from the kitchen of my good friend Solana who I am visiting in Portugal, nothing wrong with a little vacay!

Crafty Chica at CHA in Orlando
At the end of July I went to the CHA in Orlando to do a book signing with Provo Craft and the Crafty Chica was there!

Then zipped over to Philly for a premiere at the Philadelphia Buyers Market & just happened to be in town for the Amy Rice opening at Art Star Gallery & Boutique.

Faythe Levine & Amy Rice
Me & Amy Rice at Art Star

Tracy Bull of Happy Owl Glass & Faythe Levine at the Philly premiere of Handmade Nation
Me & Tracy Bull of Happy Owl Glassworks

Handmade Nation Minneapolis premiere at the Soap Factory
Drove up to Minneapolis for the premiere at the Soap Factory. It was a very hot and muggy weekend in 612

Handmade Nation at the ACC show
To San Francisco for a screening at the American Craft Council show.

Handmade Nation: Los Angeles premiere
Then to Los Angeles for the premiere at Cinefamily where between screenings there was a mini craft fair out back.....

Handmade Nation: Los Angeles premiere

Handmade Nation: Los Angeles premiere
Cathy of California's mini table

Handmade Nation: Los Angeles premiere
Totes designed by Kate Bingaman printed by our sponsor Provo Craft

Handmade Nation: Los Angeles premiere
Yudu demos inside the theater during the mini craft fair!

Yessssss, lot's of travel. This vacation is doing me good. If you want to see pictures of my Portugal trip, there is a photo set HERE.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Treehomes dyptic by Jill Bliss released by 20x200

Well, I think Jill Bliss has outdone herself with these "Treehome" prints she did especially for us and 20x200. This amazing dyptic hangs vertically- which I LOVE.

I blogged about this project last week but for those of you who are not familiar Jen Bekman curates 20x200 and she believes in Handmade Nation and is running this edition as a benefit for us (I still have a chunk of debt from production). I truly appreciate her and Jill's support.

Read about Jill HERE.
Sign up for the 20x200 mailing list HERE (do it, they do such RAD stuff).

And peep these amazing TREEHOMES!

TREEHOMES are available HERE & HERE

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

A visit to the country & all sorts of press!

I got out of town for 24 hours of NON-work to go visit Micaela O'Herlihy. Micaela, for those of you who don't know shot the footage for Handmade Nation. Micaela and her family live out in the country in Wisconsin, a good 3+ hour drive from Milwaukee where I am based. Since I am out of town so much these days I took one of my three days home this month to make the drive out and see her new house, new baby (Oota) and her preggers belly
((and of course the cutttttte goats)! I also got to visit some other amazing friends of mine in the area, the Hodapp family
(more on them soon).


Aaron and I got back late last night and I was up early this morning to do a ichat interview//convo with Kate Bingaman-Burt for the upcoming release of our 20x200 edition that we did with artist jill bliss. More info on that blogged a few days ago HERE.

Then I rushed down to Aarons shop to use the landline for a live radio interview on the Kansas City NPR affiliate KCUR which you can listen to HERE. It was a quick one but they pulled a great audio clip from the documentary from Andrew Wagner and Kathie Sever which was a nice change of pace.

After that interview I ran some errands and picked up some local produce, plus, this this great plant for $8) at the Westown Farmers market. I only get one homecooked dinner this month and it's gonna be YUMS!

Today I also got news about fantastic press in the San Francisco Chronicle covering the screening next Friday as well as some local press from my friends over at The Decider.

Looking forward to my trip to Minneapolis this weekend. Don't forget to get your tickets a head of time at Crafty Planet. There are only 100 seats per screening!


Saturday, August 01, 2009

20x200 + JILL BLISS= Awesome!

I am SO SO SO excited to announce this news.....

Earlier this year on a trip to New York for a screening of Handmade Nation at the Museum of Arts and Design I had the pleasure of being introduced to Jen Bekman by our mutual friend Kate Bingaman-Burt over lunch. For those of you who are not familiar Jen is responsible for a number of amazing projects one of which is 20x200. 20x200 offers exhibition-quality limited-edition prints exclusively online. New editions are released twice weekly, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and alternate between photography and fine-art. It was at this time that Jen expressed interest in helping out with raising funds for Handmade Nation when she learned I am still working on paying off the production cost of the film.

It was after this meeting that I approached artist Jill Bliss about creating two new pieces of work for a duel release through 20x200. Jill is featured in Handmade Nation the book and documentary and I am a huge fan of her work.

I am so very pleased to announce the release of two beautiful limited-edition print editions by Jill Bliss through 20x200 available on August 12th. Proceeds from the sale of one of the prints directly benefits the production cost of Handmade Nation.

I want to thank you for your continual support of Handmade Nation's mission to promote DIY art, craft & design and the creative community it encourages and empowers.

To be automatically notified when the editions by Jill Bliss are released and to be among the first to learn of all new editions featured on 20x200, sign up for Jen Bekman's newsletters.