Hey, so first off, sorry for the silent treatment. although not one to share here much, I’ve been under the weather recently, and have found myself on a revolving trip between the doctor and the emergency room trying to rid myself of (what they are pretty sure is a) sinus infection. Things are improving, but not fast enough for me to be anything other than ill-tempered and miserable.

On to good news. The cards from the recent NotCot exposure are beginning to come back, and there’s some cool stuff in there. Also, a friend who went cross country has been handing out cards at huge events (most notably Seattle’s Hempfest) and I’m starting to see some come back from that trip too.

Will be posting more soon, and keep them coming!

It is now 6:33 AM, and I’m still awake. Not really a day person, apparently. I’ve finished uploading the latest batch of scans for your viewing pleasure. There are some pretty interesting things in there, including a pair of Escher mimics, more robotia, a cool demon from FOS, and a fantastic monster collage from Martha Hull featuring a vampiric PowerPuff Girl pouncing on Dracula! Also, this piece, which is among my favorites.

Oi, there’s too much good stuff to mention, but I’ll mention one more. Artist and Illustrator Michael Marsicano took a stack of cards, and drew something new every day for a month. Check out his incredible New York Vignettes.

Enjoy, and get some rest.

I was finally able to get the downloadable version of the drawing cards to a stage that I thought might be releasable, and so it’s now available at the bottom of the page (or here). I created it to print, draw on, and then it folds up into it’s own mailer. So get printing, and give it a whirl. Let me know how you like it (or hate it, or whatever) and I’ll keep shaving bits off of it until it’s good and working.

If you requested cards before the 20th of August, they’re on the way! I was the last person in line, and made a postal worker’s day with a huge bag of envelopes going all over the world, all requiring weird postage and several requiring customs forms…she was thrilled…but they are all done and out the door. Enjoy!

The response for the mile project’s recent exposure on NotCot has been, well, wonderful. Thanks to all of you who’ve sent kind words and requests to participate. If you have sent a request for cards, be just and fear not! I am in the process of mailing them out, but got a lot of requests so thanks for your patience, they should arrive relatively soon. The site’s traffic went through the roof for the first couple days, then dipped as expected, but it is on the rise again and I am still receiving requests for cards, so thanks to all of you who have reposted (and do send me a link, won’t you?)

In the past week, I have received requests for cards from all around the world, including Canada, the UK, Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, the Philippines, and across the US. How cool is that?

As soon as I have the initial wave off my desk and in the mail, I will get back to that pile of new images that need adding. Thanks for hanging in there, and check back often for updates.

The mile project was featured on ultra cool art & design aggregator site NotCot.org today! And one of the most common comments I’ve received as a result is “How do I send a drawing?”

I’m currently working on a downloadable version of the card, which will be on the site as soon as it’s ready for prime time. If, however, you can’t wait for that to happen, send me a note using this contact form, include a physical address, and I’ll be happy to send you some cards myself.

Thanks!

Ok, the first batch of 741 drawings has been added, and my computer just spoke to me and told me it’s 3AM, which came as a bit of a shock. I have to say, it feels good to get these back online, they were among the first to come to the project, and now they’re back, properly tagged and uploaded. I would be resting on beer and laurels right now, except I know that there are three tubs like the one pictured sitting next to me in the studio full of drawings that need to be added, and about 3500 pieces that haven’t even been scanned! So, yeah, not completely caught up yet…

I’d start into them now, but my tagging has been getting weirder as the night has progressed, so I think it’s about time to close the clamshell and get some sleep, and the dog agrees.

Enjoy!

(UPDATE!) The Big Bear connection was drawing low traffic, so I moved the POP display to Utrecht on L St., where it has been enjoying great exposure, and where my dog is becoming a celebrity!

If you’re in the Bloomingdale area of metro DC, stop in at Big Bear Café and pick up one of my new cards. They’re up on the wall competing with the flaming hoop lessons, expensive trend-o real estate flyers, cool band posters and many, many business cards. Look for the big magic marker.

The postcards began as cut paper, and were scanned by me and printed by a commercial press (Sir Speedy on L if you’re interested, and I recommend them over the many FedEx Kinko’s out there, for price and service)

Draw me something!

Enjoy,
Joe

You might have noticed the site now has a small, hopefully not too obtrusive Google AdSense bar at the top of each page. It makes sense to help defray the cost of hosting, even if just a little…

The funny thing about AdSense is that it reads the content of the page it’s going to appear on, and automatically determines the subject of ads by the words that appear in each individual page, with more weight given to words and word-chords that appear in headings over those found in body content. When first entertaining the thought of ads on the site, the idea was to push the content toward things that seemed appropriate for the site as a whole, like art supplies, but because most posts are image-based and pretty lean on content, it would require some futzing with the site’s structure to artificially insert enough keywords to skew the automata to the right types of searches. Also, because of many of the titles that appear on the pages are all over the place, it makes for some interesting patternspotting to see what the logic comes up with for each individual drawing page.

Some of the automated choices I began seeing were kind of funny, so for the time being, I’m gonna leave it to logic and chaos, and see what happens…

The first batch (of approx. 750 images) is in the hopper to be re-added to the site. It will take a while due to tagging et al, but I’ll be chipping away at them and should have them uploaded soon. While feeding them to Blogo, I’m watching Dr. Nigel Spivey prattle on about the nature, physiology and history of art in the PBS series How Art Made the World, available from NetFlix, and brimming with interesting notions about art and the creative process. It’s a little heavy handed with post-production effect shenanigans, but a good watch nonetheless.

Eureka!

Ok, possibly a little melodramatic, but still very satisfying personally. After a cavalcade of technical issues (WordPress upgrades hosing our custom theme, some database corruption and a few other issues) combined with work schedules, and the necessities of living have interfered to make the site rebuild annoyingly difficult. However, all is now, hopefully, fixed, and the process of recovery is progressing. One of the decisions made was to change the way posts are added (saving certain scan data in a manner more friendly to our archive process) which will, unfortunately for me, would have required the manual editing of all the records up until now. Rather than be faced with that arduous task, I am almost finished with a new, highly automated input procedure, which will make it easier to simply re-add the images from scratch.

In addition to a new records display, look for a new downloadable mailer, redesigned gallery, social networking connections, a completely revamped storefront and some other great new features coming soon. It’s tremendously exciting, and all the kids are sure to be into it this summer, so come on back!