I have a new roadmarker for the beginning of fall on my own private calendar: my kids’ birthdays on Sept 18 and 20th, and so having survived the Pirate and Princess weekend with the help of my wonderful wife Heather, her awesome mom Glynn, and more, I’m back to blogging again, as I promised myself for the fall season.
 
While there have been multiple reasons for not making time to write, mainly there’s been way too much stuff going on this summer since my last post, and since much of it involved a substantial amount of advanced self-education and transformation on top of web designing, social media teaching, child-raising, and old-house tending: something had to give!
 
So I stopped tending this site for the sake of one of my other projects, The Social Media Learning Institute, where I did write a couple of pieces reflecting my current, surprisingly upbeat view of social media’s role and reach in getting things done smarter, greener and with greater understanding in our world today.
 
This has been a recurring theme in the different training presentations I’ve developed and delivered this summer, especially in the face of certain kinds of skepticism about the usefulness of social media at all.
 
Since social media consulting, training and customized WordPress design is what I’ve been doing for work since arriving in Pittsburgh, it had started to seem incongruous to write here about the other stuff. Now that things have shaken out more, I’ve started to understand the consistencies between the two worlds-- art-making and business-making — and how being an artist first enables me to help certain business clients in ways that deliver exactly what they are looking for in a consultant, designer & coach for their internet marketing and social media development.
 
Anyway, more of that to come, today I want to share some pictures of my latest design project here in Pittsburgh for clients I’m always happy to please anytime, my kids, who celebrate their birthdays this past weekend with first real party we’ve had here at the new house-- check it out:

Pirate and Princess Birthday Party

Its been crazy busy as the snow continues to fall here in Pittsburgh.
 
Since we’re moving this month into our new house, we have
two houses to shovel and the typical delays accompanying a total of
some 30″ of snow in the last two weeks:

 
work that needs done,
stuff to be hauled away, stuff to be moved in, all waiting,
with the rest of this somewhat unprepared
small city, for a the roads to get better, the snow to stop falling,
a break in the action somehow so I can get on with what
I have to do.
 
Now the bright side is that what I have been able to do
waiting for the world to dig itself out is paint--
well, prep for painting and paint, taking a poor condition
second floor and making it sealed, clean and safe for us to sleep in.
 
People who’ve worked with me know I actually do get excited about an excellent
prep job, and I’m proud to say that given time alotted (actually scraped somewhat painfully from the childcare schedule),
and poor conditions we started with, the repaired and fresh walls and ceiling have really came out great.
 
so I’ll be posting some iPhone pix of progress sequence here next, but I want to
give a shout out to one of my favorite products here that just got written up in the
almighty New York Times.
 
I’ve already been using the brilliant, zero-VOC Transitional Primer from AFM Safecoat on
what I call “welding” all the different surfaces together into a decent “canvas” on which to paint, in this case:
 

• previously painted drywall
• previously painted plaster
• previously painted pine/waterbased
• previously painted pine/leadbased/
• raw poplar
• raw pine
• lots of acrylic caulking
• fresh drywall
• fresh mud
• waterbased catalyzed resin

AFM Safecoat paints are completely green, non-toxic products, and as the article points out, even smell good out of the can. They do a whole line of interior paints, and also a line of all-natural wood finishes that I’ve used extensively on custom hardwood picture frames the past few years in San Diego.
 
Highly recommended from personal experience and will be generally available in Pittsburgh soon.
 

Happy first post of the new year!

In addition to shoveling snow at two houses here in Pittsburgh, I’ve been working on web sites since the holidays, many different web sites. Some of them are even mine!

As I mentioned last fall, I’ve finally gotten all of my digital pictures on one drive, design/build/finishing portfolio pictures going back to San Francisco 1996 (these were actually print pictures I digitized in a big batch 5 or 6 years ago). Sorting through old pictures on the computer is interesting because they only show age through technical specifications, not fading, dust or deterioration of the paper.

Anyway its allowed me to find original full resolution files and complete folders of pictures on jobs long buried away on a CD, and show lots of detail in the galleries that was unavailable on any of my earlier portfolio websites. There are hundreds of pictures useful for both technical instruction and design idea generation when it comes to faux painting and other decorative painting treatments, so I’ve really just gotten started with 50 or so pictures about a handful of jobs posted so far.

The most developed example so far is a kids playroom designed with a circus theme I painted in an historic San Diego home in 2008. This project incorporated both faux finish and trompe l’oeil mural techniques, and so I listed different pictures with commentary in those two different galleries.

I also put some design work samples from this project on the custom art gallery page. These pictures help illustrate how a project like this comes to be something out of nothing before anyone tears into your house with buckets and brushes.

Moving from San Diego to Pittsburgh has left the usual upheaval in the details, and I’ve spent my six weeks in PGH (since finishing the vertical blinds mural in SD) working to un-overturn the cart, if you will: finding new business, new space in which to work, finding old stuff I need right now (“what f$%^ing box is that in?”), etc.

One of the repeating moments here that have given me a crispy new angle on things is presenting my work (meaning, mural painting, faux painting and my custom art portfolio) to people who have never heard of me before, and also to people who don’t use the web in the same way that Southern Californians (for the most part) do.

One of the crispiest edges that started screaming suddenly for my attention was the photo gallery I’ve been using since switching to WordPress-- I hated it all of a sudden, and dreaded the thought of loading it with more pictures in organized fashion just to hate the output (small size, too difficult to hack their code and customize, irritating navigation, etc).

I have tons of pictures from the last 15 years of making art of all kinds professionally, and never liked the presentation of my chosen few, let alone all of the process b-sides which make for interesting research and reference materials.

I’ve used a few different photo galleries over the years (yes I have a Flickr account, but not so fond of its limitations for my work stuff), even had one made custom without really ever resolving the issue and became acutely aware of this here when directing people to the website and not getting the exact response I was looking for….

so over Thanksgiving weekend I found a solution that gives me what I want visually in the AutoFocus Theme for WordPress. It allows me to make better use of WordPress’ online marketing capabilities and make way better use of the hundreds of thousand of unusual pictures I have from my various wall mural, faux painting and custom art projects dating back to 1995.

immediately put into action in three new photo galleries, these new pages will be both more comprehensive and more specific at the same time while always growing with new, never before seen full resolution pictures from my archives (searchable, too)

so check out the simplified navigation bar in the header up above, and the even more simplified photo galleries of my wall mural, faux painting and custom art portfolio.

• open studio for mural project tonight.: http://bit.ly/IW5ez #
• http://ping.fm/p/UBimJ -- another good morning after, today painting darkest shadows and
  brightest lights. #
• mobile mural updates for 2009-10-02: http://bit.ly/1iowbg #

• http://ping.fm/p/lO6Mq -- coming into the foreground (and the homestretch): city mural at 95% #
• http://ping.fm/p/66BI0 -- Friday morning mural details. #
• mobile mural updates for 2009-10-02: http://bit.ly/DeQAN #
• mobile mural updates for 2009-10-02: http://bit.ly/WNido #

I really love California.

San Diego today was just simply beautiful today and this evening, as what I think is the best time of the year here (September-October) gets it going on.

I didn’t make time to write after leaving our old house here last week in Heather’s Subaru packed with stuff-- to be honest I was just sort of heartbroken about leaving California after twenty years here (minus NCSA in 1997-1999), especially after my visit to San Francisco to party with Dave the Butcher before his trip to Berlin.

Regardless, I had a reviving time in New Mexico with old friends Beth Hill (who lives in Santa Fe) and Kris Huskey, who synchronicity-as-adverb was in Albuquerque doing an event for her new book Justice at Guantanamo: One Woman’s Odyssey and Her Crusade for Human Rights.

That was a great morning.

After a thunderous rainstorm and gorgeous sunset in the rearview mirror, I was really loving New Mexico and remembering why I’ve loved the Kerouac-ish roadtrip across country driving your own car in the past: its good for heart ache of a variety of sorts, to see and be other places than the ones you’re used to.

I blew through much of the heartland (eastern Missouri/Illinios/Indiana and Ohio in one dusk-to-dawn swoop, arriving at the most awesome Waffle House ever in Columbus. Four am seemed about right to eat for some reason and after ambivalent passing some Dennys and am/pm’ markets open 24 hours, it was like being called from a great distance in the dark to a yellow glowing private party. Waffle House #495 has the coolest crew, starting with Mike the manager who knew everyone’s orders when they walked in the door (the regulars, anyway) and clearly inspired fun, respect and a rockin’ vibe in Jill, Lane and the rest of his crew (a *great* thing to see if you’ve been both sides of that relationship like me).

I was inspired enough to drive two more hours after eggs, biscuits and gravy with a smile on my face and a free cup of coffee to go, leaving me only a couple for hours from Pittsburgh on a beautiful early fall Saturday morning, crisp and sunny with college football on the radio emerging from the Ft. Pitt tunnel and bridge into Oakland campus and our new neighborhood in Pt. Breeze.

Just to be clear about this now:

I already love Pittsburgh.

Even though my time there the last few days kept me too busy to write as well, despite all the hassles of our move, Pittsburgh is sweet and I’ll be sure to go on about it later, but for now lets say I got to go with Hunter on his first day of pre-school and got excited about the art scene and was safe harbored by my awesome married-into family up the street now, Uncle Barney, Aunt Dee Dee and McGinley cousins, especially Joe, who helped me talk through the local real estate headaches.

So now I’m back in San DIego for a great mural painting project that just came my way while moving and I’m eight kinds of grateful to get paid to make art in my beautiful state!!

Pictures, progress, more tomorrow.

I’m on the road with Heather’s Subaru full of stuff, Raul and myself headed to Pittsburgh and our new set-up there. Heather and the kids flew ahead and signed the lease on our new place while spending a few days with the McGinleys, our cousins in Point Breeze. We’re very fortunate to be living within walking distance of supportive extended family!

Ironically, just as we were packing the last boxes and preparing for the moving truck last week, I landed a really cool trompe l’oeil mural project in San Diego, so I’ll be flying right back next week to paint the new project and also finish the Cafe Mundo mural I’ve written about here.

Because I’m in a hurry to get out of my motel here in Albuquerque and go have coffee with an old friend, no new mural pictures today, but I have a bunch to get of the camera, so check back soon.

If I missed you in the rush of leaving San Diego, hit me up (mobile phone and email remain the same) and we can get together later this month when I’m back.