TONIGHT

Tonight is the unveiling of my work I created for Bliss Home and the International Biscuit Festival.
Also, today is the day before the first Market Square Farmers' Market, so it's practically Christmas around here. After a 12 hour day, I will collapse into a heap of exhaustion and rise in the morning like the Phoenix (or a biscuit) and go to the farmers' market to drink upppity coffee and buy greens.

Self Rising: A Celebration of Flour

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cotton sacks replaced barrels as containers for dry goods such as flour, sugar, rice, chicken feed, and seed. These bags were usually white with the company’s logo printed directly onto the cotton. Thrifty wives and mothers would repurpose these sacks into fabric for sewing  -- making pillow cases, quilts, hand towels, and even clothing. Imagine the embarrassment of your dress or underwear having the Pillsbury or White Lily logo on it. A great effort was made to remove the printed logo – sometimes with lye soap, bleach, or even kerosene, but sometimes they remained. Companies producing these dry goods realized that their bags were going on to have a second life. In an effort to ease some of the hardships of the Great Depression and to entice more customers, they began printing sacks with colorful patterns and paper labels that could be easily removed.* It was their hope that the home consumer would buy their brand of flour or feed not because they were faithful customers, but because the print on the bag was desirable for a new dress or quilt. This body of work is a celebration of some of the more interesting flour logos of the past and the wonderful tradition of printed, patterned flour sacks.

*One of these companies was the Bemis Brothers Bag Company founded in St. Louis, Missouri in 1858. It was one of the first companies to produce machine-sewn bags for dry goods. By the 1920s, The Bemis Brothers Bag Co. had opened 5 more plants across the United States. In the 1930s, the Bemis Company began to produce printed dress sacks, and would continue to do so up until the 1960s. Their cat logo was designed in 1881, and the cat was named Biddy after the best mouse hunter in the Bemis factory. According to company history, owner Judson Moss Bemis wanted to emphasize that in “letting the cat out of the bag” he had nothing to hide and dealt fairly with his customers. This small logo can be seen on many older flour bags.

All these and more will be on display and for sale at Bliss Home for the month of May.

MORE PANDA

One of my favorite things to do when driving around town is looking for PANDA tags. It's like a giant, illegal Easter egg hunt.

ONE NIGHT ONLY

AROUND THE STUDIO

TODAY

6-9PM at The Birdhouse. 

ON THE WALL

This month, I pitched in to help out with a mural project here in Knoxville. It's under the interstate on 6th Ave. If you happen to be traveling north on Hall of Fame, take a right on 6th and go check it out. The mural was designed by Per-Ole Lind, who also has space in the 17th Street Studios. Over two weekends I did a lot of detailing with brown paint -- making crisp edges and straightening out wonky lines. I had never helped out with a mural before, and it was really fun. I'd do it again. The community seems to love it, and we would get a lot of honks and waves from cars passing by. Much of the painting was done by community members from the 3 neighborhoods joined at this intersection -- Fourth and Gill, Parkridge, and Old North. People of all ages contributed, and I had now fewer than 4 people try to recruit me to move to Parkridge. (Not entirely practical at this time in my life, but there are some great Craftsman houses in that area.) Documentation of the entire project can be found here on its Facebook page. It was surprisingly hard work, and I have newfound mad respect for Michelangelo and every other fresco painter. My painting arm got its butt kicked, but I wasn't lying on my back, or racing against time to complete anything before plaster dried. And we also had the modern amenities of a pick-up truck to blast some music to keep us all grooving and steadily moving forward.

Standing on that step you're not supposed to stand on. Don't worry Mom, nothing happened.