Sheesha Update!

Hanging out at Sheesha on Thursday night I got a chance to talk to George (owner) about some of my visions for re-styling the hookah lounge. As it turns out there is one completely un-decorated room/nook that he wants me to start with. I think I got him half convinced to let me expand from there bit by bit if he likes the direction I take :) 

My first idea to pitch is recovering the burned vinyl
tables with cool vintage pics like this.

Anyway there's not much to post yet, but for anyone who's still reading this I'll be putting up design ideas and pictures of my progress (which will probably be slow since weekends will be my only spare time). 

***Also for whoever's still reading this, be sure to comment and send me your budget conscious design ideas! I can't say I'll be getting payed for this, but if anyone else is interested in pitching in for the sake of putting your designs out there lemme know!

Design II Portfolio Cover

The only guidelines on this were to use a triadic color scheme, so I went with classic
red-yellow-blue. The design is derivative of a woodcut I did (previous post).
I obviously like the simple approach, you can take in all the information needed to
understand what this piece is in one look. To keep it personal to me and my design
aesthetic, I used my signature (cleaned up a bit) and a signature design of mine.

Best of Printmaking Spring 2012

This was the first project, intaglio. The middle piece is the zinc plate,
"Perfect Backsplash"

This one was a woodcut on sintra (sintra is a type of plumbing board, but it happens to be
 okay plate too). The left is the plate ant the right is the print on mulberry paper.
"The Experiment"

Here's my big one, this is a 4 ft. x 2 ft. woodcut on particle board. It took me about 50 hours to complete.
The design inspiration was topographic mapping. Then I decided to throw in my favorite design tool, the
Pink Pearl eraser. So in terms of the style and combining my interests, this sort of became a self portrait.
 "My Pink Pearl"

Size 10 shoe for scale

Best of Foundation 3D Design 2012

metamorphosis project: morph one thing into another in 5 steps. This is crow pose into a crow

Spring 2012 Best of Foundation Drawing II

Pastel still life with non-naturalistic color.

Mixed media (acrylic wash and pastel) still life.

We had to make a piece inspired/ based on a song. I made an acrylic painting to
represent Art Brut's "Modern Art." Chorus?
MODERN ART. MAKES ME. WANT TO ROCK OUT! WOOO!

And they make us all do self portraits. 

George's Hookah Lounge

For this design project we were asked to create a building in a pre-fab design scale. I decided to design an Egyptian hookah lounge to replace the existing George's Sheesha with a nod to Valley of the Kings like architecture and vintage exhibition camp inspired styling.

Eterior: I kept it really simple and focused using a few harmonious details. First level is the main lounge, and second level is a rooftop open lounge area.

First floor floorplan

First floor interior

Second floor (roof) layout.

Spring Break Trip With the Geology Club

This spring break , I got the unbelievable opportunity to explore and camp the Chihuahuan desert in Big Bend National/State Park. This park is home to so many perplexing structural features, it's both known as the geologist's paradise and nightmare. 30 million years ago a series of tectonic events ripped, crushed, scorched, lifted, buried, and exploded the thick layers of rock beds giving the desert a tremendous and complex landscape.   Although I took a ton of pictures in the park for my own geo-dork purposes, here are some of the particularly well composed shots (of complete incidence, I assure you).

Our three grad students and professor Dr. Gries.

The desert is usually more lush and green, but

the past year only saw 3 inches out of an average

 annual rainfall of 20 inches.

This stuff is tuff.

Remnants of a mercury mining venture in
Fresno Canyon.

Here's the whole gang checking out a stream bed that once
supported the small mining community.

In case you needed proof that I was there. This day we were

exploring part of a formation called the Solitario. The small

mountains behind me are a section called the right shut-up.

They were also the inspiration for many easy jabs.

Because of the drought, we only saw one of these

flowering cacti about every mile.

This is the Mule Ear formation. Modeled here by Isabel

 Heheehe!

We found these blow-painted pictographs of hands on the

ceiling of an overhanging wall. There were rubber mats leading

up to the overhang suggesting that archaeologists were

probably recording them sometime that day, and that they
were total wimps.

The left side is Mexico! This is a canyon that the Rio Grande

formed between the Boufacillos mountain range and the

Sierra Rica range in Mexico.

Cooling our tootsies in the Rio after a hot hike.
The water was about 45 degrees in the gorge
even though the air temp was 90!

And lastly, the Resurrection plant: this (shrub?) only

grows in Big Bend and Israel. When dry, the softball size

plant stays in a little brown ball. But when it's watered

it opens up and turns green within about 2 hours.

(So sue me, we didn't wait around that long.)