Susan is now selling her handmade booze bags on Etsy! Available in black (“Drink Me”), Red (“Poison”), and canvas (“Grog”). Made to hold 750ml bottles. Those of you who are interested in ordering bags for larger or specifically-shaped bottles are welcome to contact us via email: email (at) planktonart.com.
Susan made this custom tombstone pillow for a good friend of ours. No sewing machines were used: all the stitching was done by hand. And now, you too can order a custom tombstone! Visit Susan’s Etsy page, where more of her handmade creatures will be up for sale very soon.
We’re coming up on the ten-year anniversary for this project, which is still the most ambitious project we’ve ever done. In 2002, Susan and I worked on a 400-illustration identification key project for the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The Museum’s Milstein Hall of Ocean Life was undergoing extensive renovations, adding new habitat dioramas and models of species that were new to science. I remember visiting the Hall around this time, while it was in the middle of its renovations. I remember the Blue Whale was entirely wrapped in clear plastic, like it was sushi. I also recall the thrill of receiving a VHS tape from Woods Hole that had footage of entirely new species, filmed from the famous ALVIN submersible.
This was an incredibly daunting project for just two people. The 400 illustrations required seven months of round-the-clock work: no weekends or even holidays. We had individual folders for each species, all of which were kept organized in labeled and stacked plastic tubs. We lived on tuna sandwiches (ironically) because we had no time to make dinner. Keeping track of revisions and sketches in the midst of banging out at least five finished illustrations each day was, to say the least, a challenge. Four hours of sleep per day was the norm for weeks on end.
The informational challenge of course was to provide enough visual detail in the illustrations for ease of identification without going too far, which would obliterate the crucial details of each species. We quickly became quite good at hitting this sweet spot once we established that level of detail with the AMNH design department. The job itself was tough, but the folks at AMNH were a pleasure to work with.
We had to refuse work from our other clients during these months, and some never came back. But for lifelong amateur naturalists like us, serving an institution like AMNH in such a meaningful way was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Most work that designers and illustrators do is ephemeral: magazines, websites, brochures, etc. This project was very different: thousands of visitors will be using our keys for the next thirty years. It remains the most fulfilling project we’ve ever done.
On opening day, a little boy came up to one of our identification keys and learned how to say, “barracuda.” I’m not ashamed to say that it brought a tear to my eye.
Browse a sampling of the project on our Flickr site.
Susan is working out final patterns for her collection of hand-stitched creatures, like this lion here. We hope to offer them for sale in the shop section of our website sometime over the coming weeks. In the meantime, please feel free to drool over some of her menagerie on her Flickr sets.
Floating World Comics in Portland recently asked me to whip up a cover design for a book written by Anthony Alvarado, which is based on a series of articles he had penned for Arthur Magazine. I’ve had the pleasure of giving the Arthur articles and the final manuscript a read, and it’s a far more practical guide than you might imagine. In this book, “magic” concerns itself with sorcery by practical means, an intentional disorientation of perception. Mr. Alvarado sums it up thusly:
What I talk about when I talk about magic: I’m not fucking around. This isn’t a joke or a trick. This is real stuff that I think most people are capable of trying out if they would let themselves. Most people, however, don’t. It’s taboo. It’s considered the realm of flakes, hippies, and drug-addled softies by the general scientific paradigm at large. It is considered a waste of time. The good stuff always is…What is magic? It is the fine and subtle art of driving yourself insane! No really, it is just that. It is a con game you play on your own brain. It is the trick of letting yourself go crazy, and I do believe that when it’s done right, the magus treads the same sacred and profane ground where walks the madman. It is, however, possible for the modern magician to enter into that realm and return with knowledge, knowledge and yes, power. I believe this is the same process that for millennia mankind has participated in. It is the journey of the shaman.
The final book is currently in the production phase (we’re looking into silver metallic ink on navy blue uncoated stock for the cover). An announcement will be made here when copies are available for sale. It’s a delightful, charmingly speculative read.
Here is our installation at Philly’s Art in the Age that was up during last month. The installation includes a map, a video, and a selection of notes and images from The Hidden River Expedition, a three-day solo kayak trip I took from Mt Holly NJ to Bartram’s Garden in West Philadelphia (You can see images from the forty-mile trek on Flickr). The expedition was equal parts stunt, performance art, and a survey of the post-industrial landscape along the Rancocas, Delaware, and Schuylkill that is slowly becoming wild again.
I’ll be doing an informal video and slide presentation of The Hidden River Expedition at the Random Tea Room on Sunday Nov. 27th, 6pm. Those interested in the more unusual chapters of Philly’s history should grab a cup of hot chai and have a seat. Hope to see you there.
Here’s an invite cover I designed for The Wagner Free Institute of Science’s annual benefit cocktail party (Laura Baird and I teamed up on this project, and it must be said that she did most of the work). We had the pleasure of attending the party, chatting, eating, and drinking amid a huge collection of century-old taxidermy specimens, all of which were displayed in huge glass cases. The building is a beautifully-preserved nineteenth-century natural history museum, providing free science classes to the public since 1855. There is nothing else quite like it in the United States. Go visit if you can–or better yet, attend the many wonderful lectures held there.
Four new drawings by Susan are currently on display at Gallery 309 in Philadelphia. They’re part of a group show, Autumn Spell, and should be up for the rest of November. Susan has rarely ever showed her drawings until now, so come out and have a look. The Venus Flytrap of bone won’t disappoint.
Welcome to our new website and blog! First, we want to thank Laura Baird of Studio B for her excellent work on this redesign, which was long overdue. We love it.
We plan to post new entries at the start of each week. Our posts will be mostly about new projects or events, but we also want to share with you what is currently exciting us. We may also do profiles of our favorite past projects, like the identification key for the American Museum of Natural History, or the book I wrote that was optioned for film.
So check here at the start of your week! And please drop us a line: we’d love to hear from you.
Subscribe to Our RSS Feed