On Sunday I went to Open Studios and bought a beaded necklace from an 11-year-old beader. She clearly knew her stuff; her necklaces were sophisticated compositions of shape and color. Although just about anyone can string beads, it does require a certain amount of talent to make something unique and beautiful. It felt good to support a young artist.

My own interest in beading began a couple of years ago when I lost a treasured earring and decided to make a necklace out of the remaining one. Since then I have made dozens of necklaces, bracelets and earrings; sold many pieces and given many gifts to friends and family. Creating a necklace is much like creating a printed piece. Both situations require taking a bunch of random stuff and making something appealing and inviting out of it. In design you get a bunch of words, and if you’re lucky, some creative direction on imagery. If you’re not so lucky, you have to look at the words and hope that they inspire some kind of visual. Sometimes the words themselves become the visual. And sometimes the visuals suggest the worded message. It’s all just a big puzzle.

Then there’s the challenge of coming up with a visual solution for a play. But that’s for another blog.

A typical morning at our house:

 - 7:15  Wake up.  Swear upon realizing that everyone, including Naomi, has overslept.  Scatter to the bathroom to get ready before Naomi awakes.

- 7:20  Naomi wakes up from commotion in the bathroom.  Make feeble attempts to keep her entertained while showering and shaving.

- 7:35 Breakfast.  Kate serves Cheerios to Naomi.  Naomi crushes them and throws them on the floor.  Pull together everyone’s lunches for the day.

- 7:36 Realize that we don’t have anything for Naomi in the fridge, so begin a desparate search for Annie’s Mac & Cheese.

- 7:37 Realize that we are out of microwaveable mac & cheese.  Swear.  Scatter to prepare the regular mac & cheese. 

- 7:45 Kate goes to work.  Offer Naomi some pots and pans to play with while the water boils. 

- 7:55 Naomi decides to open the pantry and throw canned goods at the heating vent.  Apparently, this is very funny.

- 8:00  Finish preparing mac & cheese.  Notice that there are two spoonfuls left.  Eat them for breakfast.  Start cutting up grapes.

- 8:05 Naomi decides that I have to read a book to her right this minute.  Ironically, the book is Wow! Babies! which barely has any words.  Try to find a way to simulataneously cut grapes and “read” the book to her.

8:15 - Note that this is the time that I try to leave the house.  Take Naomi upstairs for a diaper change and to get dressed.

8:17 - Discover that Naomi has an “extra special” diaper for me this morning.  Change diaper while Naomi tries to stand on her changing table.

8:25 - Dress Naomi.  Have a bizarre power struggle over socks.

8:35 - Start to leave the house.

8:45 - Actually leave the house.  Begin praying that I am not late for a 9:30 meeting.  Buckle Naomi in car seat.  Thank my wife for placing extra clothes for Naomi in the car, because I would have certainly left them in the house.  Drive to day care.

9:00 - Arrive at day care.  Drop Naomi off.

9:20 - Arrive at work.  Ready for a nap.

Last weekend I went to the Paradise City Arts Festival in Northampton, an annual event where hundreds of artists and craftspeople sell and display their wares. I’ve been to many of these shows, and after a while the work all begins to look the same…except for a handful of people who take it to the next level. One such artist is Denise Shea, www.denishehats.com, a hat designer. Her work is fanciful and expertly crafted, and is a cross between something that Dr. Suess character and an organ grinder monkey might wear. She was generating much excitement, engaging her passersby by plunking hats on their heads.

We are all assaulted on a daily basis by visuals competing for our attention. In a world where much of the printed material for theatre has a generic, comedy/tragedy look to it, I am constantly looking to take it to the next level, but stay within the boundries of readability, budget, respect for the audience, and time constraints. Sometimes this (literally) means turning something on its side. Some of the best design work I’ve seen involves surprise…I don’t mind if it takes me a minute to get it, as long as when I get it it makes me go “yeah….”

• Name and occupation? Matthew J, Assistant Technical Supervisor
• What are the three best things about your job? 1) The people I work with. 2) What I am doing today is probably not what I’ll be doing tomorrow. 3) I can still get my hands dirty in the shop.
• Tell us something you are excited about? Dynamic Blocks!
• Favorite play? “A Lie of the Mind” -Sam Shephard
• Favorite book? “The Alchemist” by Paul Coelho
• Favorite movie? Amelie and/or Touch of Evil (I’m 50/50 on this)
• What’s your favourite color? If grey was a color, that’d be it.
• Best band ever? Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
• What’s the name of the song stuck in your head? Rubber Bands
• Ocean or mountains? mmmm… mountains.
• Ideal vacation? World tour!
• If you were an animal what would you be? Why? Bird. I could fly without getting nauseous.
• If you could have one super power what would it be? Fluency in all languages.
• Do you have any famous ancestors? Marcus McFinnery- of SPAM fame (death by haggis, very sad)
• Do you speak any other languages? Pig latin.
• What were you doing this morning at 8am? Sleeping in…
• What are your plans for the weekend? Uh, lets see, read, read, get some coffee, and read some more.
• Name a celebrity you would marry. Jewel Staite, ’cause she’s the bee’s knees.
• What is on your desktop background? Samurai Champloo blue and orange thingy (very classy, I assure you)
• Parting words? Just this: whatever you do, don’t get stranded in West Virginia! We all know how that movie ended…

While I was away in Belgrade (long story - perhaps worth a separate post), Naomi turned to my wife and asked, “Mama, where’s Dada?”

For the record, her first sentence was “I want that bottle!”

Today I spent an inordinate amount of time fidgeting with one thing or another. In the spirit of “The Devil (or God) is in the Details,” I focused on how often I nudged a bit of type or art until I was satisfied. It seemed as if that was all I was doing. All this nudging is vital; the ultimate goal is to create something that is seamless; you want to make the end result look natural and organic. And you also want the viewer to be able to navigate with ease through the river of words and images. They shouldn’t have to work too hard or think too hard.

A former graphics professor of mine always stressed the idea that if you think you have finally solved the visual puzzle (and completed the assignment), throw it out and start all over. Not surprisingly, this was always met by loud groans from the class. I followed that advice today, after I had convinced myself that I had found the best solution. But, lo and behold, once I re-visited the drawing board, I found that the next solution actually DID work better. There are infinite ways to solve a problem. It’s important to keep that in mind.

I know I must have breathed yesterday, but I have no memory of doing so. Here is what I produced/worked on/designed/delivered to print between the hours of 10 am and 6 pm: an e-blast promoting Prayer for my Enemy and Jazz; the Jazz program; the Moth program; an opening night invitation post card for The Price; an invitation to a Development event; a Development invitation to the opening of The Price; changes to several pages of The Price program; vinyl window banners for the lobby; signage for The Moth; changes to an Education page on the website; a newspaper ad for Prayer; a poster for The Price; and an Offstage teaser for The Price. The years of waiting tables actually come in handy at times.

This is not an entirely typical day for me, although there are many days that require superior juggling skills. Fortunately I have a large library of design solutions floating around in my head that I can call upon when needed. It is one thing that artists new to the field lack.

In addition to multi-tasking, I am often called upon to “put the constitution on the head of a pin,” as a former marketing director used to say. In other words, fit 5 lbs. of sausage into a 1 lb. bag, and make it look palatable, mouth-watering and inviting. Good thing we’re located in a food terminal.

For the past few days, I have been listening to the music of Cesaria Evora during my half-hour commute. She is a 60-something singer from the Cape Verde Islands. All the lyrics are in Portuguese, and the melodies are hypnotic, exotic, sad, tribal, exhuberant, memorable. I have listened to one particular cut over and over and each time I listen, I try to focus on a different instrument, and how it contributes to and completes the many-layered piece.

Years ago I taught myself how to draw a complicated diagram of a leaf in preparation for a botany exam. I did this by drawing the leaf over and over…hundreds of times…so that when I sat down to draw it during the exam it flowed from my pencil with no effort.

Before I came to Long Wharf Theatre, I spent most of my working life in newspapers, where you are rarely given the luxury of working on something over and over until you feel it is ready. The theatre process is completely different. The audience sees the culmination of hundreds of hours of the refining of everything connected with the production. And still there is the desire to pick it apart for further revisions. Perhaps the nature of art is that it is in constant process. As a graphic designer responsible for translating the spirit of every play into print, each day I am challenged to refine my vision and process. Some days the creation flows with no effort. And yet it is never really finished.

Earlier this summer I noticed yellowjackets building a nest beneath my deck. The progress was amazing: in the span of a few short weeks, a big, beautiful and functional colony was built to store the queen and her larvae. The pulp that forms the nest is created from chewed wood fibers mixed with saliva and spit (fits nicely with the idea of ruminating). I couldn’t wait to rescue the nest before winter destroyed it. Last weekend I carefully removed the fragile structure, after checking to make sure all the insects had left! It now sits in a corner of my studio, along with butterfly wings, insect casings and other marvels of nature. The color is a striated earthy grey, red and white. Later that day I read in The New York Times that the chanteuse Eartha Kitt is in possession of several insect nests, which she covets and treasures.

As a graphic designer and artist I am always looking for inspiration in out-of-the-way places. There is much to be gained from viewing our environment as a rich visual source. The artist Andy Goldsworthy takes this to another level in his stunning, temporary natural sculptures. Perhaps the yellowjacket paper, once scanned and manipulated, could become the background of a future show poster. Stay tuned.

This has nothing to do with being a working parent. It’s just a funny story.

We used to have a horrible spam problem. I mean, really horrible. You could easily have 100 emails per day of spam. So, we installed this spam filter, which is fantastic, but there has been one down side - any email with profanity, racial slurs, or sexual overtones are filtered out due to content.

At first, this might not seem like a problem, but you have to remember that we read and consider cutting edge plays, which often have profanity, sexual overtones, or the occasional racial slur. So imagine the frustration when we try to receive new drafts of plays from our playwrights and they keep getting filtered out.

Finally, the staff had enough of this, so I had to configure the filter so that these plays can get through. The funny part of the story is that in order to test the new configuration, I had to write correspondence that included one word of profanity, one sexual overtone, and one racial slur in order to make sure that the emails could bypass the filter. Good taste dictates that I can only give you the test email in “Mad Lib” form:

“If the _______ email doesn’t go through, I’ll ________ myself. Yours,_________.”

Some days, I can’t believe that I get paid to do this job.