Alleypalooza!

After small spaces last year, i began tossing around ideas and finding ways to raise money to do something like it again this year.  i approached the economic development office in town with a couple of plans and they in turn offered some other plans and ideas that others had mentioned. in the end we wrote and received a grant from the state office of rural and community affairs to install several large scale public art projects.  Alleypalooza was one of those projects. it developed out of a event that we had hoped to do as part of small spaces last fall, but ran out of good weather, time, and money to do.  so this year, we planned ahead to create this music/art/community festival that will take place in september.  i'm the lead artist for the mural installation, and i'm hoping to have a lot of collaborators to create a mural that represents the diversity of ideas and expression in our community. we will be creating a character mural in the spirit of a family photo utilizing the styles and techniques of up to 20 different artists.  i can't wait to go through the submissions and start seeing what people come up with.

for more information, click here.

Garden Update: Late July 2015

In the past, our patio garden's always teeming with life at the end of July. The pepper plants are usually loaded with fruits, the tomatoes are out of their cages, the plants are almost always a nice, rich shade of green, and there are bees, butterflies, and all sorts of other signs of life.

This year, things are quite different. The large amounts of rain we got in June have slowed the garden's progress tremendously. We have a few peppers growing,

and the tomatoes are on their way,

but there haven't been many bees or butterflies. Just tons of creepy spiders (and subsequently, spider webs! Urgh!)

The wax beans that we're experimenting with are growing great. The pole ones, especially, are quite an unruly sight to behold! I think we'll have a decent harvest of beans this season.

The ground cherries are the stars of the garden! We have two plants, and they must have like 300 fruits on them! I love ground cherries and can't wait till they ripen!

The cucumbers have sprung to life in the last couple of weeks! We have lots of flowers, but no cucumbers yet. I believe we won't have to wait too long for those!

The eggplants are also stalled. Flowers are just starting to appear, and I'm afraid we won't have a long enough season to have any significant harvest.

But, on a brighter side, we are getting ready to dig up some yummy yukon potatoes to go with dinner tonight!

This month, the berries are officially done. We had a few blueberries and strawberries that were waiting to ripen, but the birds got to them before we could. I'd feel sad, but Zach and I recently ate a 10lb box of blueberries and I am okay with taking a break!

For August, we are sowing a new round of carrots and maybe some baby beets too.

Monday Night Music

A pretty tune to kick off the brand new week ...

Medler's furniture quilt panel

a while back my mom asked me to design a quilt panel for a community quilt in portland. 

the panel was supposed to represent the furniture store that my family has owned and operated since 1944.  the furniture store or, just 'the store' as we refer to it, has been nostalgia central my entire life.  there was a wall in the office plastered with hundreds of family photos, newspaper clippings, awards, and letters. one of the building joists houses the growing heights of everyone in my family from my dad and his brothers, to me and my cousins, to my nieces and nephews. there is a shelf of some of my old pottery. there are just all these memories and stories of other people's memories wrapped up in that building for me.  as a kid i would spend weeks in the summer with my grandparents helping to deliver furniture or lay carpet, but mostly just spending time with my grandparents in portland. now my mom sits where my grandmother sat in the office, and my grandfather can still be found napping in one of the la-z-boy chairs on the floor.

the best in store advertisement ever.

{Five for Friday} 5 Interesting Carrot Recipes

We harvested a big bunch of little carrots this week that we started from seeds back in March. The rainbow and purple carrots have always been a pretty dependable crop for us. They are easy to grow and they taste good too.

We also tried a new variety -- black carrots, or, Pusa Asita, as Baker Creek calls them. These carrots are supposed to be so high in anthocyanins and antioxidants that they will color your food black! We had a hard time getting these seeds to germinate, and the ones we harvested were pretty small. I ended up using this batch in "black" chicken noodle soup. They were really yummy.

If you have plenty of carrots in your garden that you are trying to use up, here are five interesting and yummy looking recipes I found that feature carrots:

1* Moroccan-Spiced Carrot Ravioli

(via Food52)

2* Carrot Cake

(via Amateur Gourmet)

3* Grilled Tarragon Carrots

(via Food52)

4* Carrot Salad with Tahini and Crisp Chickpeas

(via Smitten Kitchen)

And of course, we shared one of our own a while ago ...

5* Curried Carrot Soup with Sweet Potato and Ginger

Three New Paintings

If you weren't able to make it to Gallery Walk last Friday, here are some pictures of new assemblage paintings that Zach recently completed.

The Next Big Thing, or, Buy Buy

Bird Cage

Untitled

We'll try to make a post about his new studio soon. It is such an awesome space with different areas for printing, painting, and building. It's pretty awesome.

We are now ZMEDstudios

ZMEDceramics is now ZMEDstudios on Facebook and Instagram. We made the switch since Zach has also been painting, printing, sewing, doing cartoons, and building all sorts of assemblages for a while.

Just In Time For Summer, or, Enjoy

We are going to start working on a more comprehensive website in the coming days; one that will house a portfolio of Zach's previous works, and a gallery of more recent projects. We are also slowly phasing out of selling on Etsy so that we'll be able to sell primarily on the new site. Keep your eyes peeled!

Jean Michel Basquiat at the Brooklyn Museum

Besides the Faile: Savage/ Sacred Young Minds show at the Brooklyn Museum, we also saw a great show featuring Jean Michel Basquiat's Unknown Notebooks.

There were several paintings and drawings in the show,

but both Zach and I agreed that his writings/ poems were the true highlights of the exhibit. Here are just a couple of examples:

Open Studio/ Gallery Walk Tonight!

If you have no plans for this evening, come downtown and help us grow the arts! Come to Gallery Walk and stop in Zach's new studio at 210B N. 6th Street!

For the entire month of June, Zach was busy moving his studio into this new location. It's on the ground floor of the same building he used to be in, so there's no more harrowing steps to climb! Zach has most of his new assemblage paintings on display, and there will be buttons and other small items for sale as well. We'd love to see you!

Street Art NYC (Summer 2015)

Here are just a few of the street art pieces we spotted on our recent trip ...

And of course, we left a few of our own as well ... here's "Narcissus" on a box in Chelsea.