Ending a long-haul.
Contracting forever-ever, but scheduling more interesting things. I've spent 20 minutes looking at configurations of bins and shipping palettes that should let me move a little more efficiently, and if not, put my every worldly possession into storage in a single location.
Right now, though, I feel more like a craftsman while poring over boring things I have ignored for years. Pawing through Wordpress documentation and PHP I realize how much I have ignored in the pursuit of some more interesting thing. I hope that I am getting more patient with ideas as I get older, instead of just slower.
Solid construction projects are underway. Visited with design friends who are using 3D printers in a way that couldn't just as easily be achieved with ¢40 worth of hardware store parts, which makes me feel like more interesting things are in the pipeline.
This is all so abstract.
What I mean to say:
I went to Chicago and met with a former roommate and gallery colleague and they were doing interesting and new-to-me things that made me miss seeing industrial design. Read a couple of books on the Wiener Werkstätte, Bauhaus, and Mies van der Rohe's last years in Germany. When I see designers in charge of their own means of production, designer/developer or designer/printer, etc., it makes me feel like they are doing things right. The Mies bit is a chime of conscience; the book made it seem like he spent years in fear and turning a blind eye, while trying to remain completely apolitical. The Workstätte book focused on how they progressed from a machine-age design collective to machine-age drag for the ultra-wealthy. There's a lesson here.









