Raffi was enlisted as a maintenance tech before the lunar collision of 2073 that caused the great tidal shift that forced the coastal cities inland to account for both rising sea levels and the new erratic schedule of the torrent of waves that crash in against the depleting coastline.

These days, the good days, the tides seem to be slowing back to a regular rhythm.

On the bad days, the waters rush in a pull the facilities up into the air a few hundred meters. Thankfully, they are anchored to the ground so they don’t drift too far away. The kite-stations, as well, are built on float-boards that can handle the constant push and pull of the ever-flowing waters.

On the rough days, Raffi eats ginger to help his stomach deal with the constant rocking of the floating station. He doesn’t really enjoy ginger, but he loves the flavor that reminds him of his late wife. Her hair always smelled like salt and warmth. He stands on the bow of the floating station and thinks of her constantly. He writes her poetry. He wishes that they were never forced out of the central city, but this is where his feet are now. He finds purpose in the kites.

The kites are made from Vantablack monocrystalline silicon and a composite woven turbine. They harvest energy from the perpetual winds of the coast and the beaming light of the sun before wirelessly transmitting the energy down to the central kite hub where it is gathered by the IEG collection tanks that come down once a month.

Note: This abbreviated sci-fi was inspired by a conversation I had with Amina Moreau a year or so ago about building a network of naturally-made kites built of vines, bamboo, and large raffia palm leaves. Hence, “Raffi” as the main character. The character himself is inspired by Lindsey Brunsman‘s photo documentation of Old Man Ocean.

Old Man Ocean by Lindsey Brunsman

I picture Old Man Ocean (Fredrick) looking back on his coastal journey with love and peace. Still wandering the coast long after his duties have expired by finding old kite stations and sleeping nearby or in them. Travelling along, finding shells, sea glass, and other treasures as he thinks about his life.

Thanks to Amina, Elon, and Lindsey for providing the inspiration for this abbreviated sci-fi. I’m looking forward to doing more of these in time.

-G

It got me into a frenzy of daydream and I thought about a snippet of a story about a man named David headed to a citadel to stop something bad from happening. I’m not sure what the “bad” thing was, but I liked the random romance of the mission. I sketched up an idea and put it aside for a few months.

David’s last stand. Driving to The Citadel, he will stop this. #abbreviateddrama #story #conceptart

A post shared by Gabriel Mathews (@gabemathews) on May 2, 2017 at 6:51pm PDT

Then after months of other projects, I decided to take on the concept a little more. I developed a dune buggy of sorts for a quick underlay. You can see it in the bottom sketch here:

Some random #scifi vehicles I dug up while consolidating art. I love all of the old ideas that wind up influence more of my newer stuff.

A post shared by Gabriel Mathews (@gabemathews) on Jul 12, 2017 at 9:53am PDT

The following are three frames of story board that illustrate David’s journey. I like the idea of not exploring what his mission is for the sake of letting the character live in our heads with some sort of mystery. We are left in limbo. Is he going to stop some baddie from destroying the city? Is he going to unclog a toilet? Is he going to chase down the one that got away? It’s his compusion to get there that makes this so interesting to me, less the destination’s purpose.

Do me a favor and follow me on IG – @gabemathews and let me know what you think of this idea on one of the photos.

Later taters.

-G

I like rhythms. All those A’s. All those 4’s and 8’s and .5’s. 4/1/14, 8/15/14

Some good symmetry happening there.

Anywhere there was a seam, a pulley, a hinge or a reveal, I tried to keep the above dates in mind. the 15th of the month became “.5″ and then everything else became 4″ or 8″…seems like a 12” cube was in our future.

Let’s jump right in.

The first thing we needed to do was soak our pointer and middle fingers in salt water. This will makes sense, soon enough. With suspense, I made Amina sit on our couch and wait. I ran down the stairs to the garage like a giddy little kid and nabbed the Assembly I had been working on for the entire six months prior.

As mentioned in Part 4 the Assembly would be a cube. That’s five sides of exploration plus the base. Measuring 1′ x 1′ x 1′, the cube would greet Amina with Side 1 facing her after completing the projector box from Part 5.

This would be a combination lock that would relate to the projection.

“2DEDGE, SIDE, VERTEX” – Referring to the 2D vs. 3D cube, this is how many edges are there on the 2D version? (4) How many sides? (6) How many vertices (8). This would unlock the box.

Inside, she finds this, the final gift:  The X-acto knife from our initial conversation on the couch back in May. When the door opened, a Canadian and Polish flag hang proudly on the inside of the door; further driving the metaphor of the cube and Amina together.

On top of the Assembly is a series of pockets and holes. The central hole is perfectly tuned to the diameter of the handle of the knife, allowing her to insert, blade side down, and cut the cords that where hidden inside.

Initially, this was designed to hinge open when she pushed the blade in. The sheer force and point of rotation caused much too much stress, so instead this was revised to simply cut the cord that tied everything together on the inside.

Once this was cut, a really satisfying “pop!” was heard as the cable snapped.

When the door directly right to the is lifted up, a series of dashes is revealed. This is the time that we talk about her voice mail code:  “Begin Transmission.” L,S,BLANK, E,BLANK,I, H,BLANK,T,N,V,T,L,E,BLANK,D,E,I,A,I,S,O,BLANK,”End Transmission.” This unscrambles into “Love is in the details”. She rotates the cube once more to reveal the side opposite of the lock:

This maze is behind acrylic. How will she navigate it? The ball from when we met at our intersection! She takes it and places it inside. The wand from Part 5 carries the answer for her. She navigates the ball from the left side of the maze to the right. When she allows it to detach, a wonderful plink is heard. This plink is the start of a wonderful circuit. Inside, is a capture funnel as seen here:

Once again, she rotates the cube. Once again, she is met with a door that can now open. This door reveals something that I’m most proud of. I took her original diagram from her Assembly reveal in Part 3 and turned it into a laser etched diagram.

However, if you look closer, the diagram has a slight change:

The switch has four metal contact points.  Remember soaking fingers in salt water? This was why. By increasing the salinity, we became much more conductive. This circuit, thanks to the internet, some experimenting and a little luck worked perfectly!

She stopped me with a, “Nooooo!?”…That made all of this worth it. I knew she was excited. We sat, took a breath and then touched our respective contact points.

The heart glowed a spectacular rose pink.

When it was all done, we closed up the box and took another look at the top. The first square was meant for the container that contained the ball and the note about Sir Francis Bacon.

The second spot was meant for the cactus vessels that we would share. The middle square was for the projector and the holes across from the long slot were meant for the wand and the laser pointer.

The final slot was meant for something more.

This symbol means chaos. Amina isn’t woo-woo. Pure and simple, she is a lady of facts and figures and truth. So a “fortune” slot, was out of reach. However, there is a nice truth to chaos. So by putting in the slot things she could hope for herself and us through the means of chaos was something I knew she could get behind. We write on little pieces of paper our wishes and hopes for the future. On April 1st, every year, we will randomly grab in through the front door. This year, we grabbed 2 each and read them aloud. But then we put them back. Next year, we will read 3 each and put them back. And so on.

Because this was an experience that I wanted to be completely immersed in, I left the camera to the side. Though I did capture a single moment in the experience:

She sat back when the whole thing was over and just stared. She was speechless. I was speechless…and with baited breath, I was scared that maybe I did too much too soon. She told me that no one had ever done something like this for her before. I was really honored to have that privilege.

Now, peacefully, the Assembly rests and waits. It observes. It watches as we sit and laugh and share and talk and smile with one another in The Arbitrarium.

So what’s next?

Like I mentioned above, our annual Assembly opening is very fun. I’m looking forward to many more openings…and reveals.

There is something beautiful to simultaneously designing a project while executing upon it. Knowing what the end result is makes the development a series of layers that can build or detract on one another. Here is the map of the experience/execution;

Anywhere there was a blue dot, I added a coded message either in braille, morse code, or Bacon’s cipher.

I gathered the ingredients one by one starting with the gifts:

The schedule would be as follows:

• 12.22.14 – 0. Laser pointer
• 12.25.14 – 1. Projector
• 1.15.15 – 2. Wand
• 2.15.15 – 3. Mirror
• 3.15.15 – 4. Access Card
• 4.1.15 – . Assembly Delivery | One year past the day that we first met.

The initial idea was of the Assembly 2 was to integrate the first Assembly so they could come together. However, I wanted this to be more about me reflecting on her as she did with me with hers. Therefore, everything had to eventually need to evoke a singular perspective with an introspective context while coming from an extrinsic source. Each of the first four deliveries was wrapped in a white box with a red ribbon as a nod to her assembly gift to me back in October.

Therefore, each tool needed to relate to the next or be somewhat tangentially related. I also made sure on the last four deliveries to set a consistent schedule of 6:00pm in the Arbitrarium — a place we sit and discuss life. Each evening starts with a written poem or clue that make Amina have to search the room for the month’s component.

On December 22, 2014, we were on our way to Michigan. In the airport, I gave her #0-the laser pointer and said, “A gift. This is close to it, but not quite right. Perhaps you should hold onto this as it might come in useful later.” She was very excited to use it, but I had to hold her back as I wasn’t sure what TSA might have to say about using a laser pointer near aircraft.

On December 25, 2014, I deliver #1-The projection box. It was accompanied by the note in pig pen cipher, ” To touch the heart, one must first start on the outside of its house. With time, the heart will greet you at the door when it trusts you.” On it’s own, this particular gift was very obscure. This was critical to keep the Assembly 2 in a mysterious context.

January 15, 2015, we sit down in the Arbitrarium once more to go through a gauntlet of clues and searching to find #2-The wand. This was accompanied by a verbal presentation of, “I’m magnetically attracted to you, so please, take this. You may need it in the not-so-distant future.”

On February 15, 2015, as we sit in the Arbitrarium, she receives the box with the mirror and in braille a message reads, “Reflect on yourself, your history, your future.” She very quickly realized that the mirror fit into the projection box and put the parts together, but we weren’t done yet.

March 15, 2015 I deliver a two clues. These two clues lead her on a search around the house for these two envelopes:

The envelopes when overlaid would make the original symbol that I sent to her when this whole thing started:

These both contain acetate prints. One has a smattering of A’s and one with B’s.  By themselves, the acetates are meaningless. But like the envelopes themselves, if overlaid, create meaning through Bacon’s Cipher.

This reads “Under the place our lips first touched.” Inside the couch storage, was #4. Once she tracked it down, she was greeted with this:

When she picked it up, I said to her, “Welcome home.” This was a final clue before she would get the last component before the reveal of the Assembly.

When she pulled the “4” off, she was greeted with a lock. The “welcome home” indicated that her house key that I gave her would articulate the lock.  She unlocked the lid, and revealed the access card written in braille:

This component fit into the projection box and completed the projection system as shown here:

When illuminated, the laser fires the beam through a diffusing paper, hits the mirror, and shines through the morse code.

This reads, “2DEDGE, SIDE, VERTEX”. Think about the properties of a cube that I mentioned in part 4.

It should also be noted that 18 days before April 1, 2015, I left daily voicemails at midnight each day : “Begin Transmission.” L,S,BLANK, E,BLANK,I, H,BLANK,T,N,V,T,L,E,BLANK,D,E,I,A,I,S,O,BLANK,”End Transmission.” This will make sense eventually.

When I asked Amina about her experience about this entire gauntlet of mystery, she replied that, “It was exciting and curious and the anticipation was half the fun.”

Next up: The reveal, the details, and what comes next.

Like I mentioned in my prior post:

F_A = −F_B. 

This is an equation for Newton’s Third Law: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Needless to say, when given the gift that Amina put together for me. I became inspired to reply with this this new sculptural language of dialog that she introduced me to.

I need to flash back to an evening we had month’s prior. She was feeling down. To make her feel better, I had her repeat after me.

“Stand on one leg.”
“Raise a fist with the opposite arm as the leg you stand on.”
“Now proclaim, I believe in the power of cinder blocks!”

Reluctantly, she complied. We hugged. The night went on.

There is a very specific, almost shamanic, power to derailing a person’s state of mind.  By interrupting your brain’s normal patterns, you can disrupt an emotional state and reframe the context of your thinking. By asking her to take a pose and proclaim a ridiculous statement, I was able to interrupt her emotional slump and make her focus on something that would be so outside her current focus, she was able to pull out of the state.

Later it became a statement we use extremely sparingly to exclaim that we love each other when “I love you” just doesn’t do it.

“Gabe, what do you tell someone when I love you just isn’t enough”, she texts.
“I believe in the power of cinderblocks.”, I reply
Immediately, I get the email that reads, “Gabe, I believe in the power of cinder blocks.”
In quick witted form, “…then let’s build on that…game, set, match, fire.”

Using that as a leaping off point and with the Assembly experience from her in hand, I immediately wanted to set the wheels in motion to define one for her.

To start, I’d need to come up with some words that evoke a sense of who she is as a person, but something that was strangely familiar. Cinder blocks as a starting point was a good place to begin.

This exploration might have been too literal of a takedown from the idea. So I simplified. A simplified cinderblock could be a rectilinear solid. However, a cinderblock proportions were too awkward to reflect who she is as a person. A cube however, this was a good place to start. Afterall, a cube has very specific characteristics that would play very well with who she is as a person.

As the second platonic solid, a cube evokes:

stability
solidarity
truth
a persistence of values
counterpart to the sphere
“the building block of what”
and in woo-woo circles, it represents the regenerated and perfected soul

Not bad.

Next lets look at the cube from a strictly analytical space:

A 2D cube is a square. A square has four sides, four corners and is quadrilaterally symmetrical.
A 3D square is a cube. A cube has six sides, twelve edges, and eight vertices and is octolaterally symmetrical.

This is a great place to start. When working on something for Amina, or anyone else for that matter, I always try to start with the “why” first. If you can define the why, you can define the layers that encompass it. This is the how, what, where, when, and who.

So the why, as an answer to the Assembly for me, was the bunsen burner. For her, it would make sense then if it was her defining object. The knife. But…that’s just the start.

I aimed to create a mystery that would unravel over the next 6 months in the form of coded messages, clues, optics, and an over arching labyrinthian experience.

The first thing to do was to get the ball rolling. In order to do that though, I’d need a map.

I walked to the gas station by my house and bought a map of Portland. I needed an excuse for her to plot some points. It just so happened that we were to harvest some cactus from her dad’s house in Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario that had been imported by way of Switzerland. We wanted the soil to mean something, so we decided that the soil should come from three locations: Her dad’s house, my family’s house in Michigan, and somewhere in Portland.

On December 9th, 2014, We went out to dinner and with our pen (another story) and map and then noted my house, her studio, and the place we first met (Heart Coffee) and used those and coordinates. I asked her to choose a number that would have significance to her. She chose 15 as it was the 15th of August when we connected romantically. I chose 4.5 as it was 4.5 months after meeting that we had our first emotional connection that would lead to us going steady. Effectively we chose the same date of significance. Because of the map size, she used 15mm to draw a circle around her studio (metric because she is Canadian). I drew a 4.5″ circle around my house (imperial because I’m American). We then added 15 + 4.5 and added a little more because we are more than the sum of our parts. You need the propellant and the aspirational space to become more than you are. We took 20 and drew a 20mm circle around Heart. Where the circles converged was the Cadillac dealership just north of the Portland Tennis Center. In the cold of night, we ventured to the field of Escalades and Hummers and found some soil on the side of the building to take. While the circles technically intersected what would be inside of the building, we weren’t quite ready to commit B&E for cactus dirt.

#somuchhair

I now had a map with some good data to triangulate. I bisected the lines and then connected them center to center to center and got coordinates to introduce Amina to my responding Assembly.

I sent her an email at 00:01, with no subject: “Your discovery begins January 22, 1561” with the following:

And the attached braille message:

The first notation is a nod to Sir Francis Bacon. Known for the conspiracy that Sir Bacon is responsible for some or all of Shakespeare’s writings, I thought what better to create intrigue than to start all messages using cryptic code. The braille reads, “Familiarize yourself”.

Next I sent along a text, asking her to meet me here:

It was on this location, after her wandering the intersection and finding me on the porch of a random apartment building’s porch swing that I greeted her to sit with me. And then I delivered this small box with a ball and a note inside.

The note read, “Your discovery begins on January 22, 1561. I believe in you. <3 G”

With curiosity, she stared at me.

Next up: The development and the elements.

Amina, being the practical person that she is decided that the Assembly should be delivered to me on this day. But there were preparations to be made.  The night before, she told me that before she came over, I would need to prepare the following ingredients:

• Large bowl
• Pair of small pliers
• Pair of large pliers
• Large knife
• Hammer

For a moment, I felt like I was dating Dexter:

Once I had all of these elements prepared, I stood for a moment at my counter and just wondered. Normally, I’m the one that is creating the wonderment — this was a nice change of rhythm for me.

When Amina finally came over, I was instructed to sit down at the table. True to form, Amina created a wonderful level of suspense by forcing me to wait with my back to the door. She finally came around with this comically large white box tied with a large red bow (the measurements of the pieces of which were 25″ and 35″). Also I was presented with a candle and some matches. We lit the candle, and sat for a solid minute.

When I opened the box, I was greeted with an amazing little card.

An image that represented us and our connection:

The top branch represents me. The small box is a symbol for resistance.

The bottom branch is her. In order for the circuit to the heart to be complete, one must close the switches. The resistance is based upon where I was in 2014 and the situations I was dealing with that made me unable to comply with the idea of a relationship. With enough time, the “current” could pass through and then I could decide to throw my switch.

It was beautiful. I had never received such a lovely gift.

As I made my way through the box, there were strange little parts to be found, all wrapped in black tissue paper. A length of tubing, a small box of matches, another longer length of tubing, a small canister of propane, a valve controller, and then something that stopped me completely.

It was the base of a bunsen burner and then the stem of a bunsen burner.

When I looked closely at the base, I noticed something had been laser etched onto the base:

“Awake, chaos: we have napped.”

This is from E.E. Cummings’ 1931 book: ViVa

XXVIII

serene immediate silliest and whose
vast one function being to enter a Toy and
emerging(believably enlarged)make how
many stopped millions of female hard for their
millions of stopped male to look at(now
-fed infantile eyes drooling unmind
grim yessing childflesh perpetually acruise
and her quick way of slowly staring and such hair)
the Californian handpicked thrill mechanically
packed and released for all this very diminishing
vacarious ughhuh world(the pertly papped
muchmouthed)her way of beginningly finishing
(and such hair)the expensively democratic tyrannically
dumb

Awake, chaos:we have napped.

This also poked fun at how many naps I consume.

This whole kit of parts, had a secondary and equally poetic function. I assembled the parts to make an active bunsen burner. The propane burned perfectly upon the test run.

She then led me to the counter where the implements were nicely laid out and she took the candle and instructed me to use whichever of the tools I wanted to break apart the candle. This candle was substantial in diameter and pretty dense. It took many of good whacks, but I finally got the entire thing down into smaller chunks.

Being as it was my birthday, Amina felt that she should let me in on a tradition of carromancy. While she is the least woo-woo person I knew, I liked the idea behind it. Basically, you melt wax down in a pot and then pour the molten wax into a cold water bath. The forms that appear are used to “divine” whatever fortunes may come to you for the next year through interpretation. The Germans have a similar tradition called molybdomancy in which they do the same thing with little lead slugs heated on a spoon.

Our setup was quite a rigging!

At the end, we had all sorts of lovely globules of wax to enjoy. Amina and I picked our favorites and set them aside to cool completely. At the end, I chose my 3 favorites and put them on my window sill with the intent of eventually having them cast into silver.

I got to admire them for a while before they were accidentally pitched by my house cleaner. I was very sad, but I kept the bag that Amina give me the original candle in with all of the other pieces of wax, so I will cast more soon into the fire.

…of course, F_A = −F_B

Next up: Some cactus, a map, a Hummer dealership, and some dirt.

Eventually, a few months later, she invited me to a comic art show where we met the producer of The Blair Witch Project, saw a man with a dread that went down to his flip flops, and had many salty ham bites. Afterward, I exclaimed that I was still kind of hungry and invited her to follow me to My Father’s Place where I had an english muffin and a cup of coffee. I noted the strange shadows that cast across her face from the lights.

The evening was largely part of an older activity we had planned to watch the sunrise and play Connect Four. We got to the house relatively early in the evening. Around 10:00pm or so and we didn’t have much preplanned for the next 7-8 hours. We spent a good portion of it “eye-dancing” and with it eventually becoming overcast, we realized that it probably wasn’t going to be a good morning to watch the sun peak up in the east. Instead, we continued eye-dancing before it was time for her to go home and get ready for work.

It was at that point that we knew there was enough tension built to decide to have a discussion of what she calls our “predicament”. We sat in Ladd’s Addition on a bench and discussed going steady. We were both pretty keen for each other, so it made sense to explore the situation. The issue was that I was still dating, so I needed to close some other doors before opening up that one. With quick work over a couple weeks, I did.

As a new relationship does, we had our exciting times and heartaches apart (admittedly, I still do — I can’t speak for her) and it was very good. My office just happened to exist right across the street from her studio apartment and her company recently moved in two blocks away from that. We had a lot of excuses to bump into each other during those months while texting and phoning to fill in the gaps. I noticed that, while on the phone,  she would make these giggly and cryptic references to “…it works!” or “The assembly is almost ready…”…what?

Through the time leading to when she decided to let me in on the secret, she would tease me with obscurity, hints, and outright evasive maneuvers to keep things mysterious.

That October, my dad had visited me for the first time in 14 years since I had left Michigan. I was very excited to introduce Amina to him and let them talk about their respective careers. They clicked very well. It made me smile.

After he left, I celebrated my birthday on October 9th. Amina decided it was time to let me in on her little secret…

I invited my new friend Amina Moreau over to my house. I was closing on it in a mere 20 days after renting it for about two years from my landlord who told me he had to sell it. I wanted to start warming it up early.

What I planned for us was to have a little dinner, a little conversation, and a little movie time.

I communicated to her that I wanted to make her “polenta pizza”.  I thought I was making pizza from my favorite cookbook “Plenty” by Yotam Ottolenghi. To my credit, in a fast-glance style, this photo in the book does look like pizza:

Subjectively pizza.

Anyhow. I spent most of the day cleaning and trying to make the house presentable for my first guest that I had over in a long time. There was a lot of music, a lot of smiling, a lot of peeking out of the window to see if she was on her way.

She arrived by bike. We stowed the bike in the garage and went upstairs to start the evening.

When Amina got upstairs, as she always does when I cook, commented on how amazing the house smelled. It was a nice start. I had about 20 minutes left on the food. Ms. Moreau kept me company while I finished off slicing taleggio cheese onto the “pie”.

When I finally got around to serving, I asked her to pull out some bowls from the cupboard. This was her first hint that something about the dish might be awkward.

When I scooped the polenta off the cookie sheet, complete with mushrooms and cheese, she started laughing and stopped me to take a photo as she “never had liquid pizza.”

We sat and enjoyed our soup.

You can read the polenta recipe here. Make it, eat it, save some for breakfast the next day with an egg on it.

Next up, we digested with one of my favorite movies; Ghost in the Shell

There was a nice hum of happiness from the enjoyment of getting to share something I enjoyed with my new friend. When the movie was over, we sat talked a bit about the movie.

After the post-feature critique, we dove into a deeper conversation about passions, curiosities, and desires for the future.  This eventually evolved into me transcribing a list of things that Amina wants to accomplish short and long term as well as a metaphorical comparison of ourselves to an object.

I chose a Bunsen burner. I chose this because ever since I moved out of Michigan, I’ve taken note of areas of my life that I’d like to improve and visualized them as flames that need to be adjusted via the collar that allows more or less oxygen into the system. I think of my life as an array of these all being carefully watched over by a metaphysical version of myself — scrambling — adjusting the valves on the thousands of burners. I referred to it in the conversation as “controlled chaos”. This conversation lead me to quickly doodle the bunsen burner as I saw it in my mind.

Without really giving Amina a chance to name her own object, I chimed in on her behalf. I entrusted the concept of an X-acto knife to portray the role of the friendly Polish-Canadian. When she asked me why, I noted that her personality and communication style is so concise and so matter-of-fact, that only the accuracy of such a blade could do her justice. Her lines, then, were very black and white. All or nothing. A perfectionist in pure form.  She talks a bit about this particular personality trait here. I recommend giving it a gander. Her precision fascinates me.

Our evening wrapped up with me putting her bike in the back of my van and driving her home. We sat at a train stop for a bit and I still remember how nice her smile was when illuminated by the red train crossing lights.

In comically poor choice of words, when I dropped her off, still thinking of the X-acto knife, I said to her that any time I cut myself I’ll think of her. As we stood outside my panel van in the abandoned parking lot at night. I had to pause for a long moment before apologizing for how that must have came out sounding. She smiled and forgave me.

Next up, cryptic phone calls, an illustration, and voltage.

Stay tuned.

There are flags on that flag…what the hell!?

Through learning about vexillology (the study of flags), Amina and I were inspired to create a flag for our relationship and the house. The development started with some thinking about us as individuals as well as a couple.

Words that came out included:

• Confidence
• Gabe
• Maddie
• Amina
• Energy
• Passion
• Voltage
• Grounded
• Aspirational
• Heart
• Direction
• Intent

I started with a sketch of an idea using some of the basic rules as Mr. Mars had stated them. This includes using a postage stamp as a reference to how your design would read to a viewer from far away. If you hold a stamp at arms length, you can pretend it is a flag and get a good sense of what details will be visible from 2000′ away.

I sketched up the following on my iPad and held it across the room to see how it worked.

This was close, but Amina had a better idea:

We combined the two as would be appropriate in a “relationship flag”:

Now we were getting somewhere. But we should refine this a little bit more in illustrator which led to a little more extensive exploration:

Once we had all of these options in front of us, it was time to go with a little bit of gut, logic, and following the postage stamp rule plus the simplicity, we wound up with this:

Now let’s go back to the meaning, colors and iconography. The flag breaks into several overlapping grids:

The reason we did this was that it represents the distinct sense of order and balance that we care about in our lives as individuals and as partners. Secondly is the dynamic of dimensionality.

By having the lines all converge at a central point on the right side, this indicates a sense of movement, direction and forwardness that we use to represent our forward movement in life. As we read left to right, this rightward direction was intentionally chosen to indicate that future state. Next up is the color choices and what they mean:

The blue is meant for sky. Sky being the aspirational, the upwards momentum (as well as forward), the color of serenity…seriously:

The green represents the earth. Grounded, stable, a place to land. It also means go. In all three colors, forwardness was a critical part of the story for us. We grow together as individuals and as a couple. Finally the red, with it’s energy and movement to the right side of the flag is the wall that we write on. This is our track line that we run hard and fast on. It is momentum, confidence and a place to travel forward upon. The forced dimensionality to the leading edge of the perspective on the right side makes you never quite see the end, just like what we’d like for our time together.

The two white lines that are converging at the right represent us as individuals. We are connected through the spark in the middle. This spark has several meanings:

The first has to do with an illustration that Amina did before we were even dating. This illustration shows my resistance (in electrical terms) to the voltage as I wasn’t quite ready to leap into the relationship with her. Thankfully, my capacitor overloaded. Secondly, and more obvious, is an EKG readout for our mutual hearts beating against the same drum as we move forward. Next, the spark element graphically represents both of our initials as an A and G combined in a cool and techy way. Additionally is the parallel to literal voltage. Our energy with one another as we get things done and encourage each other along. Finally is the metaphor of the assessment of time. We are both extremely introspective people that use our past to grow and learn to help us into the future. The spark line travels backwards and forwards on red and ricochets back and forth as we help each other through our past and into our future.

So there you have it, the story behind our flag. It was exciting to have it mounted up just in time for Flag Day 2016 AND Amina’s Monthly Day of Happiness and we both have been smiling as it dances in the wind.

Have a great day folks and may your freak flags fly.

-G

The last year of my life was very transitionary. I met some new friends, traveled to some interesting places, met my Schmoopy and launched YawningFish.com

The latter point of YF is an interesting one as it is my first dive into tangible product fulfillment as everything I’ve created up till now on my own has been either digital product such as the things seen on PolyPlane.com or I’ve had a manufacturer working with me directly for the fulfillment such as when I did some work earlier this year with the ever so talented team over at MC Laser Labs. They helped me fulfill some orders on projects I had designed and then I played the role of the shipper. This time around, I’m either creating the product myself, working with a drop shipper for certain parts of the collection or hiring out some additional support to fab, but I’ll still be responsible for assembly and shipping. Might have to figure out a pick-and-pack vendor.

On the other side of the fence, my main source of work Con Cor Design has been steadily growing. I’m reaching a point of growing pains at the cusp of needing to hire on an additional resource to handle the day to day so I can focus more on tuning the infrastructure. With that, I’m planning some additional points of strategy as it relates to PolyPlane…but that’s all I can say on that for now.  Otherwise some interesting work came through last year via Thurston Off, LLC. They had me design these cool lamps that are currently being fabricated now for Anthem Memory Care to serve as not only a beacon but a direct reflection of the logo.

Below are a few sketches from the design process:

Otherwise, life is good. The house is coming along…oh right, I hadn’t filled that part of the picture in. The day after I had to surrender Ms. Daisy Mae Ruffhausen, my landlord called me and reluctantly told me that he had to sell the house that I was living in. After everything else that had happened in that part of the year, I had to put my foot down. I bought the house! It was pretty liberating and scary for someone who has never done that, but it taught me some valuable lessons.

1. Put down as much as you can at first to reduce the principal that you are borrowing.
2. If you can, pay triple the against the principal. And then a little more…every month. This will dramatically decrease your debt time.
3. If you are lucky enough to have either a spare room or separate studio in the deal, rent it out ASAP to reduce your payments or offset some of the increased payments from point 2.
4. Knock out a wall or put a window in. I can’t stress this enough. It makes the place feel like it is yours so much faster.
5. Walk around by yourself or with your partner and just slowly let it dawn on you that you were able to make this your reality.

I’m sure there are more that I’m not thinking of, but this is a good start.

Also this year, I’m rounding out 16 years of living out of Michigan. That’s pretty crazy. I’m really thankful for the opportunities that  have either been put down in front of me or were created tangentially by my actions.

To top it off, I’ve gone through and reduced a lot of my online presence lately. On Twitter I reduced my tweet count from 18k to 14k with the intention of bulk deleting more, but I’m still looking for a good tool to do that. On Instagram, I reduced my photos from about 500 to currently 96. Finally, as a lot of people might celebrate, my FB posting addiction has buckled from a solid 8-10 posts a day to about 2/week. This is all thanks to Schmoopy. Her first tweet is a perfect reflection of her philosophy of quiet intelligence. She is very controlled about what she says, how she says it and when she says it. She is quite the inspiration to me in that and my other regards. I feel it is affecting my ability to create quality work in a much more positive way than I’ve been able to do in the past.