Earth Day 2006

Our earth day festival was a big success! It was amazingly cool and evidentally all the people who came had just the best time :D Things really started to take off near the later part of the evening, when tons of people started showing up. A lot of them came to do the all might open mic and camp out. It was originally supposed to rain and storm all day and magically it didn't rain at all... it was actually sunny and nice all day and relatively warm all night. Our stage looked awesome, the lights were cool, and those of us selling art made a little money to buy food with for the week ;) I think the coolest thing about the whole thing was knowing that we threw an event that people REALLY dug... especially all the open mic bands and the whole late night crowd of kids that came... and by the way there were some really talented kids playing that night. They were rocking out the folklife center until like 6 in the morning. It was all so fantastic.

What is even better: we get to do the open mic once a month all summer long- and a lot of people have already told us how excited they are to come to them all. There are so many interconnected things that can happen through all this too!

Well we have another vending opprotunity this weekend to sell some art, so back to creating it is!

5 in the morn

Wow is it really 5 in the morn?

The four of us had a crazy creative spurt tonight and stayed up writing
and playing music and expressing ideas. Meanwhile we have also been
each working on our art to sell at earth day. I think we are all delirius
(sp?) now and the creative / productive boom has wained down to short
lived bursts of action in between long periods of inactivity. Time for bed!

Good night!

Circus Day!

Going to see the circus today up in Charleston... lots of fun!

Arts conference went great, we impressed lots of folks, and
it was this whole big thing. We may get more grant money
than we know what to do with. Also have a consultant
from the National Endowment of the Artss coming down to
help us write grants. It's been a while since all this happened
so my tone/descriptiveness may not be as excited as it was
immediately after returning from the conference. :)

Our earth day festival is rapidly approaching and we've got some
cool stuff made; mostly amber. I made some bumper stickers
and I'm going to make some cards and matte some prints. She's
designed and hand-made several clothing and jewelry items
that we're very excited about!

Lori and Robert's band is taking off- they are booking up pretty
fast- all the way to the fall; playing all over the state :) I think theyve got
about 30 gigs booked for the next 3 months or so. I've been doing the
lights and sound for them and both amber and I have been sitting in
on stage occasionally, usually drumming and whatnot.

We went to a yoga class with Lori and Robert yesterday
morning. It was my first one. I felt more rested and revitalized
afterwards than i have in a long time.

Our building is coming along quite well and we can't
wait till its done!! It's going to be amazing-------
I'll miss the mountain house once we move in to
the building but i think the whole thing will be
so fantastic, and there will be so much space
and so many resources for creating art that
we won't dwell on missing the mountain house.

Thats all for now! Circus time!

Fantastic!

Well we made to WV ok and we've been busy since we arrived.
We have been enjoying mountain living up in the huge, comfy,
quiet mountain house. We'll be living here for a month or 2
the building is absolutely amazing- they are still remodelling,
but moving pretty quickly. The coffee shop needs a lot of equipment and
research and money before we can get started on it and so we are going
to put it off until later- probably this fall. We need to get all of
the other functions going first. our art is priority over coffee :)
we may set up a coffee shop in a tent for festivals this summer.
I think we are planning on vending at like 12 different festivals
this summer.
We've got a workshop set up in the basement
for cutting wood, painting etc. and building a dark room down
there too.
Part of 1st floor will be gallery for photos, clothing, art,
and also we will have an office for graphic design / photography.
There is another storefront on 1st floor for our coffee shop.
There is an in between loft area between 1st and 2nd floor that
will be a lounge.
2nd floor will be apartments, another office,
our internet radio station (which will be broadcast eventually),
and recording studio.
3rd floor is huge- will be the music venue where we
will do open mics, play and book live shows, have lessons
like dance, etc. We will do live recording there for the
performances. Amber will have a full sewing room.
We also will rent the space out for receptions
and banquets as a source of income. We even have some
teachers from local colleges that want to rent out
the space to give private classes and lessons.
There are a lot of other rooms on the 2nd and 3rd floor
that we don't even know what we are going to do with yet.
So we are going to hit the photography / graphic
design market really hard. they have already started
projects for clients and with the diverse group that
we have, we can do anything like murals, signs,
photography, window displays, logos, advertisements,
etc etc etc. We can photograph events, video events,
record for musical artists, make promo packs,
promote. We even have a silk screen tshirt press
to make tshirts for peoples businesses or bumper
stickers for bands. We also have lots of artwork
that will be displayed for sale in our gallery:
Ambers clothes and jewelry, my photographs,
roberts photographs, paintings and sculptures and
furniture made by the other two guys, our cds from
local bands, Lori and Roberts band, and once we
record an album my and Amber's band.
Also there is a farm that used to be
kind of a commune/ artist colony in the 60s,
the folk life center, which we will be having our
earth day festival and culture festival on.
Culture fest this year will be a three day
festival with camping and all! Fantastic!
We got scholarships and stipends (for travel etc)
to attend this huge 3 day arts conference / seminar /
awards thing. We are going to be there representing
our organization.
Also we did a radio commercial (we also wrote
produced and recorded it) and its playing on the radio
station. We are also going to be doing a tv commercial
soon!