S.R. Wild: Artist and Graphic Designer

WWII Junk from my Father's Father

Today, my parents came to town to help me celebrate the last day of my week-long birthday extravaganza by taking me out to some of my favorite kinds of places: the flea market in Waterbury, a church tag sale, and an army surplus store. I didn’t get anything, except for a hummus wrap, but my father surprised me with an amazing box of my grandfather’s WWII junk. He was an airplane mechanic, so his job was to keep our boys in the sky.

The most interesting thing is his mess kit. He scratched into the metal the names of all the countries he was in: Okinawa, Guam, Japan, Africa, France, China, Italy, and India.

An altimeter from a Japanese plane.

The Pilot’s Flight Operating Instructions has some great illustrations and photographs I’ll have to steaaaa… appropriate some day.

The nameless, faceless head is modeling a lovely pair of headphones and a throat microphone.

There are also postcards, matchbooks, photographs, random tools, and newspaper clippings I haven’t completely gone through yet.

All these recent junk acquisitions make me think of one thing: more shelves. Magpie… Pinky… quick, jump in the jalopy… to the hardware store! Oh right, they’re closed.

My father also got me a first aid kit that was blessed and hand packed by Director of Homeland Security Tom Ridge. I really needed one of these because I tend to get injured often. Plus, it came with cool biohazard stickers that I could put on the sandwich bag that contains my thumb if I cut it off with my jigsaw.

And my mom made me my annual birthday pie (cake is so bourgeois), which I should start working on now. The photo may look bad, but I assure you the pie is not

I usually don’t look forward to my birthday or do anything for it, but this whole week has been great: I met up with someone almost every other day to go to junk, antique, and used clothing shops; ate a lot of food; didn’t accomplish much, but I did build a few things; spent very little time in front of the computer; watched a lot of movies; slept a lot; and forgot what an alarm clock sounds like. Alas, all things must end and I have to go back to the real world of waking up at a specified time, interacting with other humans, and work. I haven’t thought about work all week, which is good because it’s going to be busy — crap, I just thought about it.

Holy Squeezebox!

This afternoon, Molly stopped by to give me one of the coolest birthday presents I’ve ever received and something I’ve always wanted: an accordion! Wow, thank you very much Molly. I promise to give it a good home and play it often.

What’s even cooler is it was made in a country that no longer exists since a little wall came down: German Democratic Republic, which is or was more commonly known as East Germany.

Magpie isn’t too thrilled about the accordion. She’s still hiding under my bed from when I played it a few hours ago. She’ll get over it.

Class Ends, Vacation Begins

Tuesday was my last silkscreen printing class. Everyone was asked to bring in all of their work for an informal critique. It’s been awhile since I was in a critique — well, everything I do at work is critiqued by numerous people. Only about half the class showed up and only about half of those brought more than one piece to show. I sort of expected more since the class wasn’t for credit or anything. Once again I felt like an overachiever because I showed about ten pieces.

After the critique I worked a little and made the print pictured above.

I’d be sad about not having access to the print studio, but my instructor got a free month of studio access for everyone in the class to make up for a few mishaps and whatnot. I’ll be able to work in the studio for the rest of this month and all of September.

As I mentioned before, I wanted to set up shop at home. Last weekend I ordered a few basic supplies that were a birthday present from my mom (thanks mom). The package arrived yesterday so now I can’t print at home.

There are a few things I don’t have that would make printing easier, like a lightbox for exposing screens, but I’d prefer to build them myself. I can make do for now.

Speaking of birthdays, mine is next week. As a present to myself I decided to take the week off. I haven’t taken more than a few days off since I started my current job over a year ago. I’m not going anywhere or doing anything special. I plan on covering all my clocks and turning my phone off so I can catch up on my reading, watch a ton of movies, build things, do some silkscreen printing, and just lounge around my apartment with my cat.

I suppose I’m taking a “staycation,” which is the latest buzzword inspired by people not traveling on their vacations due to increased gas prices. High gas prices have nothing to do with why I’m not doing anything. I just need to take a break from everything.

srwild.com is 7

I almost forgot, this website is seven years old today! How long is that in website years? To celebrate this momentous occasion, we are having a party all weekend. Where? Right here at srwild.com. Feel free to stop by anytime and stay as long as you’d like.

I wish I had seven years worth of content to show for it, alas, I only have about eighteen months worth because this site wasn’t very active until 2007. It’s always been a place to show my work and experiment with web design, which is one of the reasons why it’s been redesigned fourteen times — only fourteen redesigns have gone live, I’ve made at least twice as many attempts.

Form 2001 to 2004, this site was just a portfolio site. I briefly tried blogging during that time, but I gave up after three entries (I posted one of them last year). From 2005 to 2006, this website consisted of a single page that said “Coming Soon” — I missed its fifth birthday on 6/6/06. At the beginning of 2007, I was encouraged to relaunch this site and start a blog. The latter is something I never thought I’d do and I’m still lukewarm towards the idea, which is a good thing because I get bored if I get too comfortable.

A Cherry of a Package

This morning, I finally made it to the post office to pick up a package from Miss Cherry. Inside the box, excessively wrapped in pink and black duct tape, were a number of lovely birthday surprises. Thank you Miss Cherry.

Dirty and Thirty

A lot of people have birthdays today: H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Plant, Connie Chung, Isaac Hayes, and many other people who aren’t famous, such as myself. Around 2 o’clock this afternoon it will be the 30th anniversary of my eviction from the womb.

Many people have asked what I’m going to do today. I suppose I’ll take a shower, drink coffee (lots of it), eat a few times, go to the bathroom numerous times (due to all that coffee), breath, work, walk, and… you know, the usual. Other than that, I don’t know. I never do much on my birthday. Although, now that I think about it, ordering a ton of Indian takeout, watching a movie, and taking a nap sounds really good right now. Especially since there’s one thing I’m not going to do today: sleep. I’ve been up all night, and it’s so late (or early) that sleep would be futile.

Happy Birthday Hitch

I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it. —Alfred Hitchcock

Today is Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday. I’m going to celebrate by watching one of his fine films.

Speaking of birthdays… ahem… mine is in a week. Today is the last Monday of my twenties, tomorrow is the last Tuesday, etc. Provided I make it through the rest of this week, I will enter my thirties.

srwild.com v14.0 :: © MM–MMVIII S.R. Wild