Championing the makers, artists, and wanderers in all of us.
Floating above downtown Phoenix is a permanent public art sculpture inspired by monsoon clouds and hot Arizona summers. “Her Secret Is Patience” was created by artist Janet Echelman, specifically for the site it is now suspended above. At night it’s illuminated with the colors changing with the seasons.
The name comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.”
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I’m taking part in Microblog Mondays!
In case you ever want to print some really big stuff, there’s now a plotter at Gangplank that prints on 3-foot wide rolls of paper. Not like photos, more like black-and-white line drawings. It would be great for patterns, maps, large schematics, and probably lots of things we haven’t thought of yet.
I was looking for ideas of something we could make with it during the May CraftHack meetup. I’m not sure I found anything that would work for that, but I did come across some interesting stuff.
XY LED Plotter (University of Illinois) – Stephen Cartwright creates abstract long-exposure photographs with an LED plotter.
Coal Drawing Machine (Belgium) – Carlos Amorales created an art installation in a former coal mine that features a modified plotter printing with charcoal.
Cardboard computer and plotter (School of Art and Design Offenbach, Germany) – In an electronic media class, students were able to use cardboard to construct a tiny working computer and plotter.
I wondered if we could use the plotter for printing larger versions of foldable projects like this Paris city scene or these VW buses.
Then I fell asleep and dreamed of looking for plotter crafts.
Really. In the mall, there was a store that still had a Christmas display in their window with 3 paper figures that were as tall as I was: an angel with beautiful paper cut wings, a boxy snowman, and maybe a Nutcracker. They had been printed with a plotter, cut out, and folded up (Folidify craft style). So I went to ask the store owners if they would let us have the files for our CraftHack project. They showed me this adorable little papercraft camper that was a cross between a paper VW bus I’d seen and the Fisher-Price camper I had as a kid. (Remember those?) Of course, I still don’t have the files. Because it was a dream.
But if you have any fabulous real-life ideas for projects that start with a plotter printer, let me know!
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Photos via sites as noted, except for the top one, which I took of the actual HP DesignJet 600 at Gangplank.
One of the questions that came up on my please-ask-me-stuff post was how to make a paper hat/boat. When I made the one in my Travelcraft Journal birthday photos, I couldn’t remember how I had done it as a kid. But I found great instructions on wikiHow.
If you make one, I’d love to see a photo of you and your boat where you live!
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Microblog Monday: Keep calm and write on.
We’re not Seattle, obviously. But Phoenix does have its hardcore coffee devotees. We also have an increasing number of independent shops run by people who care about where their coffee comes from, the way it’s brewed, and who even roast the beans themselves to make sure they meet their standards.
1. The original Cartel Coffee Lab is what my friend Anne affectionately refers to as “the hipster epicenter of Tempe.” That may be true, but hipsters usually know where to find good coffee. Roaster Paul Haworth II has started the Coffee Bureau site to help people make better coffee and is currently in Central America visiting farms and sourcing beans. Cartel has expanded to also serve beer at its Tempe location, as well as opening several other locations in Arizona, including in Tucson and Sky Harbor Airport (Terminal 4, past security checkpoint C).
2. Echo Coffee came to be after founder Steve Belt heard a talk at Ignite Phoenix and decided to make a career change. These roots may have something to do with the strong community vibe of the place. There are different areas within the shop for conversation or work and large windows filling the space with natural light. Steve only hires people passionate about coffee, but they also tend to be really friendly and great about answering questions without the pretentiousness you get from a lot of baristas who take coffee (too) seriously.
3. Newly-opened Peixoto Coffee in downtown Chandler imports their coffee directly from a 100+ year old family farm in Brazil. They tell me the family name is pronounced “pay-sho-to”. Even though it’s been open under a month, it feels established, like it’s been there a long time. There’s a salvaged-wood counter, coffee bag cushions, and chalkboard-painted tables with coffee puns on them like “Espresso Your SELF” [sic]. I didnt see food on their online menu, so I was surprised to see they also offer empanadas and really good Brazilian cheese biscuits.
I can’t take credit for making this – just appreciating it.
Our church shares a building with several other groups, and the main meeting room had been kind of bare for awhile. It’s great to have a multiuse facility, but sometimes it feels like no one really has ownership over it.
One day this upcycled pallet art was just there at the front, made, I heard, by one of the churches that meets earlier in the day.
The colors remind me of the sunrise. I like looking at the way they bleed into each other while I listen to a message.
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Microblog Mondays is about sharing a little something every week. More at Stirrup Queens.
