Category: Uncategorized

One day you look up and you realize it’s been almost three years since you last updated your site. Time goes by so much faster when you have a kid! I keep thinking one of these days I’ll be able to get back to my creative endeavors. Not that raising a child isn’t a constant creative endeavor. I love doing Callithump! and exploring the world of vended art projects but I really haven’t had the time or energy for that.

The Callithump! project lives on in a way. What we learned by creating artist’s multiples and selling them helped us to realize that we could really do this in a bigger way. That evolved into a business venture called Adventure Awaits! Check it out.

The vending also lives on in our own home. Of course our daughter gets to have her own toy capsule vending machine!

Trendhunter declared “Art Vending Machines” to be a trend in May, 2006, which was about the time the first Callithump! vending machine was deployed.

Implications – Art is increasingly being commodified and made available to not only the upper classes. Art is being sold in small, on-the-go formats that appeal to the busy, but culturally-inclined, consumer. This trend also shows the continued popularity of vintage and retro designs, especially in now-simple technologies like vending machines or juke boxes.

It’s probably good that I missed this back then. Knowing me, it’s likely I would have abandoned the whole idea.

A decade ago I set out to push myself as a writer and photographer. I picked the most boring, mundane subject I could think about: myself, drinking coffee. I would photograph and write about every cup of coffee I drank for 100 consecutive cups of coffee. In the process, I would try to make it interesting for a general audience.

You can read the results here. 

At the time, writing for the Web as its own medium was fairly new, so this was an exercise working in a new medium for me. Facebook didn’t exist yet, and taking pictures of, posting and writing about the things you were eating was a pretty strange thing to do. It still is, when you think about it! We also divulge a lot more about our personal lives now. It was an uncomfortable experience doing it a decade ago.

I can see a real arc in the quality. I hit my stride around the 25th post. The writing is more articulate and interesting, and the photographic compositions are much better composed. Around the 75th post the enthusiasm starts to fade. Or maybe it was the depression was setting in.

It’s an interesting snapshot of life a decade ago. It’s remarkable how much has changed, and how some things haven’t changed at all, both in my life and the world at large.

Doing 100 Cups of Coffee really had a profound impact on all my creative work that followed. Doing something creative is one thing. Doing it repeatedly is a very different challenge. The majority of work that I’ve done since has been an artist’s multiple of some sort. You learn things in the repetition that you don’t when you just do one of something. All true art is a kind of science, and when you do multiples you add repeatable results and are doing research.

Name: Margot

Genetic Mix: Insect, human

Series 1, Revision 1

Margot was created for housekeeping purposes. Tired of driving to isolated locations to discard the Protos, Margot was bred to consume the bodies of the rejected Protos. She refused and was discarded herself. To spite her frightening appearance, Margot can only consume decaying flesh and is completely harmless to all living things. Bread to be a cleaner, she’s a compulsive neat-freak and often sneaks into houses in order to tidy up.  This often results in her needing to hide under a bed when the family returns home unexpectedly. There she waits until it’s dark and everyone is asleep so she can make her escape.

Name: Ed

Genetic Mix: Human (mostly)

Batch #1

Ed possesses the most brilliant brain on the planet. Unfortunately, the only other body part which he (Ed thinks of himself as a “he” even though he possesses no identifiable gender) is a foot that he uses both for locomotion and to sense the world. For crying out loud, even if he’d been given a hand instead of a foot, at least he’d have an opposable thumb to work with, but noooooo. The scientist had some leftover parts and a little spare time to kill, and never bothered to see if Ed was alive before discarding him. Don’t worry about Ed, though. He’s so brilliant that it’s likely that he’ll be able to find a way to overcome his physical challenges and may one day conquer the world!

It’s a new year and a new direction for Callithump! After a longer than intended hiatus, we’re be returning with all new content at the end of January.