Behold the gnarliest piece of leather I’ve ever tried to work with.

When you buy leather you order it by the side, or roughly half a cow. What you get doesn’t come in nice uniform sheets. You get something roughly cow shaped and all the trials and tribulations that cow has been through are going to show up on the hide.

As you can imagine, not all parts of the hide are equal. There is nice tight grain that is smooth and dyes beautifully along the back and flank.

Then there is this. This comes from what would be the front under neck area. It is usually considered waste leather. It is spongy with loose grain. It has scars and bug bites. It is wrinkled and folded.

I’m very diligent about not wasting anything. Thicker leather scraps get cut down into punch pads or cutting mats to protect my tools. Thinner leather gets used as liner or filler in handles or I’ll make a case out of it to protect my tools when I’m not using them.

This part of this hide though I’ve never been able to use. It won’t lay flat so I can’t use it as a work surface. That loose grain means it won’t hold up as a tool cover.

The thing about it though is that I find it really interesting. All though wrinkles and folds and changing density in grain does weird things as it tries to soak up dye.

To me this is like burled chestnut. For a long time highly figured wood was seen as waste. All those curls and whorls make for very poor chair legs. As we got better at cutting and refining wood suddenly that gnarly piece of firewood had a new kind of value.

So here is what I’m trying. I want to see what happens when I take all that nasty messed up leather and then stretch it over a form and smooth it out.

It’s different. And weird. And if it works I’m going to love it. In all honesty I think its going to fail. But I won’t know until I’ve tried.

The title of this piece is Waving at Strangers.

For a few years now I've been in the habit of going on a nightly walk. I'm generally an anxious person. My walks give me a chance to direct my attention towards something other than my racing thoughts and try to settle myself down a little before I go to bed.

These walks became especially important during the pandemic. I need a lot of space and quiet to maintain my sanity. Being stuck at home with two small children, my wife, and all the humming mental noise that goes along with a global event like Covid had me feeling claustrophobic. My walks became a way to stretch my world out a little and get a some breathing room.

Encountering other people on these nightly walks led to new questions about pandemic etiquette. Should I be wearing a mask? Is it okay to cross paths? How much distance do we need from each other? Things were so uncertain.

Generally crossing the street, or stepping off the sidewalk out into the street, to pass someone became a normal part of my evening stroll. I remember how alienating this felt. These were the days when the only new faces I was seeing were on screens. Facetime and Zoom were lifelines but they also felt so artificial. Here on my walks it was coming up again. A reminder that we are all isolated, even from the strangers we pass on the street.

That's not the part that sticks out to me though. It's what happened as we passed each other. A wave. A few words shouted across the street. Every single person I passed had a little something to say, a smile to trade, a brief moment of connection. An unspoken acknowledgement of the shared feeling of being isolated and afraid, but also a chance to smile at someone else. A chance to recognize that we are alone but in this together.

That feeling is what this image is of. A leaf waving confidently at the top, little cracks running through the world below. Or maybe it is a light, a flame, standing up alone in the emptiness. Or maybe it's me. Alone, and worried, and trying to calm myself down walking around my neighborhood at night, waving at strangers.

Capturing the seasons in my work

Winter Sun

This week felt like spring. It was warm enough yesterday that while walking home from picking up my son at school we were able to shuck our jackets.

I love the return of spring air. It is like my sense of smell gets switched back on. Wet grass. Wetter mud. The warm smell of sunshine in the air. A little hint of diesel from the bus stop up the street. It's like that scene in the Wizard of Oz when the door opens and suddenly everything is in color. It was a bittersweet moment though because it is still only February.

I've been trying to capture more of that sense of seasonality in my work. That taste of warmer weather has me jonesing for green leaves and the smell of rain, setting cyanotypes out to expose, their printing frames warming in the sun. I think I was looking for a sense of the seasons when I started doing my annual indigo dyeing every spring. The same with my October residency.

February can feel devoid of seasonal cues, but that's not true. February is about light. The days start getting longer. It's around this time of year that the sun is up late enough that it sets while I'm making dinner. I can see it just out my kitchen window while I'm cooking. It skims along the bottoms of the clouds and catches the tips of the maple tree branches in my backyard as it goes.

I've been seeing this show up in my work with these wet molded vessels. For so long I’ve been looking at my work straight on. A wallet in my hand. Art up on a wall. These new shapes though are made to be viewed at an angle. That's how I catch myself looking at them. With the light cutting across them creating shadows.

Molding them also creates this gradation in color as the leather bends around the curve of whatever I've molded them into. I think this works really well with my hand dyeing technique.

I have pages of sketches in my notebook of trays and bowls right now. I don't know how I'll find the time to try out everything I've got down. I'm trying to sneak in one or two every day around the rest of the work I'm doing in my studio. I hoping to have enough to launch a small collection of them in March.

In the meantime I'm wrapping up a couple more bags this week. Over the weekend I'm bringing another batch of cyanotypes up to the printer's for reproduction. I'm hoping to finally get a few of them up on the website later this month as well.

First Week In Feb

January was spent squeezing in projects around making bags.

As far as bags go I'm well into making this Mercer I'm working on. I'd say I'm about half way through this one.

This past week I cut all the big parts out from un-dyed, vegetable tanned leather. I spent a day dyeing, slicking down the backs, and then oiling everything. Then the wet leather has to dry for 48 hours before I cut the panels down to the actual shapes I'll use to make the bags.

I snuck in a little Millstream drop earlier in the month. I was doing a lot of planning and book keeping and I just needed a break from looking at a computer screen. I’ve wanted to try doing some in chestnut and teal. It was good to take a break and work with my hands.

My experiments this week have been around learning to make these wet molded trays.

I see a lot of potential in them. I think the skills I’ve picked up in hand dyeing will really shine with a display surface like these. I've also been looking into some other forms my leather working can take. People only need so many wallets.

So I'm hoping to either translate these into some form of home good or maybe just take the plunge and make actual art objects out of them. I'm not really sure yet but I've got a lot of ideas scribbled down.

I'm just finishing up my annual planning here at the studio. It's hard to get this kind of thing done because while I'm doing it it feels like a waste of time. Once it's done though having a plan for the year ends up being incredibly beneficial.

This year needs a plan more than most. I feel like I'm all over the place with what I'm trying to do.

Right now I feel like I am running two different businesses and not giving either their due. I make leather goods. I make cyanotypes. There is a bit of a middle ground but most of the time I feel like I'm trying to push forward on two fronts.

I've known since I start down that path that it was going to lead to some big changes in the way I do business and what my business looks like. I also knew there were going to have to be some sacrifices, some of which I wouldn't be comfortable with.

This year's planning has involved a lot of asking myself about what things I'm doing that are successful but I no longer want to invest my time or energy into. Learning to see something as successful but not worth continuing has been a hard lesson.

Getting it down on paper feels like a big step. The choice has been made, a direction picked. Already I can feel myself letting go of the things that I have to let go of.

Anyway. Big changes are coming to Wright & Rede this year as I transition away from trying to be a little factory and continue evolve my artistic practice.

Look for a new release of prints from my October residency later this month. I am also working on a whole new line of wet molded leather vessels that I'm hoping to launch in March.

At the start of the new year I like to set aside time to look at where I've been and then decide on where I'm trying to go.

A structure I've been using for the last few years is something called the Three Words. I'm not sure where I learned this or if I adapted it from something else, but here is how it works.

At the start of the year you pick three words. These words will be the guiding force behind all of your decisions for the rest of the year. When in the coming year you aren't sure about what next step you should be taking, or want to check in and see if you're still heading in the direction you intended, all you have to do is remember your three words.

Some guidelines. The words have to be verbs. It has to be something you can do. If you just write down "resilience" or "authentic" you can't really do too much with that.

For example in 2020 my three were: Finish, Exchange, Externalize.

Finish because I had a bunch of good ideas I felt I wasn't following through on. So whenever I started something new I asked if I had finished the last thing I was working on.

Exchange because I wanted to make more of an effort to get other people's art into my life. An exchange of ideas and influences. I wanted to make sure I wasn't getting myself into a little influence bubble. So I started trading art with people.

Externalize. Up until 2020 a shameful amount of important work related stuff existed only in my head. This was the year I started writing down how I do everything, made templates of all of my work, and started to make systems for planning out my year. I now have a system for recording how I'll launch a campaign, record good ideas I don't have time for, track my growth, things like that.

I'll spend a month or so coming up with the words. It's something I keep in the back of my mind, and while I'm thinking about things I would have changed about last year or I'm hoping to have happen this year, I'll jot down a word or two.

At the end of the month I'll look through all the words I wrote down and either combine common ideas or see if I can make them more specific.

It might not seem like a huge idea, but the simple act of making this one decision now will make all of the other decisions for the rest of the year that much easier.

Let me know in the comments what your three words might be.

As I sit here looking up at this print of blowing leaves and listening to it rain it occurs to me that the time for making this idea has come and gone.

I made this image by placing sensitized paper out under a tree as the leaves were falling. Some collected on the paper. Some just landed there for a moment and then blew away, leaving a ghost of their shadow behind.

I had hoped to develop of whole body of work around this idea. I like the high key image and I like the sense of movement that it has. But now the leaves are wet and have all fallen from the trees. Every day the sun gets a little dimmer and the days a little shorter.

When the sunshine returns in strength and frequency again it will be spring. There will be buds, and petals, and blossoms to work with then. But to make this falling leaf picture I've got in my head I will have to wait until the opposite side of the seasons. A year between now and then.

It might sound frustrating but I love it. I like the idea of there being seasons to my work. It's creates a sense of urgency. I have to get out there and record the fall leaves while I can. It puts me in the time and place that I'm in.

Time to Switch Gears

My First Week Back

The more things change the more they stay the same.

I spent the first day of my week back just cleaning up my studio. After every big project I like to take a little time to put everything back away.

I find that in putting away the detritus of my last project I'm better able to draw it to a close in my head as well. There is a time for moving on to other things. I get nothing done when I try to split my focus in too many ways.

The next morning I walked in and pulled out a big roll of leather to start cutting down. I had it out on my cutting mat and was marking out the shapes I needed to cut out when it hit me.

I could smell the leather.

Most people don't realize I can't smell leather any more. I'm around it all the time. I'm desensitized to it. So when people walk into my studio and breathe that leather smell in I just smile and nod.

Standing there though I got a good whiff.

"Oh! That's what they are talking about."

It's a good experience to have. Sometimes you spend so much time working on a thing that you forget how it feels to encounter it for the first time. I don't want to lose the perspective of experiencing my work as an outsider.

Two days after that I messed up all the work I'd done that week.

I was making some Traveler's cases. I must have been in a hurry when I was making the template I was using. After days of dyeing, drying, cutting, and stitching I snapped the first one closed and it was crooked. I went back and checked the template and sure enough one of the marks for a snap was slightly out of line.

I'd used this to mark all the work I'd done that week.

It dawned on me then what I high bar I've set for myself. I not only have to make these beautiful things, but they have to hold up to being used. For ten years I've been pushing through on momentum alone. But this break has given me a chance to step back and look at what I'm doing.

I took a moment to grieve a week's worth of wasted effort. Then I sat down and carefully crafted a new template.

I've just finished the first one with the new template. It fits together the way it should.

October Residency

Week Four

This week was rough and I knew it would be.

I went into this month knowing that it was going to end in this week and started building up the courage to face it.

I took three of my cyanotypes, my three favorites from this month, to a gallery on Friday to have high quality scans made of them so I can have reproductions made.

Sounds mundane. If you've ever poured your heart into a creative endeavor before you will know the fear I'm talking about though. Logically I know they aren't going to laugh at me, but there is always that voice in the back of my head.

"What if they find out you don't know what you're doing?"

"What if I look like an idiot?"

"What if they tell me my work sucks?"

"What if I don't realize I'm in over my head until it's too late?"

Well, let me tell you how it went.

I started by emailing them. I explained I was looking to have some reproductions made. That I had experience running a creative business (so I didn't look like an idiot) but was new to making work that was scan-able and printable (so I could ask stupid questions). They got back to me the next day, told me to come on up, and that I didn't need an appointment.

On Friday I drove twenty minutes across town. I felt pretty nervous the whole way. I'd spent all week getting in my head about it. Simon at the gallery recognized me by my Lamplighter when I walked in. I showed him my prints. I think he was glad to see I'd brought work that was nice and flat.

Over the next thirty minutes I learned a lot. One important lesson I've learned in running Wright & Rede is that you don't get extra credit for coming off as an expert. So I walked in with a written list of questions in my hand.

"Do I need to worry about surface texture for scanning?"

"What is a normal turn around time to expect?"

"How do I order new copies?"

"How big of a piece can you scan?"

I then had to name all the pieces (oh god) but he told me I could always change the names later (thank god). In talking to him I learned a lot of other things I'd need along the way. Most people you are establishing a relationship with like this are more than happy to educate you. They want a competent customer who is going to order a lot of reproductions. So as long as that is your aim then you are good. You might look a little dumb the first time, but you'll look less dumb the second time and that is what really matters.

Next week I start back in on leather work. It's been a whole month since I've worked with any leather. The holiday season is peeking over my shoulder while I'm typing. Usually by now I'm well into stocking up for that. I haven't started on it yet. But I knew that this was the right time to do my residency. I started it as all the leaves began to change and fall. The branches are bare now and it makes sense to move onto the next thing.

I'm excited to get back to leather working. I've been trying to imagine how this is all going to fit together. After this last month of turning out cyanotypes I'm fairly tired of thinking about leaves. Switching gears feels very right. So that might be how things work in the future. Different seasons with different mediums. I'm not sure I could do both at once.

If you follow me on Instagram check out my profile. I finally updated it to reflect all that's going on. I've been struggling with how to define what my job is when I'm telling other people. I took the plunge and changed it to artist.  Over the weekend I'm going to one of my wife's corporate events. That means lots of introducing myself to people. Let's see if I can tell people I'm an artist for a living without stammering.

October Residency

Week Three

Oh, Week Three. You were a beast.

The beginning of week three was about trying out a bunch of different ideas and compositions. So the first half of the week was a blast, and now I have a direction for the body of work I am going to make for this month.

My inner craftsman was dancing with joy. The straight forward, mechanical work of coating paper to prepare for making all of these cyanotypes is right up my alley.

My goal for October was to have three finished pieces around a cohesive theme to function as an anchor off of which I can build a greater body of work.  Also I wanted to have a good ending point for my residency.

I've got three pieces. More than three I'd say.

So I've reached then end of the creative/producing part of my residency. Then I hit a wall. I noticed it right away.

I stopped sharing the work I was making. Writing to you from the beginning of week four I can tell you that I've had these finished pieces for over a week now. I haven't showed them at all.

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I thought this would be the easy part. I have a lot of experience sharing my work. I've been photographing myself at work for over a decade. So I went into this part feeling pretty confident. I'm discovering that it is a whole different beast. My biggest hurdle at the moment is my set up. I need a big sink and a room I can darken while the light sensitive paper dries after I coat it. My studio doesn't have a sink and there is no way I can get this room dark enough. So I'm having to work part time in my old basement workshop. Which is not photogenic.

I know the obvious answer is to just shoot anything. Perfect is the enemy of done, but I'm finding myself getting caught up in trying to perfect it. This is a red flag for me. It's one of the ways I procrastinate when I'm slipping outside of my comfort zone. This whole residency is an exercise in being outside of my comfort zone. I shouldn't be surprised that this has come up.

I suspect the bigger issue is that I'm nearing the point where I have to make all of this real. I will have to show my work to the outside world. Creating in a bubble is safe and fuzzy.

This feels a little like posting nudes.

Experience has taught me to just do the damn thing. So tomorrow I'll be shooting a video of me talking about my work, how it is developing, and why I've made some of the choices I've made. Following that will be a round of "just take a bunch of damn pictures".

You'll be able to judge for yourself the results in a few days. I give myself 50/50 odds of messing it up.

Next week will be the nitty gritty. I'm going to start contacting printers this week to see about getting reproductions made. Then I get to dive into the exciting world of pricing out art mailers and packaging. I know, right?

Am I giving up on leather?

Why Cyanotypes?

“Are you giving up on leather work?”

The burning question that no one is asking but I'm imagining they are in my head.

The short answer, no. I still have a lot to say in that area. I love working with leather. I've spent a decade honing my craft and I still think about it every day.

So why the side project? Is the band breaking up?

Yes and no. I started this business thinking of myself as a little factory. A cottage industry. The point was to turn out a quality product and make a living with a little integrity. The problem with this plan is that A) anyone can do it (or appear to) and B) success with this plan looks like growing into just a bigger factory .

To sort out "A" I started making more creative work that has a higher bar to entry. Something not just anyone can sit down and do.

Sorting out "B" has been a bigger issue. What does success and growth look like if I'm not hiring people and producing more?

This is why I pivoted over the last few years to making more creative work. I don't just make wallets anymore. I make little bits of functional artwork you can carry around in your pocket. As the creativity and complexity of the work I've been doing has increased so has the price I charge for that work. That has worked for continuing to grow my business.

But I feel like I am nearing a ceiling on what I can accomplish with this plan. Continued growth along this path looks like eventually making insanely clever and meticulous art that I turn into wallets. Which I then have to charge thousands of dollars for to cover the time spent in making them.

I'm sure there are a few people out there willing to spend that much on a wallet. I don't know any of them, and I don't think there are enough I could reach to make a living. To be honest I don't think I would even want to make a living that way.

So then what do I do?

Well, I've spent the last few years (mostly during the hours of 2am and 5am) thinking about this. I'm in a weird situation. I'm making art, but treating it like a craft. I'm not just making functional goods. I have a whole ethos behind what I do. Come to the studio and I'll talk your ear off about it.

There are so many stylistic, ethical, and creative decisions over the years that I've managed to shoehorn into the leather goods I produce. When I started making cyanotypes again I suddenly realized all of those choices and artistic intent I've developed are quickly and easily applied to this other medium in really interesting ways.

Have you ever tried to figure out how to express the bittersweet magic in something that is beautiful but temporary? And then put that on a wallet?

I have.

You can see how I might be interested in applying some of this to a new arena.

It's like I've been serving wine in a coffee mug. Both coffee and wine are great on their own, but sometimes wine makes a lot more sense in a wine glass. There are so many things I can explore once I stop limiting the art I make to a canvas that is 3" x 4". I really want to explore those. I think this is why the very first body of work I made in cyanotype was on 30" x 22" sheets of watercolor paper. I needed to stretch out.

This also solves a question I've been trying to answer ever since I read the E-Myth Revisited. A book that makes some valid points about being an entrepreneur while simultaneously being completely soul crushing.

One of the points in this book that has really haunted me over the years is this. If you build your business around the work you do with your own two hands, what happens to your business when you aren't working? When you go on vacation your business stops. Every winter I am super cautious walking on ice. Because if I fall and break a hand I'm out of business until it heals. What happens if I get sick? Like I said earlier, I'm not interested in building a factory filled with employees churning out leather goods.

Cyanotypes offer a solution to this. The work I do in my studio with my own two hands creates originals. That labor is dependent on me. Once they are made a whole range of possibilities opens up.

High quality, archival, reproductions. In different sizes! Do you have any idea how amazing that is to me? For years I've made art that has to be wallet sized, and once it's done it's locked in. With cyanotypes I could make a cool image that could be as small as a greeting card and as big as a mural (at the same time and without me having to make new versions with my own two hands!!!).

But I'm here for leather work you think you think. What does this mean for that?

Two things. If I am successful at separating the income I make off my work from the income I make off my labor that is going to give me a lot more time to pursue different creative avenues in my leather work.

You have no idea the things I want to try. Pages and pages of ideas that I don't currently have the time or resources to tackle. The other part of this equation is that creating in a few different mediums feeds back in on itself. Leather work influences cyanotypes and cyanotypes influence leather work. So on and so on in an upward spiral. The more work I develop the greater pool of creativity I have to draw on.

So yeah. It's a lot. I am still not sure how to talk about it. But it feels right, and terrifying, and silly, and exciting all at once. It's going to be a journey. The path less traveled.

Week Two

October Residency

Last week I was focused on making a bunch of work.

In the beginning I don't really care if it is good or bad.  There is a certain critical mass that I have to achieve to make good work. When I'm designing in leather I have pages with the blank profile of whatever I'm working on.  If I'm designing a new satchel I'll have a grid of 6-8 isometric rectangles that I'll draw flaps, pockets, and different closures on. At this point there are no bad ideas. If it pops into my head I have to write it down.

I did the same here with my cyanotypes. I'm just running through paper and making a wide range of different styles and compositions. If I think of it I have to try it. Once I have a big enough stack I'll sit down and look over all of them to find things that I like. Often I already have a good idea of what I'm looking for since I've been developing my creative taste for over a decade with my leather work.

This is the thing I have been the most excited to see. I know what my style is when I'm designing leather goods. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to translate that into a different medium like cyanotypes.

I can see my style beginning to emerge as I sort though this stack of work. If you want a quick guide to my style here it is.

I like simple work. Simple but not boring. It can't be too busy or too noisy. So there is usually one strong element in a big empty space. But when you look at that apparently empty space you'll realize that there is a lot going on. This could be the whorls and marks of full grain cow hide, or it could be the subtle mottling you get from brushing wet sensitizer onto watercolor paper.

I'm also a big believer in limitations when it comes to cultivating creativity. I like to give myself hard limits on what I'm doing in a project. “Hmmm, what happens if I can only make things that are blue and brown?”

I think this comes out in my work too. If I'm going to put down a line it needs to have clean and clear edges. I like to have details that involve doing something very precise and meticulous. Conversely I also like a bit of chaos in my work. A little room for serendipity. But it must never come off as sloppy. Color and a good range of shades from dark to light are also important.  Most of my work is usually monochromatic or bi-chromatic.

So knowing what I know about my taste I start looking through the pile and finding things that check those boxes. I also take careful notes. With leather I keep files in Evernote, but with my cyanotypes (for now) I'm just writing in pencil on the back of the paper. Maybe someday I'll be famous and people will be able to read what I was thinking on the back of each piece.

My notes encompass how I made each piece with details about things like how I brushed on the sensitizer, how I let it dry, how long I exposed for. I also have project notes in a notebook where I track the arc of the greater body of work.

Here is where I will decide what I'm going to work on. I'll usually end up with a few ideas I'd like to try, but I'll pick one idea and (again with lots of detailed notes) shelve the others.

I call this "running down my rabbits". Imagine a wolf in a field with a ton of rabbits. If he tries to chase after all the rabbits he's never going to catch one before he's worn out. If he picks just one rabbit and stays on top of it until he's caught it, that wolf gets dinner.  I've found if I try to chase after too many ideas at once I end up not really finishing anything. So instead I'll pick one idea and run that idea down until I have something to show for it . If the other ideas are any good I'll find them again later.

So do I have an idea of what the finished body of work is going to look like when I'm done at the end of the month? Yes. I finished some pieces last night that I think are going to form the idea I'm running down this time. Except it's still wet from being washed and I'm not about to accidentally tear it. So you'll have to wait a bit to see.

Week One

October Residency

This week I'm just focusing on sorting out materials.

Planning ahead is key. To make a cyanotype I've got to coat the paper, let it dry completely (in the dark) and then have enough sunny weather to expose them in the next few days. Old and unexposed cyanotype paper doesn't make for very good images. They look muddy.

This has lead to making a lot of images. Part of what I'm trying to develop is the muscle memory of quickly coating a large amount of paper while not making stupid mistakes. This has it's benefits. I'm a firm believer in Inspiration finding you working. I want to end this residency with a cohesive body of work. Not just a bunch of random images. Making a lot of work early on is going to help me figure out what is doing it for me at the moment. I'll take the little things I like that come up in this round and develop them in the next round of images. From that I'll develop  a theme.

I'm having to try out a bunch of watercolor paper this week too. I'd settled on a Bergger COT 320 as my paper of choice. It's been out of stock everywhere for the last few months. I finally decided to track some down and discovered that it has apparently been discontinued. So the hunt for new paper is on. Paper choice is a big deal. Blues will be darker or lighter depending on the paper. Some clear really well. Others leave you with light greyish blue where there should be white paper. The texture of the paper also has a big effect on the final result.

I've learned my lesson from building my business around one leather from one tannery. If there are any monkeys with wrenches at the tannery my whole operation has to stop and wait for them. So I am limiting the scope of my paper choices to papers I can find at any art supply store. The idea that I can just run out and grab some more paper is very exciting to this leatherworker who is used to having to wait two weeks (sometimes six to eight) to get more leather in.

On the nitty gritty business end of things I'm having the biggest struggle with just figuring out what to do everyday. It sounds great before you have to do it. I can do anything I want. But then you show up at work and daylight is burning and you have to pick the one thing to do out of all the things you want to do.  This tends to cause me to spend a lot of time worrying that I'm wasting my time on something. I had to get over this with my leather work as well. Ten years in and I know what needs to get done there. This will happen with cyanotypes too once I get used to the new menu of options I'm being presented with.

The other struggle I'm running into is figuring out how to document all of this. Leather work is good because there are lots of different things to take pictures of and movement to capture in video. I feel like you can only watch me brush sensitizer on paper so many times. Also a good chunk of my time is spent looking at images and writing down ideas. Not the most interesting thing to watch. But there is a story there. I just have to figure out how to tell it.

October Residency

Today I start my residency.

Hmm?

Well, you see for the last year I've been developing my cyanotype creative practice along side my leather work. It has been enlightening to see how they are influencing each other as I explore the possibilities in both.

You also might have noticed that I haven't been talking much about my cyanotype work and that as of today (Oct. 1st) I don't have any listed for sale in the shop. Which is strange on my end because I've been putting more than half of all my effort into something I'm not really talking about or sharing.

I've been struggling to establish my cyanotype work as a functioning practice. It’s like starting a second business. The creative parts of the two different mediums (leather and cyano) play well together. But the practical parts are completely separate.

Once the making the art part is done I have to do something with them. I have to figure out how to talk about them. How to share what I'm doing intelligently. Do I try to find some gallery space? How? What do I mail them in when they sell? What about getting reproductions made?

There is also an elephant in the room.

Why am I doing this at all? Is the leather working not going so well? It's doing just fine. There are a lot of good reasons to branch out in new directions. I'm going to write a whole separate post about it. Part of running a successful art practice is imagining what kind of future you are working towards while acknowledging that future is always going to be changing as you learn more.

So I've spent the last few months making extra leather work every time I put out a new collection. At this point I have enough saved up that I'm able to take the entire month of October off from leather. I'll have a whole month to not only try out all the ideas I've come up with over the past year, but also sort out the nitty gritty of how to run a cyanotype business.

It feels stupid to admit, but I'm not even sure how to describe myself at this point when people ask me what I do for a living. So October is going to be for answering big questions and little ones. After a lifetime of turning away from being an artist I'm finally going to lean into it. The leaves are ready and calling to be printed. It's time.

End of Summer Update

(First a quick shameless plug for this vase I bought from my friend and fellow artist Gina Desantis with a hydrangea bloom from Stems Fleur who are just below my studio.)

Summer is drawing to a close. The weather, as I sit here writing, is caught between summer and fall. It’s grey, wet, and some of the first leaves are beginning to drop, but the air is still clinging to me with its insistent summer ardor.

I’ve just wrapped up two new collections. This summer’s cyanotype collection came out in July and then I followed that with what I ended up calling the Scrivener collection. It is a series of notebooks and pen holders. I’m trying to focus in a little more on making things I’d want to own and I love me a good notebook.

I’ve got a few bag orders to wrap up before September is out. It’s nice to switch up doing something creatively intense like working on special collections, and doing something I’ve done many times before. Those long stretches of quietly stitching seams let my hands do the thinking and my brain take a rest.

I just finished stitching the interior pocket onto this Lamplighter. I always try to take a picture of this pocket since you can’t really see it once the bag is done.

While I’m stitching I’m thinking about what projects I’d like to work on next. The holidays are closer than I realize which means I should be starting to restock all of the standard colors. I also have yet to do an indigo collection this year. I loved last year’s but I don’t want to just repeat myself. I’ve been admiring some work dyers do with wax resists. I’d love to incorporate that somehow, but I fear the learning curve on that means it won’t be part of this year’s collection.

I also don’t really feel done with the Scrivener’s. I’ve taken up writing as a daily practice. I start every day in the studio by writing down my thoughts. It really helps me figure out what is important for the day and keep track of my larger goals. To be honest I’m mostly doing it because I’ve fallen down a fountain pen rabbit hole. It’s really interesting to me how enjoyable it can be to write with a nice pen on a good notebook. It’s one of those little life enriching activities that I love to find. I especially love the idea of having a giant stack of filled notebooks to look back through some day. Old man Jordan shaking his head at today’s Jordan.

Nine years ago today I walked into my day job for the last time. I had just spent almost a decade waffling around trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing with my life. At the time I thought I was starting a business that was much different that the one I'm actually running right now. I've learned a lot both professionally and personally. On the anniversary of my final shift I like to think back on what I've learned in the past year. This previous year brought a lot of lessons about understanding how a see myself and how that translates into how other people see me.

They way we define ourselves provides clarity. It also creates limitations that we set on ourselves. Don't let the way you currently define yourself box you in. Especially if it's leading you down a path that is unfulfilling. In fact I'd would say the more you step outside that box the more likely you are to succeed.

There is a point at which it is important to master your skills. But ultimately what people will recognize you for, or find you remarkable for, are the things that you bring from outside your area of expertise. People might like a really good baker, but a baker that is a amazing story teller or good at organizing their community will do better every time and I suspect be happier in doing so.

Another thing I think is important to success and one that I am still working on, is being remarkable. I don't mean that in the sense that you should be amazing and wonderful at everything you do. I mean it in the sense that if you want people to tell their friends about you then you need to do something that is worth remarking upon. People tell each other stories. So ask yourself what is it that you are doing that people would be interested in telling their friends about?

The last big lesson I feel like I learned this year is about rest. It sounds dumb to have to say it out loud but you really do your best work when you are well rested. This could mean getting plenty of sleep or taking an extra day off in terms of physical rest. But I'm also talking about the mental rest of not thinking about your job all the time. As a creative person I like to think about my job. I like coming up with cool things to make. But if I try to draw water from that well too many times I'll end up pulling up dry buckets. So putting it all down, not trying to grow or develop , and just giving my brain some time off has proven to be really important. Go do some weeding.

Dye Tests

Like Two Trains Passing in the Night

I did a collection back in the fall using vinyl tape and indigo dye. I loved it and even stole one for myself, but I was limited to doing a single color with a contrasting natural stripe.

What I really wanted to do was two different colors. I did a few tests back then but I couldn’t figure out the right way to do it. Either the colors were bleeding into each other or they weren’t lining up correctly. There would be little gaps that didn’t get dyed at all.

A failed dye test. See how the brown spreads into the grey.

But over the past few months I’ve been doing some tests in my spare time. It turns out there’ s no trick or anything to it. Just lots of practice. I’d cut long strips of leather and dye lines on them over and over. After a few months I started getting the hang of it.

So now I’m working on turning that into a new collection. I’ve already started dyeing leather and drawing out ideas. I think I’ll go with a W&R classic of brown and blue to start things off.

Side Projects

Through a Pinhole

In January I started taking a self portrait every week. I've found that having little side projects like this nurtures my main creative practice. Sometimes this is in very obvious ways, like using cyanotype printing and adapting that to leather working, but often the benefits are more circuitous.

It is no coincidence that I'm doing this pinhole project in January when I spend time planning for the year to come. I think about where my business is and where I hope to be going. In shooting these self portraits I am getting a new perspective on what I've built and where I fit into it.

Shooting with a pinhole camera is a unique experience. Traditionally you can build them yourself out of coffee cans and VW buses. I use a special kind of lens on my digital camera. Imagine a lens cap with a hole drilled in it. Over that hole is a piece of metal with a very tiny pinhole drilled through it. That whole thing fits over where a camera lens would normally go on your camera. This tiny hole is just small enough to project an image into the camera without the need for glass or all the other things that make up a camera lens.

The result you get is a very soft, almost painterly image. There is no way to focus the pinhole. So everything is just a little blurry. Because the hole is so small the time it takes to expose the picture is usually 5-10 seconds. Anything that moves in that time will be a blur in the final image. The picture is also too dark for me to see in the viewfinder. So I can't focus, can't see what I'm taking a picture of, and (because theses are self portraits) I have to run in front of the camera and I hope I'm in the right place when the shutter opens up.

Sounds like a mess, I know. After shooting a bunch in a row I'll start to get these truly candid pictures of me in the middle of trying to make something interesting. Sometimes I'm mid step, or looking a little frustrated after waiting for the timer to go off. Often I'm holding my breath so I don't move too much while the picture is taken. It's all highly staged but in the act of making it I get these chance moments of truth.

Caught mid step, a little frustrated, and holding my breath is about as honest a portrait of being a small business owner that I can think of.

Workbench Philosopher

Around the Curve

This damn curve. It’s a pain every time I stitch it. There are little stitch holes on both pieces of leather and they have to line up perfectly for me to stitch them in any kind of straight line. And as we all know from Mario Kart, things that travel along the inside of a curve cover less distance than things on the outside.

So here I’m working on this bag, two weeks of work, and I’m just starting in on the big final push. Then along comes this curve and the holes stop matching up.

Fortunately I’ve done this enough that I know to plan on being frustrated during this part. I know they will line back up once I’ve made my way around the curve. 

That’s one of those little philosophies you find in craft work. There are going to be curves. They are going to be hard and frustrating. But if you plan to expect them, and remind yourself that they aren’t permanent, you’ll get through to the straight side again. Just because things are hard doesn’t mean they are bad. 

State of the Studio

Side Projects

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want my business to look like. Seems like there is a lot of noise out there. There are a lot of people doing a lot of good work and it all looks the same.

When I started doing this in 2012 the online leather working community was new. There were old hands who knew what they were doing but mostly it was people trying things out and learning together. Now it seems like the culture has become codified. There are best practices and jargon handshakes. You know what Tokonole is, right bro? It feels like this has lead to a lot of closed mindedness. That there is a best way to do things. Where ignorance is something to be embarrassed of. At best this leads to a community all following the same guidelines to make the same work. That’s never good for any creative community. I’m sure you’ve seen it in other creative arenas. Don’t know the best kind of ink roller/ distortion pedal/ microphone? Then you don’t belong there. Its just another form of gatrekeeping. I’m not really interested in being a part of it.

So I’ve been turning my attention to other types of work. I’ve gone back to my photography roots and produced a bunch of work that I’m not interesting in profiting off of. I’ve been experimenting with cyanotypes. It’s been satisfying to learn something I’m too ignorant of to hold myself to much of a standard. I’ve done a few that I then painted over with watercolor. I like them a lot but they are still to new to share. Maybe after I get a little more confident with them.

I’ve been shooting a weekly pinhole self portrait. If you aren’t familiar with pinhole photography you take a normal camera, but instead of having a lens on it you use a black card or tin with a tiny little pinhole in it. Believe it or not this works as the lens. You get these really soft almost painterly images. The camera takes 6-10 seconds to shoot the image. So even though I’m standing still I’m going to be a little blurry because I have to breathe and balance and stuff. The other thing is that the pinhole doesn’t give me enough light to see through the viewfinder on the camera. So I have to guess at what I’m taking a picture of.

Self Portrait December 21, 2021

All this to say that I think 2022 is going to be about a lot more than leather work at W&R. I’ll still be doing plenty of that, but there is a lot more that I want to explore with this business. I don’t see any good reason not to. When everyone is doing the same thing it is time to try something new.