Chelawolf

Writer, Designer, Artist

[chelawolf-blog]

WHEN YOU WORK WITH PETS, YOU ACTUALLY ANOTHER DOSE

When you do what I do to pay the bills (I won’t say “for a living”, because I’m getting out), the things you once loved become some of the things you hate the most.

Pets.

I used to love them, love having them, love taking care of them, everything. They were a constant source of subject matter in all of my artistic endeavors: printmaking, drawing, painting, photography, mainly my old chocolate lab: Bailey. I’ve never lived a single day of my life without a pet. Not one.

It seemed a natural choice to work at a vet clinic, assisting Veterinarians and Technicians with exams, blood draws, x-rays, vaccines, and then the kennel work…never fun for anyone, but hey. Dogs are cute. To a point. It’s odd that now I love handling angry cats more than anything else. Maybe I like the challenge?

After six years of this, I’ve realized that the emotional toll is too much. Most of the animals that come through our doors are sick or dying or in pain. They are not at their best, to be sure. A room full of strangers pokes and prods them and tortures them as far as they’re concerned and they have no idea why. The owners know something’s wrong, so they bring their pet in; the Vets have gone into the field because they want to help animals, as is the case with their supportive staff (aka: me). Somehow, everyone comes into the fold with the best of intentions, and somehow, everyone ends up confused, frustrated, upset, even physically hurt. I’m either not tough enough or too tough, either not compassionate enough or too compassionate. It takes a special type of person to do this long term. As it stands, I am not that type of special…I’m not any type of special that requires air-quotes either.

I’m responsible for a small portion of social media that the clinic is invested in, and so am often responsible, forced, what have you, for finding the joy of owning a pet. It keeps me going, even when a favorite of mine declines in a single day for no measurable reason and in six hour’s time, is no longer himself, passes away, and no one can answer “why?” You’d think six puppies getting their last round of vaccines would be a breath of fresh air…but it was bedlam. Ok, they’re cute. But you quickly get over that when their needle teeth pierce your skin, you draw up twenty vaccines while they pee on the floor and drag their leashes through it and you have to remember which one is Lincoln, Phoenix, Taco, Skippy…and then you loose track and wish they would go home. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.

How do I find my way back to a life-long love? When I “get out”, and the time is coming soon, will I be shell-shocked and never want a pet again? How do I stay interested enough to incorporate the vast knowledge and experience with pets back into my art, as I once did?

I though I misunderstood the concept of live streaming, and then I remembered...didn’t I have a widget of my computer that allows me to watch pandas at the National Zoo? Yes. And aren’t my friends eagerly awaiting April the giraffe’s new baby? And it’s on live stream too. Then I though nanny-cams, then I thought Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch…a little out there, but aren’t they based on the same pretext? That you can see what is happening right now (in the case of films, obviously an illusion). I did understand it after all. Inspired by April the giraffe, I came full circle: puppy cams. There are TONS of these online, and there have been for years, I just didn’t have a specific categorical name for them.

Puppy cams often include calls to action and embedded links to other social media. They may also advocate for animals, or encourage donations to a cause puppy-camers would care about. It’s a fantastic concept, especially for someone like me who is quickly becoming disenchanted with the idea of pets. You sit and do your work on your computer.

whatever type of work: writing, graphics, animation, etc.

And those puppies are up in the corner, playing, sleeping, eating, growing, just being cute. They make no noise, they demand nothing from you, you’re not responsible for them in any way. They are there to make your life better, if even just a little bit. I love it.

It’s not just puppies either. If you want to watch wildlife, either in captivity of otherwise, there are live cams for that as well!

[chelawolf-blog]

FIVE MEMES AND THEIR EVOLUTION

The Smiley Face

A designer named Harvey Ball was commissioned by an insurance company to design an image to improve low spirits among their employees. In 1963 he was paid $45 for his smiley face design. As time went on, the smiley face took off as a fashion icon; “hip” teens had smiley patches on their jeans and bags,  and during the Vietnam war, it served some of its original purpose and became associated with the liberal movement at this time. Reference to this was made in Forrest Gump, where the smiley face made a cameo. The Smiley face has since become both very commercial and very iconic to American culture. Without the original smiley face (which has since made Mr. Ball a rich man), the original “emoji’ would not exist, or at least not in its current form.

Johnny Cash’s finger

Johnny Cash received much of his success in Nashville, but in later years, grew apart from this community. A photo actually taken at a rehearsal and aimed at a photographer of Cash giving the finger became an iconic image that many believed was directed at Nashville or at those who did not support his new direction as a musician. As time went on, it became disconnected even from Cash himself, but a photo indicative of “bucking the system.” The image is often referred to as “f**k you” and used to show distaste and rebellion. The image of cash appears on t-shirts, posters, and original online memes, and has in many ways become permissible behavior by a famous and well-respected artist.

Jaw’s Poster

Jaws was one of the most highly anticipated, popular and profitable films of all time, based on a well established novel. The movie poster became quite iconic; through time the aspects of it that made it so successful and long-lived were played out in so many different ways, relying on the basic understanding of its essential nature: the unknown but inevitable concealed below the unknowing enthusiastic. This simple message, that danger is everywhere and could come for you anytime, conveyed by a powerful image which so elegantly encompasses them from this poster. After Jaws’ hype had died down, this image alignment has been used to catch the eye, relying on its popularity, recognizable to those who have not even seen the film, and to parody, perhaps making the fear the image initially unsighted less so. Basically, what made it so scary made it popular; because it became so popular it was no longer scary and lent itself to jokes and cultural transformation.

Che Guevara

Blacklivesmatter

While this hashtag was originally intended to highlight the blatant disregard for human rights in largely African-American communities, it unsighted anger in some people, and misunderstanding in most. Hashtags like #alllivesmatter, #womenslivesmatter, and #bluelivesmatter or #policelivesmatter were set in response and sometimes in direct opposition to the original message. Many people interpreted #blacklivesmatter to mean that its creators and propagators believed that  by stating that one type of life matters, the rest do not by default. A community who did not feel heard set out to create a social media presence in order to be heard; this message has been somewhat diluted by the many similar hashtags that piggy-backed on it, either maliciously or otherwise, and garbled the intent of the origin.

[chelawolf-blog]

Alphonse Mucha

Alphonse Mucha was born in 1860 in the Czech Republic. At the age of 27, he moved to Paris, beginning relatively stable with a patron who quickly removed his support. Mucha was catapulted into fame when a friend asked him to complete a poster for the theater production “Grismonda”. All of Paris took notice of Mucha’s original style; he became one of the forerunners of the Art Nouveau movement. In addition to many commercial commissions, Mucha also designed fabric, furniture, and jewelry. He remained a highly sought after artist throughout his life, with private, public, and government requests for his work. Towards the end of his life, Mucha was immersed in his Slavic roots, and began work on massive paintings collectively called “Slav Epic”, which were donated to the capital city of Prague in the Czech Republic. He was one of the first waves of people arrested by the German Gestapo for questioning at the start of WWII. Upon his release, Mucha died soon after of pneumonia in 1939 at the age of 78. A status rarely afforded most artists, he was revered in his time perhaps as much as now; his genius carries an unnamable “something” that ensnares the viewer.

            Mucha’s unmistakable style relies on the simplicity of the human form alongside lavish ornamentation, on the familiarity of the figure to test the limits of design, pattern and color. His work existed before “graphic design” was a designated field, but if produced today, it would certainly fall under this category. I consider him among the first, if not the original, graphic designers. Sleek, consistent, clean to a fault, he ventured into advertising many times, with a consistently distinct and original style pervading his professional and personal work. Mucha was introduced to me at time in my artistic growth when I was exploring which medium and subject matter appealed most to me. Something about figure drawing especially hooked me; the simplicity of the task, not necessarily the technique lent itself to wide interpretation with plenty of room for me to experiment. Figure drawing doesn’t stipulate a particular medium, size, or style; it may be argued that figure drawing is unique as a medium unto itself, where the specific subject matter derives its essential aim. The artistic study of the human form being the only stipulations or restrictions in this “medium” , it allows the greatest freedom in testing my skills., and which Mucha took advantage of in his time. As time has passed, my attachment to figure drawing has never diminished, but has evolved along with my growth, a constant companion.

            In addition to being a graphic designer, I also consider Mucha one of the greatest masters of figure drawing, and so whose work stands as the epitome of my most beloved artistic endeavors. As I form my style in graphic design, and as I continue to figure draw for my own personal growth, I recall Mucha’s work often because of its convergence upon both of these fields; without attempt to emulate, it inspires and reminds me of the power of visual communication.

[chelawolf-blog]

“   SCHOOL   “

School is mandatory, there’s nothing we can do about it, and it’s free. From K-12 we are conditioned to believe three certain things about education, three things mainly, and they color how we view education for the rest of our lives. We are taught that school is one: mandatory, which it is by law. We are taught that school is: free, which because it is mandatory by law, it is provided by the government free of charge. We are taught that school is: out of our control. What we study, what skills we choose to develop, how we allocate our time, even what school we go to, all these are out of our control. School is standardized. It is incumbent upon the government to provide the most uniform education to every child included the most essential knowledge and skills. The three laws of tutelage mentioned above are therefore necessary.

This is what we know from ages five to eighteen. Too young to read and write to adulthood.

By the time we get to higher education, with these laws being true for us for the vast majority of our lives, how are we to understand that higher education has a completely different set of laws, in fact, the complete and utter opposite? I believe it is because we walk into higher education with the same expectations of the essential structure of school that we fail to understand the difference and fail to understand our true power where before we had none. As I’ve already gone through four years of University education, I can tell you these are things we should never forget if we are adult students for the first time or again.

In higher education: school is entirely voluntary, the exact opposite of what we’ve believed our whole lives. You don’t have to go to school. You can leave. You can decide not to go at all. It’s up to you. (And I mean this in the sense of overall attendance not day to day). Bachelor’s Degrees are the new High School Diplomas – everyone seems to expect them of you; and if you’re lucky enough to have the means and opportunity to go, you ought to. Only you can decide if this is the right path for you; only the forces in life you hold most true and relevant inform your decision. Now the truth about control; mandated school was out of our control but the aspects of higher education are entirely within your control. You choose your major, you choose your classes (this is more true on a University level on third year after you’ve met basic requirements, you can continue with any class offered in your major you’d like) you research and choose your school. Nearly everything about what you learn and why is under your purview. You are getting a specialized degree, not following a nationwide education stencil. Your choice. Lastly, and this is the kicker, higher education is NOT FREE. It’s extraordinarily expensive. And you’re paying for it. Higher education is for profit, and essentially, you’ve hired a group of people to teach you something. What equation do we come up with, then? Something like this: I have chosen to come to this specific school because I trust its reputation and am paying you an extraordinary amount of money to teach me something I have chosen to pursue. This is nothing like we have known, and yet people fall victim to “the old ways” for lack of a better term; after thirteen years, they’ve been etched upon our psyche. Never forget how different this situation you now have put yourself is from what you have known. Never forget the power you have; student is truly a poor term, it recalls hierarchies of power that have now been reversed. Pupil is more appropriate. You can most certainly fail yourself, there is no doubt about that, but still, no one can make you stand for the pledge of allegiance, no one can squelch your opinion or the type of words you use, no one can make you do something “just because”, you are forever owed an explanation, and while they know more and are your elders they deserve your respect, never forget that the teachers and staff work for you. And if they should fail you, not fail you with an “F” but fail to attend to your needs, dismiss you as irrelevant when you do not understand, attribute your resistance to apathy rather than dejected confusion…if they fail you, do not default to the days of old, but remember that this is YOUR education and so only you are in charge of it.

[chelawolf-blog]

It’s not all business

When I started down the road of Graphic Design, it was a soft voice I could ignore. When I started school, it walked and talked; I shouldn’t have ignored it, but I did. Now, there is no escape: the world of Graphic Design is highly commercial. And it bothers me. A lot. As someone with a Bachelor’s in Eastern Religion and Environmental Policy, I’m very concerned about and well versed on the bigger issues in our global society. I never thought I would be facing this: art in opposition to my values? I am not “ambitious” – not in the way most people take it these days. I didn’t get into this field for the money. I only want to be comfortable and do what I love. I also want to be a well-known author. I also want to travel and learn the violin and keep up with my yoga. All very ambitious. Personally ambitious. But somehow that means I may end up, in this quest, working for companies that are that other kind of ambitious: financially ambitious. It’s fine, everyone needs money to survive, but big business can bother me, especially if they use methods to create their product I disapprove of, or if I disapprove of their product. In a commercial consumerist culture, do I really want to be a part of this machine by designing for companies that use child labor, unfair wages, discriminate against minorities, sell unhealthy products or lifestyles, and the list goes on. Will I ever have the luxury of choosing who my client is as a designer? This question I always come back to, and it haunts me because I think the real answer is obvious: no. But, BUT! I grasp at straws where I can and these are legitimate alternatives. NPOs like Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Foundation, Unicef, The Red Cross, historical sites and archives, government and independently funded programs across the board all have the same needs any company has in terms of graphic design at least. They all need eye-catching logos, informative and streamlined websites, a social media presence, printed material, and even a brand. Everyone knows the WWF logo of a simple panda. When they see it on packaging or at the end of a pamphlet, they know that a long-standing environmental advocate is on board. Slowly, the Fair Trade Organization’s logo is becoming similarly recognizable. Charitable and non-for-profit organizations need to stand out perhaps even more than profitable ventures because their target audience is…EVERYONE. Issues like species extinction, global climate change and international human rights, are issues that effect the entire population. Outreach and funding are the most important things for NPOs, and so with any company, but unlike a company, the more money they “make” does not make it more wealthy. There is always a financial deficit behind any worthy cause until the issue is solved. For myself, I would much prefer to design for organizations for less and feel better in my heart.

[chelawolf-blog]

DIY Design

The Design field is expanding quickly; demand for quality design exists in every context within new platforms and formats growing everyday. This demand still follows general consumer rules that have always been true. Clients will usually go for the highest quality they can find at the lowest price; also true for almost all consumer scenarios. We want things done fast, easy, cheap, and well. But we can rarely have all of those things at once; usually it means that something has to give. Think of any time you’ve gone shopping, in a store or online, researched and formed a particular set of product details in mind. When faced with two or more options that meet your criteria, you’ll likely pick the cheapest among them; you may even compromise one or two of your initial requirements if the price difference is significant enough. Everyone functions on a budget—designers and their clients are no different. For a business to stay relevant, they must meet certain expectations for an online presence; an eye-catching informative, easy-to-navigate website supported on most mobile devices, and participation on at least a few social media platforms, where personalized aesthetic is somewhat lost, or at least more standardized, but can also be easier to convey. The specific website is perhaps the most important in communicating the brand, the mood, the nuanced “feel” of a business. This necessitates strong visual communication, and an understanding of brand identify: basically a graphic designer’s job. In fact, to complete all requirements of a strong web presence, a business would be well off to hire a competent graphic designer or firm to do all of it for them. This is the surest way the brand will be clear to the public. The choice that businesses have is not just between designers or firms, but between hiring anyone at all and doing it themselves. Will they always choose a designer? Depending on their budget, they may not. There are multiple services out there, no doubt staffed by designers, who offer businesses a step by step website building guide for a nominal fee. DIY website creation, complete with the dreaded template, even hundreds of them. What are the parameters that a company needs to weigh in the face of this option? Which is easier? Putting your brand identity into the hands of a skilled designer seems like it would be simpler, freeing up a company to focus on the many other aspects of business. Which is cheaper? It depends on the designer, but in general, website building software is. Which is best? Undoubtedly, a designer is always the best choice. But in a small business, with a few tech-savvy and/or artistic people, this may be like choosing between the same product by different brands. With DIY website creation available to meet increased demand, designers must be well acquainted with these systems so that they can compete financially (within reason) and show potential clients what THEY can offer that these programs cannot, and also looking at making themselves easier, or faster.

[chelawolf-blog]

The Geometric Craze

We all know the look, not just in the graphic design world, but in all realms where an aesthetic trend has any influence (clothing, accessories, even tattoos, basically anything decorative) is flooded with hard edges. I’m not talking about a resurgent obsession with geometry, but more the trend of “geometricizing” work, especially organic subject matter. For example, a fox is reduced to five or six triangles of varying shades of red and rust, a tree’s leaves are dissected into straight planes of green along their veins, an ocean’s waves are straight-lined hexagons breaking fading away to the shore. Why is it that, just in the past few years, this “look” has become so universally used, repeated, and from the consumer standpoint, popularized? It’s more modern and clean than the famous Escher; it is less organic than tribal or religious patterns such as mandalas, (both very relevant and far more mature sources to look to when speaking about geometry and symmetry in art). This style, however it varies from artist to artist, looks almost as though the entire world is being viewed through a prism that breaks light color and shape into measurable repeating parts. I believe this trend exists first because artists tend to mimic each other—there’s nothing wrong with this, without plagiarism in the mix it’s how artists evolve—but I would emphasize the essential difference between a trend and a phase. A trend is like wildfire, spreading at different rates depending on the trend. One person sees anothers outfit and, someone sees theirs and so on then suddenly overalls are back. A phase, however, belies a depth, intention, growth and change. You may keep a trend going by painting your nails black but you may go through a phase where you don’t eat meat. Both of them can end or stay, on an individual and communal level, but a trend lives on repetition and a phase on exploration; neither carries an inherently or exclusively juvenile connotation; they are stops along a continuous road. A phase speaks to a cultural movement, however small, indicative of the constant progression of our collective psyche. Where does this popular geometric look fall? I believe the geometric craze currently flooding our visual landscape is a phase beyond also being a trend; we are celebrating the beauty of simplicity and the simplicity of beauty after a long phase of highly intellectualized and comparatively overworked visual statements. We are also deconstructing the complex to make it universal and in a sense, normalizing variant imagery to make it communal and oddly comforting. In this way, all exists on the same plane, putting the natural world in a predictable context to co-exist with the overwhelming amount of geometry and symmetry we have already created and live in. Just as it is oxymoronic to “permanently” mark skin with a tattoo, the inherent organic nature of reality is made manageable and simplified. With that in mind, now look up “geometric nature tattoos” on Pinterest for a mind-bend.

[chelawolf-blog]

You’ve already paid for that

What if I told you you’ve been paying for music, movies, expert tutorials, magazines, newspapers, and more without even knowing it?

Social media offers boundless resources for graphic designers, illustrators and animators alike, but these free platforms can only go so far, which is why paid services like lynda.com and Adobe tutorials exist and go deeper. As a design student, I’ve heard the name lynda.com repeated many times.

Recently, just because I can’t stop myself from writing, I’ve been working on a piece analyzing HBO’s current series, “The Young Pope” (Jude Law, Diane Keaton, it’s pretty great), I went to my local library branch (incidentally about 5 miles from campus)  searching for books on papal politics. The librarian typed in key words and had me view her monitor for the best match.

I was astounded to see a tab in the upper corner for lynda.com.

“You have access to lynda.com?” I asked. “Oh yes,” she said “all library cards come with access to that database.”

I could hardly believe it. I had resisted getting a subscription to the often cited site on principle: I believe as I’m paying for my tuition, I shouldn’t pay extra for help. Stubborn much? You bet. Yet, no doubt this resource was helpful, instrumental: a service I’d heard more often than any other on campus.

Here it was. Full access. Free. Within five minutes, filling out one sheet of paper, I had a library card.

I, and YOU as well, have already paid for everything the library has to offer, we just didn’t realize it. Taxpayer money funds the libraries, which offer boundless resources. You’ve been paying for access to them for as long as you’ve been paying taxes. You’re entitled to everything they have to offer.

Libraries are not obsolete. You can check out an astounding 100 items at a time. Apple music, Amazon video, Podcasts, Spotify, any subscription you pay for to access media without owning it, essentially renting it, is available (perhaps not as instantly) at the library. Load up your card with DVDs so you can forego redbox on the weekends and just choose from a ton you’ve checked out that interest you. Anything from “Casablanca” to “Suicide Squad”.

The library provides a network of music, movies, magazines, podcasts, tv series, learning resources: all types of media and access to online databases; it just provides it at a substantially lower cost...as in free.

As a writer with a background in Library Science, I’ve always known what kind of historical treasures have been available to the American public in libraries, but when I needed resources in school, I never thought that local libraries would be helpful.

It’s completely free, easy to do, and therefore, well worth the effort. You can keep track of anything you check out online, and if you can’t find what you need at the branch closest to you, you can request that it be sent there; logging into your account will tell you when it’s ready. Libraries are a service for you to access. Have you fully explored that? I hadn’t! I had no idea that my library card offered free access to so much. I’m happy I found out!