John Everett Morton

Eye Art. Aye, music. iWrite.

[jeverettmorton]

Vari-Dot Grid Prototyping and Bullet Journal Giveaway!

We've been further prototyping the Vari-Dot Grid Ruling and we're giving away some Bullet Journal supplies!

The Journal Giveaway is over now, but you can download 24 different versions of the Vari-dot ruling in A4, US Letter, US Half Sheet, and A5.

[jeverettmorton]

Free Download: Variable Size Dot Grid Notebook Layout

I'm excited to announce my new design for a variable size dot grid notebook. Some subtle features add new utility to the dot grid format. Pages are available to download now in US letter, half-letter, A4, and A5 sizes!

Yeah. You can totally download my custom dot grid layout. Let me know what you think. 

[jeverettmorton]

Variable Size Multi Dot Grid

Here’s a thing.

[jeverettmorton]

[jeverettmorton]

[chrisriddellblog]

Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman.

[brianewing]

Read this a million times!

[jeverettmorton]

[jeverettmorton]

Roman 880 wallpaper paste (methyl cellulose) with just two drops of a phthalo blue green aqueous dispersion. Cautiously optimistic. #screenprinting #serigraphy #printmaking #diy #artist #scientist (at Neat And Keen Studio)

[jeverettmorton]

I haven't died. This is some stuff I'm doing.

[ofsmokenbone-deactivated2018081]

I (badly) drew the towner in Eastbourne and wrote #ontheblog about the east Sussex open. link in profile and all that jazz #cbloggers #sketchbook #creativesoninstagram #creativityfound #artistsofinstagram #makearteveryday #doitfortheprocess #inkandpaper #illustrateyourworld #artjournal (at Towner Art Gallery)

[jeverettmorton]

Much thanks to @fulltonephoto for developing my #blackandwhite #35mm #film this week! I am not a photographer, but needed to know if my #Russian #Zenith #camera was in working order. #fulltonephoto #neatkeen (at DeKalb, Illinois)

[jeverettmorton]

Tonight I'm #screenprinting with a #Paloma with #tequila courtesy of @elaine.madeline (at Neat And Keen Studio)

[jeverettmorton]

"Dough.": Homer Simpson Meets Andy Warhol

I've mashed up Homer Simpson with an Andy Warhol dollar sign in a 5-color screen print. See the results and learn why I hesitated to do so.

[jeverettmorton]

Two color #silkscreen #print I made as a keepsake for those who attended the Neat & Keen Open Studio today. #screenprinting #serigrafia #homersimpson #popart (at Neat And Keen Studio)

[jeverettmorton]

I'd like to sell one of these before midnight. Not to you, but to your weird analog photographer friend.

[jeverettmorton]

35mm Russian Zenith Camera Print

Shooting, editing, and printing the 35mm Russian Zenith Print. Who knew photography was so complicated? Photographers, that's who.

I took some pictures and printed a thing. Here’s how I did it.

[jeverettmorton]

John’s Dream Journal: 26 March 2016

[Director’s note: For tonight’s performance the part of John Morton will be played by a young John Cusack]

Visiting a US Naval base in France, I wait nervously for the guest of honor, the bride-to-be, with a strange case of travel amnesia that I can't seem to shake. And as I watch out over the Atlantic at night an AJ-500 aircraft begins to make it's approach for take off. The AJ-500 is an impressive craft. The twin turbines are huge, like nothing ever seen on a fighter jet before and the takeoff approach is even more unique: As it hovers over the land it jerks 90 degrees and ascends straight into the air, but at this point it is just getting started. After achieving an optimal altitude it slows to a stop and redirects doing a dive towards the earth. During the dive it harnesses the natural forces of gravity and in the moments before impact it does a sonic bounce off the ground (or water in this case) and back into the air at full super sonic speed.

That's how it's supposed to work. 

Instead the craft crashes into the ocean and disintegrates. Debris goes flying everywhere, but it's so fine that it does little more than sting my exposed skin and become grit in my teeth. And suddenly I remember that this is not the first time I've seen this.

THREE YEARS EARLIER

How could we all forget? How have we returned to status quo so soon? It was little more than a day and in most places and it truth for most of us it was only at night. Jets crashed and bombs fell. You couldn't look in any direction without seeing multi-million dollar fighters on fire. In the following weeks it was dubbed the World's Shortest World War and no one still knew how it got started, only that if it had gone on one minute longer there would have been nothing left. Every nation attacked their most likely enemy attacker in retaliation. In the midst of the utter devastation an emergency ceasefire was called across all borders and it just never ended. Everyone pretended it had never started. In a moment of global embarrassment the world’s leaders, citizens, and subjects collectively said, “Oops” and all but the dead pretended it didn’t happen.

How could we all forget?

The déjà vu passed, my focus turned to the rescue boats heading out to sea. Yeah! Maybe the pilot is okay! Maybe he's fine. Those eject seats are crazy fast and sophisticated and improving all the time. One of the bridesmaids was closer to the blast and caught some serious debris in her face. Light gauze was laid over the injury and she cried as they prepared to stitch her up right there at a picnic table. Her cries were less about pain and more about the fear that she wouldn’t be pretty again. The sailors and pilots seemed to be calming down. Maybe they’d heard the pilot was fine. Maybe they were just used to seeing such things. Maybe we all were.

One of the wedding organizers pulled me aside.“Now remember, during this initial part of the ceremony it’s important that you present this to the bride,” she said. She handed me what appeared to be a single pale blue berry hanging from a fake plastic twig. No, I don’t remember. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. In France, at a US Naval base, at a wedding rehearsal. It’s as if I crossed the ocean yesterday and lost all my short term memory. Hand it to the bride. I can do that. I searched the faces of the eight young women in front of me, all young, short, pale skin, dark hair, and all dressed in pale blue like the berry. Almost eerily too similar to one another. They were beautiful young women to be sure, but none seemed to possess the wisdom and confidence to be getting married. Maybe the ignorance was sufficient. Before I had time to make a bad guess at which one was the bride, another organizer decided to postpone the rehearsal for now due to the crash. I could have made that decision off the bat. Hell, it was a bad omen if I ever saw one.

Instead of settling into a hotel for the night, I was taken back to the estate of the bride’s family. It was quite late, but the mother of the bride was still ordering around caterers and making preparations for tomorrow. I disliked her almost immediately.On the floor the family dog laid down and was eating some food that had been spilled. I surveyed the contents of the food and in addition to some smashed club sandwiches I saw an alarming number of chocolate candies and brownies. This mutt of a dog reminded me every dog we’d ever owned before and despite his brown exterior I found myself resisting the urge to call him Sam after the dog I’d grown up with since I was a toddler. “Sam” seemed like such a great dog and I was surprised that such a well to do family didn’t insist on having some purebred prize winning hound or poodle. At first it even seemed that he knew to only eat the spilled sandwich and avoid the chocolate, but only at first. As he set off towards the broken brownies I tried to snatch them up, but he snapped at me and growled.

“No! My dogs don’t do that!” I yelled, forgetting that this was in fact not my dog. I swashed my hand in front of his snout, but he was undeterred and kept eating the chocolate.

“The dog’s eating chocolate! He’ll get sick! He’ll die!” I yelled. The mother of the bride did not seemed too concerned about the welfare of the family dog, but it seemed that I held some clout.

“Layla, first thing in the morning see to it that the dog goes to the vet to get checked out.”

Her attention was directed at her youngest daughter at the opposite end of the entrance hall. Layla was a short girl with blonde hair in a peach colored dress and matching hair band. Maybe it was the disdain she exuded for her mother or the compassion she feigned for the dog, but she was the first likable person I’d come across during this entire trip. And while she didn’t seem old enough to take the dog to the vet on her own, and least someone was going to look out for the dog.

“Yes, mother,” was her reply.

Yes mother. Not, Oui, mama?

“John, your family should be settled in at the hotel now. You may call them if you like,” the mother informed me. I enjoyed how my name sounded in her French accent. Less average.

“Thank you,” I said and pulled out my cell phone. I dialed my father, but reached my mother.

“How’s the hotel?” I asked.

“It’s fine, very nice,” she said.

“Is there a pool?”

“Yes, a very nice pool.”

Fine. Nice. Very nice pool. I guess my fears were alleviated. Now if I only I could remember why we’re all in France for a wedding.“You’ll see it tomorrow after the rehearsal. Then we’ll be off to Turkey.”Turkey? What was in Turkey? The next leg of our European getaway I guess. Maybe I should come clean to someone that my memory isn’t there. It seems like I’ve got some obligations to fill at this rehearsal and wedding tomorrow. Still uncertain I ended the call with my mother and went to bed. Maybe things would come back to me the next day.

* * *

The rehearsal was a dress rehearsal. This was largely due to the fact that the rehearsal was immediately preceding the real deal. Maybe that’s how they do weddings in France. I’d never worn a suit so fine or looked so good. I still didn’t know what I was doing here, but I was getting used to living in a haze. The wedding band was made up of young kids. Well, college kids I guess. Friends of the bride and groom I assumed. Everyone seemed to get along famously with one another. Their setup was pretty impressive. Top notch sound equipment, though it was a little different from equipment I was used to. The mic stands were Homer Simpson yellow with integrated coil pickups protruding from the extensions for what I guessed were background noise cancellation efforts. No expense spared.

My parents stood off to the side. They didn’t seem to know anyone there except the parents of the bride who had arranged for them to be there with their children. My sister Heather was not far away. The band counted in and started to play. I knew the song, but couldn’t place it until I suddenly started singing it.

“Susanne! You’re all that I wanted of a girl…”

Suzanne! The brides name was Suzanne! I spotted her dancing in her seat as the band played and I sang along. I was hired to be a wedding singer. Weezer deep cuts and B-sides. Jesus. Why would anyone take a pretty French name like Suzanne and try to honor it with such a silly song in a heavy American accent? There’s no accounting for taste I guess. 

Suzanne. (Susanne!)

She seemed like a good kid and I realized she wasn’t one of the faces I saw last night. I watched her swing her arms and rock on her hips in her seat and wondered if she was past saving.

As the song progressed it became a medley-mash up with another song I didn’t know, but it all sounded good and I kept on pace with “Susanne” while the other singers did their thing. After we finished the first practice I made a suggestion.

“You know those two guys are really overpowering me with their two voices and instruments. Why don’t I play the guitar part to ‘Susanne’ to augment it a bit more?”

“That sounds good,” said one of the band members, “but we don’t have any XLR connectors over here.”

“That’s okay, I’ll improvise something.”

At that moment a wedding organizer handed me a colored envelope made of handmade paper.

“Fifteen large,” she said. “Your deposit for the practice of the first song.”

Fifteen large, like we were in a mobster movie. 15,000 what? Francs? Euros? US Dollars? It didn’t matter really, I felt guilty taking it. It was too much. Just then Heather pulled me aside.

“You don’t seem very well prepared. Didn’t you read the program details ahead of time?” she asked. I wanted to point out that she was probably had me beat when it came to doing homework at the last minute, but with my memory loss I’m not sure if I’d studied it or not or if it would have mattered. At any rate, some of the pieces were beginning to come together. Our parents had pieced together this deal from an advertisement they found online. They were here as our managers. And I got the distinct impression that Heather and I were supposed to do a duet next, some other song from the first Weezer album maybe. Whatever songs we had to do later, I was beginning to get excited. This was going to be a little bit of fun. What was in Turkey? Another gig? Just some time away? I guess I’d just take it all as it came at later that night I’d swim in a very nice hotel pool.

Did anyone ever find out if that pilot was okay? Probably not. Who can remember?