Help Marsh Fork Elementary
Posted in Friends on September 3, 2008 at 1:41 PM
I got this email today from Rhiannon. It's worth a read and worth taking notice. She has a few fund-raising/awareness plans brewing as well, so I'll give a heads up once those are up and running.
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Over the past couple of months, I've been coming across this elementary school in multiple readings of the devastation of mountain top removal coal mining. Interestingly enough, all books or articles mention an "elementary school", yet none ever mentioned its actual name. That took some googling and then some guessing.
Anyway, the school, Marsh Fork Elementary, exists a mere 400 yards away from a major coal mining site, which means the children are exposed to a heavily polluted area on a daily basis. The toxins are in their water, their soil, and in the air they breath as they run and play. Not to mention, if the built up coal slurry dams (excess toxic sludge that is leftover after coal is mined) ever give way, which is likened from the mine-seem blasts, these children most likely wouldn't have a chance in a devastating slurry flood. (Which has happened in W. VA, and such dams bursts have claimed 100's of lives.)
To boot, Massey Energy, owner of the coal tower, has requested to build yet a second coal silo at the site. Infuriating enough as that is, it's even more so to find out they were denied, and has further repealed that! (Side note: In my readings, Massey Energy also recently requested the allowance of toxicity levels beyond regulation levels at one of
his coal sites - ridiculous.)
With all of these obvious threats to this school, W. VA government has somehow denied funding to build the children another school out of harms way. It's just mind boggling...
So I'm writing you all to see if you think this is a cause you may be interested in. If so, you can go to the one fundraising website that was difficult to find and donate (it doesn't come up intuitively when you google Marsh Fork Elem, unfortunately, although it's a clever name for the group, it's probably keeping the site from being found.)
http://www.penniesofpromise.org
Oh, they are also on Facebook, just search "Pennies of Promise" (And join!)
I don't see how in this day and age we can move mountaintops, but we can't move a school!
Meanwhile, I'm writing emails, reading up now that I've found a decent path, seeing what I can do... and I'm going to reach out to every teacher and mom I know. Please do the same!
This seems like a no brainer! But, I assume it's difficult for these small groups from nowhere Appalachia to get backing, not to mention in my reading, a lot of local people are afraid to take on the coal companies or complain because so many of their family members are employed by the coal industry in that area. And as you know, you don't bite the hand that feeds you in this country...
So frustrating...
xoxo
Naan
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That Web site again is http://www.penniesofpromise.org.
Paintings at Fireflies back on
Posted in Work on August 30, 2008 at 4:45 PM
I happened to go in to Fireflies for dinner yesterday and managed to get everything straightened out with the Painting Show that was supposed to start this summer.
Koi Paintings will be going up Labor Day and be there for a currently undetermined amount of time. I'm guessing a month, but I'm not sure.
So, to summarize:
Koi Paintings!
Fireflies!
Starting September 1!
Fish on the Brain
Posted in Work » Illustration on August 27, 2008 at 6:12 PM
This is for the next issue of Fray. The story it's paired with is about a 6th grader's obsession with his fish (Ironic right?). This pretty much poured out after PBS Parents launched.
PBS Parents 3.0
Posted in Work » Day Job on August 20, 2008 at 8:21 PM
Today marked the launch of the New PBS Parents.
We re-did the entire site, from front to back, along with the help of The Incredible Pear. We integrated Movable Type, cleaned up the XHTML and the CSS, and brought a new brand look to the whole sha-bang.
Now for most folks this is just another day on the job, but for us? It was the work of 3 regular regular staff members, one contractor, two interns, and two part time temps... for a 1900 page site. And for me, it's the reason for a very long summer and many late nights.
We're really proud of it. Stop by and say hello: http://www.pbsparents.org
Taurus Character Design
Posted in Work » Card Cheat on August 1, 2008 at 2:01 PM
Taurus, the villain of Card Cheat is the leader of a small gang that hounds our Hero.
"Too much mouth" was the feedback on this one. Marc's keeping me on task by not letting me get away with overly simple faces. That's not say there won't be style to the book, but I want to tighten up my drawing a bit.
This might be the worst I've ever done.
Much better.
Taurus! We wanted to avoid pure black/traditional villain colors, so we just stayed in the darker hues.
Where the heck...
Posted in Admin » Me on July 29, 2008 at 4:51 PM
So, after some steady blogging I vanished again in to the world of day job land. It's been a lot of long hours and really uninteresting blogging material.
Here I'll sum it up for you:
"Woke up. Went to work. Coded Web pages. Design Web pages. Went home. Ate a sandwich. Slept. Repeat."
The Fireflies show didn't happen, due to some communication snafus, so I'm working on setting up another show soon.
Gid Character Design
Posted in Work » Card Cheat on June 30, 2008 at 4:57 PM
I'm doing lots of design work and model designs (and bitching about it the whole time) for Card Cheat. It's good process and will help me keep consistent character designs through out the book (which is looking to be six issues long).
Here's the Gid Webb Process:
He started a bit rounder, a bit of sloth. He has a couple of nasty habits that wouldn't let this happen though, and he's too vain to let himself really go.
I stepped back and focused on his face.
I refined his face a bit and drew a horse. Cause it's a western and has horses. Plus, drawing characters standing around for design sheets bores the crap out of me, so I try to do various stances and situations when I can.
Standard model sheet with a straight ahead view, a profile and a close up. The hair color was way wrong though. As Marc said "I don't think they had peroxide hair bleach back then."
And through the magic of Photoshop, Presto! Gideon Webb: All ready to get in to all sorts of trouble.
Red Koi in progress
Posted in Work » Swim on June 19, 2008 at 12:58 PM
Working on some new pieces for the Fireflies show in July.
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Yes, I work flat on the floor. Yes, I got the idea from watching Pollock.
Sylvanian Families
Posted in Random on June 13, 2008 at 2:07 PM
It was just too weird not to share it with the world.
Swim at Fireflies in July
Posted in Work » Swim on June 11, 2008 at 7:34 PM
Just a quick heads up. I'll be showing some Swim Paintings at Fireflies in Alexandria, VA next month. No opening or anything this time around, but stop by and check them out when you get a chance.
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