Dressed In Value is a design workshop in Louisville, Kentucky. Learn more.

1 February 2010

Running a graphic design studio used to be my dream, my goal. Over two years ago I achieved that (in some measure) with Dressed In Value. After two and one half years of freelancing now I am putting it away. In just a couple weeks I will begin full-time employment. It’s unclear as yet what freedoms I will have to write publicly about my new work, so I will leave that be for now.

Dressed In Value is not closing up shop on existing clients, but I won’t be taking on much new work. (I get to be extra picky about extracurricular projects!) I am however discontinuing this journal. I’ve taken up a new place to write at Tumblr, which will be a lot the same but more personal. I don’t expect it to retain the same appeal.

Thank you to everyone who has trusted me (and paid me) to do work, everyone who has corresponded with me, everyone who has helped and encouraged me along the way. I’m inexpressibly happy with where this has all led.

11 January 2010

I’m taking a break from writing Dressed In Value.

25 December 2009

I feel that art has something to do with the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos. A stillness which characterizes prayer, too, and the eye of the storm. I think that art has something to do with an arrest of attention in the midst of distraction.

—Saul Bellow, in The Writer’s Desk

1 December 2009

A few years ago we attended a photography lecture by National Geographic photographer Sam Abell at the University of Kentucky. I remember being quite amazed and inspired by this man, his ability to yield powerful stories through photography, and his simplicity and calmness. To this very day I consider his advice every time I pick up a camera.

Here following is what I learned from him (quoted from a 2008 article in the Minneapolis-St Paul StarTribune):

Abell lives in Charlottesville, Va., but he travels the country to teach professional and student workshops, as well as “photo camps” for inner-city children. At all of them, he passes on many of the things he learned about picture-taking from his father, a teacher and freelance photographer, while growing up in northern Ohio.

Dad’s biggest lesson?

“A form of patience that distills itself into three words: ‘Compose and wait,’ ” Abell said. “[It means] as a photographer to be out in life and to have a scene select you, sort of speak to you, and to dwell on it and to compose it carefully, and then to wait until the scene is fulfilled by something — something arrives, something departs, things happen in front of you.

“I’ve made a lifelong habit of doing that, and it’s the most characteristic thing about my methodology, how I arrive at pictures.”

Photo above: Sam Abell’s book, The Photographic Life, and my dog who decided to stand in the frame.

30 November 2009

A note from Mandy Brown on extracts from Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy and E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful:

Along with a new vision for eating, McKibben notices an alternative definition of work—one in which the value of work is held in higher accord than the labor it demands.

28 November 2009

Father Jonathan:

A church lady, at an oxymoronous event called “the coffee social,” chided me for not being up to date.

“Are you on Facebook, Father?”

“No, I’m not,” and she looked stern, because she was ready to offer me a prize that had something, but not exactly, to do with Friendship.

[…]

“You probably don’t even Tweet.” Her disdain was peeking out from under her suburban charm.

No. I shook my head like Charlie Brown in the discouraged pumpkin patch.

[…]

I couldn’t manage it. I could not read or think with all the chatting and practices and associations and shows and games. I could not think in paragraphs, or a sentence, with all the talking about what other people are doing while they themselves are wondering what I’m doing while I’m pecking and swiping with thumbs on a touch-sensitive screen.

What are you doing? Typing? What are you saying while you chat? What are you thinking, while touching the wares at Chico’s and Brookstone’s? What do you mean, behind the screen?

Nothing, of course, is the answer — but nothing while the background music is at full.

She and her Facebook Friends, usually frenetic, are bored. Full of information, but unable to hoist belief against the anxious and despondent tide of the 4 am abyss.

24 November 2009

A scene from The Ramen Girl:

Mother: “Her broth is bland.”

Sensei: “I wonder why. She’s mastered the technique perfectly.”

Mother: “Sometimes too much technical training can get in the way. You cook with your head. Your head is full of noise. You must learn to cook from the quieter place deep inside of you. Each bowl of ramen you prepare is a gift to your customer. The food that you serve your customer becomes a part of them. It contains your spirit. That’s why your ramen must be an expression of pure love. A gift from your heart.”

Abby: “I don’t know anything about love. Every time I feel it, it’s gone. It disappears. And all I have left is pain and sadness.”

Mother: “Begin by putting your tears into your broth.”

23 November 2009

I got the new Dwell magazine in the mail today. It is all about the future, and the future of design. Within is suggested that “modern” design could be counted as “timeless” design. It struck me that modern design, by definition, is not and cannot be timeless. Modernity is very much part of a particular time in history, and its influence is necessarily always looking forward, anticipating change, pushing boundaries; its very purpose is lost without time. Even its dismissal of history is wrapped up in time. And so, though it has now transcended not a handful of generations, it cannot be timeless. I think there is a quality about it that is trying to be described that is true — that it will keep its course through the future of time — but that word is not timeless.

20 November 2009

I took out a winter coat today and found, pocketed, a paper with this quote written on it (no source noted; Google didn’t find anything):

The future is technological, mechanistic, and robotic, but our souls and bodies are only truly fulfilled when connected to nature and the earth.

18 November 2009

This summer we visited my uncles in Joshua Tree, CA at their Bed & Breakfast, Sacred Sands. It’s such a beautiful and peaceful place. A friend just sent us this set of photos from a wedding at the B&B. Beautiful photos of what looks like a beautiful wedding at a definitely beautiful place on earth.

Photos by Stephanie Williams / Stephanie Williams Photography