Roadtrip 3

So I’ve covered a lot of ground since I left Harker’s Island, NC. and I’m sorry I didn’t write anything about some of the weird and offbeat things we’ve come across. Two examples that spring to mind are the Oyotunji African village in Sheldon, SC. as well as the coral castle in Homestead, FL. They’re both pleasantly bizarre and maybe I’ll write a bit about them another time but right now I want to write about little Perry, Oklahoma.

Perry, OK. is not much of a place. It’s a little farming town an hour and a half south of Wichita, Kansas. There’s a couple gas stations, and a few motels, and that’s about it. The people there all have delightful Oklahoma accents, and apparently there’s a large population of amateur wrestling enthusiasts there.

So what’s so great about Perry Oklahoma? David Nemechek’s signs

Drive about 6 miles east of Perry OK along Highway 64 and you pretty much can’t miss them. They’re all shapes, sizes, and colours, painstakingly hand-lettered, and carefully written (through not without a few grammatical and spelling errors). From what I can tell there were about 40 of them, all over the farmland property, each outlining the injustices David Nemechek has suffered since buying the land in the mid 70’s. I’ll post a few pictures here to give a bit of a preview, but there are more high resolution, legible photos on Astra’s Flickr.

Roadtrip 2

Okay so here’s something.

The place I’m staying right now is called Harkers island, North Carolina. It’s right near famous vacation spot Okracoke island, only it’s less populated and has more elderly folks living on it. There’s an island just off the shore of Harkers called Shackleford banks, and it’s a protected area open to the public but no one’s allowed to live there. It’s roughly a 10 minute ferry ride from Harkers to Shackleford, it cost me $10.00 and was worth every penny because when you get there it doesn’t take much exploring before you come across these guys:

Wild ponies.

I was doubled over playing with come fiddler crabs when two of them came galloping past, then one stopped by the brackish pond for a drink. If you ever get the opportunity to come to this fantastically secluded, scenic, and exotic place absolutely do so, because I’d never seen anything quite like this.

On the pessimist side of matters, while I was walking around the island I stepped on a cactus and one of its spikes went into my heel about a quarter inch, and my girlfriend got a nasty sunburn. These are the prices we pay for ponies.

Roadtrip 1

I’m getting complaints. I know I haven’t updated yet, but please understand that internet connectivity on the road is limited at best. I’m in a cafe at present and I have two stories of note: the first from PEI and the second from New Hampshire.

See, in PEI there’s a place along Hwy-1 called the “Car Life Museum”, and best I can tell it’s abandoned. But see around back of the abandoned museum is this forest of terrors otherwise known as “Animal town”. In amongst the underbrush are massive cement animal statues who’ve felt the ravages of time, abandonment, and PEI weather. My description will not do it justice, just try to understand it was extremely creepy and bizarre. Photos were taken and can be found on Astra’s flickr stream here.

My second tale involves the roommates of Astra’s Friend Matt Swett. Their names are Ryan and Grace and boy howdy do they like animals. We spent last night at their pseudo zoo, along side 3 ball-pythons, 4 ferrets, a gecko, a tortoise, and an indoor chicken named Betty. We spent about 2 hours in the living room just playing with animals before bed and a good time was had by all. Again, photos on Astra’s flickr here.

Daiquiri Poster

It might be a bit premature to be posting this already, since the venue hasn’t printed this yet, but here’s the poster for the Daiquiri / World Provider show coming to the Starlight in June. I figured I’d better post it now since I start road tripping early next week.

Speaking of, after next week this blog will transform to house photos and stories from the road rather than the projects I’m working on. That isn’t to say there won’t be any design related content, in fact I anticipate that my thirst for all things graphic will have a noticable effect on where this trip takes me and the kind of people I meet. For anyone not hip-to-the-square starting May 20th I’ll me driving down the East coast of North America and up the West coast in hopes that I’ll find myself a place where I can see myself living. It’s my big post-graduation adventure.

Islands poster

This is the finished poster for the Islands show at Starlight. I’m not going to be around for the show but keep and eye out, they should be posted at the venue within the week. It’s got kind of a watermelon feel to it, no?

This is the fourth poster I’ve done for Starlight, the other three can be seen on my gigposters.com profile here.

First.