My obsession with seltzer

I was a huge sugar addict when I was a kid.  Passing around sugar packets at school, and drinking tons of juice, soda, and powdered sugary drinks were quite normal.

I continued this behavior through school and once I got to college it caught up to me.  Cavities and weight gain acted like bouncers to a sugar club.  I soon started having acid reflux issues after college and I knew I needed to cut back.

My wife got me into Poland springs seltzer and as an adult I loved it.  I specifically loved the taste of the water used from the Maine based seltzer company compared to say Polar seltzer.  I visited the old facilities during a trip to Maine a few years ago to pay my respects.

Unfortunately, Poland Spring is now owned by Nestle.  I associate Nestle with chocolate and chocolate water sounds wrong on several levels.  Not to mention the fact that a huge corporation "sitting on the mountain" of what I used to enjoy.

A few years ago, we wanted to reduce the amount of plastic we were recycling and we bought a Soda Stream.  It has been a wonderful experience reusing the same container I had when I first bought the machine making seltzer on demand.

Last year I made a major effort to remove sugar from my diet while adhering to the Tim Ferriss Slow Carb diet.  That meant half Trader Joes mango juice half seltzer drinks got the kibosh, but Tim recommended squeezing the juice from a lemon slice into a glass of water before each meal.  I squeezed my lemons into seltzer and fell in love.

It was the natural taste of lemons in a refreshing carbonated drink that really won me over.  The most natural soda a guy can get.  As this week has warmed up and I've seltzerfied myself, I can say I'm ready for the warm weather.

Here's a new series graphics inspired by my history with seltzer.  These are all available now via Society6.com.

The first and last day I spent with my grandfather

There are no books to help guide one through the murky waters of divorce.  All that remains are fragments of relationships and  -- Lord willing -- enough of a relationship between family members where the next generation that's detached from the gory details of the marital split can still connect with the adults 1 or 2 generations before them.

From stories, I knew the grandmother on my mother's side had 3 husbands.  I remember the 2nd to last or the last one with her as a young child.  Most of my time with my grandmother I knew her to be single.  Picture a Dominican women in a bad neighborhood wielding a machete to prune her bushes.  The showy use of the machete was intentional and she saw it to be necessary given the crime rates of Lawrence, MA 1980-1990s.

One summer, in a surprising turn of events, my mother arranged a trip for me, my siblings, and her mother to visit my grandmother's first husband.  He was a very successful architect in Hoboken, NJ in his 60s.  The apartment he had housed his 2nd wife and his daughter who I had never met before.

As time passes, memories compress tightly to obtain new information and new experiences.  So goes my memory which compressed 1 day with my grandfather into two specific events.

The walk

My grandfather had never met me before, but he seemed very proud to introduce me to his neighborhood friends.  He waved and greeted several people he passed or saw across the street.  I remember a conversation or two, but the prominent memory I have is him pointing out the buildings he designed.

Here I was just a 5 to 6 foot high school student and seeing the fruits of his mind cast 100 foot shadows across blocks and parks while simultaneously reflecting the sky and sunlight.  There were several buildings he pointed to and would proudly say, "I made that".

The generational hand off

One of the last stops on our walk he entered a very unpolished bodega.  The moment I stepped in, I knew where I was without even seeing the business sign.  There was a bodega in my former town in Lawrence, MA and it was almost identical to the one in stepped into in New Jersey. It was a place to grab produce, manufactured goods, and candy.  Candy like swedish fish, other junk food, American and Carribean Sodas, Malta, and frozen treats.  Back before I was 10 I could purchase a piece of swedish fish for a penny.  A dollar would get me a small paper bag full of the juicy fish shaped sweets.

These bodegas also dueled as a cultural meeting place.  To continue in the traditions of the Caribbean Islands,  these bodegas provided the foods islanders were familiar with:  Yuca, Platanos, and a variety of other foods.  And on American soil, they could keep their culture in their mouths and hearts too with this small business which served as a bridge between where they were from and their present abode in America.

We both walk into the store and, of course, my grandfather knew the store owner very well.  The owner tried speaking to me in Spanish, but my grandfather told him I didn't speak any Spanish.  The owner said, "La rapidez con que se va".  Loosely translated he was lamenting how even as his bodega helped keep the Hispanic language, cuisine, and traditions of conversation alive, this culture somehow hadn't been passed down to me.

Thank you, typography rabbit trail

I have a customer/friend who has been extremely supportive of my work.  There is one phrase she uses like Bostonians use the word 'wicked'...i.e. "Hey you worked wicked hard, you deserve that beeer".  Anyone from Mass knows to drop the 'r' and add a 'ah'.

So the phrase my friend uses is 'hot mess'.  She is the first person I've ever heard use it and I'm assuming people in the mid west anywhere Illinois use it without thinking.  Teachers telling their 'F' students they are hot messes.  Judges assigning probation officers to their 'hot mess'.  Wives kicking their hot mess husbands around the house to clean up after themselves.

I'm told the phrase means someone is messed up.  Just picture a spilled bowl of potato soup on the floor.  It's to hot to clean up and is ignored until the time is right.

My friend dropped this phrase often enough that I needed to commemorate it in some way.  Possibly, put it on a t-shirt or something.

I drove during my lunch hour to Heart Pond, where I've done a lot of t-shirt illustration and made this:

Heart Pond, Chelmsford, Ma.

I presented this first design to her and she told me to redo it.  Change the style to bubbles + add more pink flames.  Since she was the queen of knowing who was and wasn't a hot mess.  I took her advice and started right away.

While watching TV with my son and writing out a hot mess bubble style, I remembered a trip I took out to Marlborough, Ma's Borders bookstore a year ago with him.  The store was closing down, and everything was steeply discounted.  Jet Tea smoothie boxes, ice machines, books, calendars, toys and more all discounted heavily.  I figured my son would enjoy seeing the selection of toys and I would enjoy dropping very few pennies on them.  An acquaintance of mine bought up all the coffee making equipment and started a coffee house in Worcester, MA.

There were several out of business signs in the store windows and throughout the store.  Frenzied shoppers contrasted against the somber looks on the Border's employees faces.  These employees looked like book geeks who were extremely knowledgeable and some I met had a wonderful sense of humor.  It is pleasurable to see people behind a cash register who love what they are selling and share thoughts on what shoppers have chosen to buy.  The attendant peered at my items spread across the counter --a balloon powered car, strawberry jet tea smoothie boxes among other items-- and made a few comments.  My son slipped a last minute toy in and I totally caved.  The attendant noticed I slipped something in last minute and she was exited to see the calligraphy set.

I brought the same calligraphy kit home and my wife figured I'd try it and move on.  That's exactly what happened.  My main issue was with using a thick chiseled pen and keeping it the same orientation while I moved my wrist.  Some movements left a flat line. and other movements left broad line.  The kit came with pens of varying thicknesses, paper, and a thin book with some info on calligraphy.  Eventually the novelty wore off and the kit's pens were left in my desk drawer for months without being used.

Writing 'hot mess' over and over moved me to pull out what I learned about calligraphy and the 1 typography class I took at Framingham State.

I loved the contrast between what seemed so common with what appeared to be refined.

Eventually, I started thinking of making cards with this style of writing and experimented with other
spins on thick and thin lines.  I made these 'Thank You' as a result of the last couple of days experiments.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/107650345/thanks-thank-you-card

https://www.etsy.com/listing/107650309/thanks-thank-you-card

Experiment #1: Reusing an empty Tera's Whey Canister in Photos

Hi! I'm Ruben.  I've been photoblogging for around 2 years over at sqwair.blogspot.com.  I'm going to be doing photography experiments along with others performing creative experiments as part of a group experiment executed by Tara.

I had the monday morning blues and I needed a pick me up.  99% has been an incredible resource for productivity tips and always has challenged me so I naturally went to the blog looking for new articles. After watching a video and reading this blog post, I wanted to continue on my personal goal to have 100 photographs or illustrations available for viewing and purchasing.  I currently have around 60 unique listings on my etsy shop now.






Video I saw from Tina Seelig's TedX talk:

The concept I walked away with was to use resources that are nearby and free.  I looked through my recycle bin and my family had just finished a Tera's Whey canister of protein powder. My son, Max, saw me messing with the cylinder and before his bedtime I showed him how to spell out letters one poke at a time.  Writing on the can and poking with a push pin every 5mm worked best.

I held the canister to the light and wedged a rock underneath to keep it in place.  All lights in the room were off except the light shining through the canister.

Scorpio Constellation

These concentrated lights made me curious to see how an out of focus, a.k.a bokeh, approach would look.

Used yellow/orange tissue paper.

Used a handmade filter to change the light color (I'll explain this in  a blog post coming shortly).

The 1 class I took from David Wells at the Worcester Art Museum several years ago emphasized always trying several settings because you never know what will look good.  Slowing down the shutter speed would allow more light in.  I definitely wanted to see points of light and have it surrounded by pure black.  I didn't want to see any writing from Tera's Whey in the picture.

Exposure time set to 1/500th of a sec versus the previous settings which ranged between 1/1000th and 1/2000th of a sec.

I went to sleep at 2am that night!  Between my day job and when all in my house go to sleep I often will stay up very late to get a few hours of creative time in.  I do best when I'm not confined just to my lunch hour during the day.

The following morning I woke exhausted + running behind schedule to get to work, but I was also remarkably cheerful knowing what I had done the previous night.  I imagined the canister lit up showing constellations and thought about how I could make it better.  Several movie scenes show a shaft of light from the sun or a flashlight in dark areas.  I knew the light path would need to be smoky or dusty to be seen.  After work, this desired cloudy atmosphere around the constellation seemed feasible if I used baby powder. Unfortunately, baby powder didn't change anything.  I tried smudging a sage stick and although I felt extremely relaxed, it had little affect on the photos.

I was so stoked to have this experience and my blues were gone! : )

Click on the pics to see the prints available for purchase from the experiments done here.


https://www.etsy.com/listing/106816011/scorpio-constellation-photographic-print">
https://www.etsy.com/listing/106816240/scorpio-constellation-blank-cards-5-x-7">


I figured another nice side project would be to get bokeh and straight shots of all zodiac constellations and offer the photos as a print or as a card for birthdays.

Any questions about the process or other thoughts on the experiment?  Comment down below!