It's Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)

So, a rare summer update!

I had previously posted about an opportunity to design guitars for a new company that one of my co-workers at Terra Trike, Ben, is starting up. The owners of Terra Trike also have this super small side start up guitar company called Etavonni. Ben is the lead guitar tech for them, but naturally wants to have full control of his own ideas and is starting up his own guitar company, Lumen, to take full advantage of his contacts in the guitar industry. The thing with Etavonni is that they cost $7,000, way out of most peoples price range. Ben wants to make a sweet looking, nice sounding, guitars that garage bands can afford.

Well when you need a guitar body designed, who's your favorite art student baby!

Ben came to me with the head stock picked out and a general idea that he wanted to make it swoopy and kickin. I just got to go to town on the design and have some fun. After a few sketches, this is what Ben settled on as what he wanted.


Yep, my design. Pretty cool huh? Ben has a guy in North Carolina making the body for him, this is the first prototype.

The other super cool thing about the look is not just the body design but where the guitars name sake is coming from. Ben found these super thin sheets of lights (not LCD exactly) which we are working on affixing to the front of the guitar. The sheets light up in a certain color and can do two tones. I'm working on some graphics for the front in lights, I'm a bit limited in size restrictions as the larger the design the more expensive it gets. If this really takes off, we'll look into some of my more intricate, larger designs.

Currently the graphics are just in the sketch form. Keep in mind these are going to be in lights, like say neon green on a gloss black painted guitar. Super cool for your weekend gig!


Thanks for looking, I'll keep you all abreast of happenings with Lumen over the coming year.

Summer Lovin / Bummin

Well, schools out. I've been home going on a month already actually. The last semester wrapped up nicely, I was pretty happy with final grades. No surprises, well actually I was expecting an A- in my Humor Class (one of my advanced studio classes), but I got an A. So a good surprise.

I'm actually missing art school allot, I had such a great semester. Met lots of really creative and fun people and made some pretty sweet art. I miss it. I'm working full time (I actually like what I'm doing, more on that in a bit) and making the monies and riding my bike, but there is a lack of artiness for sure. I aught to get on designing my wedding invitations or save the date cards, or start taking my camera with me more.

I'm working for a trike company called WizWheelz, we make the Terra Trike.

A TerraTrike

I do assembly, shipping, R&D, and anything else that needs to be done pretty much. It's a pretty sweet job, but I still miss art school.

Speaking of art school, I have pictures from my final TMP II project that I never uploaded. It was the expanded image piece. Overall, Dennis, my prof (who was great) loved it. I was less happy with the final result. He gave it an A-. I gave it a C-. I think that he liked the amount of time I put into this mother and the fact that I stayed late on the day we had to work on it and finished it at 11pm on a Friday when I still had a week to do it.


It's three of my friends/roommates ascending the stairs of the house I lived in last year at Michigan. I really like the top of the piece and the sides where you can see the banister and the baseboards of the stairs. They were used to give the piece some cohesion. That worked, all three of them are climbing stairs, but I have way to many pictures of them and not stairs up the middle and that mucks it all up.

I made this by taking tons of pictures, printing them glossy 8.5x11 and then cutting each one into roughly 2/3 " strips and gluing them to the foam core to expand them climbing the stairs. The idea was that it would look like several were climbing the stairs at one time and all at the same time.


In retrospect, I'd like to try this again but with only one person and less pictures of them. Don't make is so cluttered and obvious.

the stairs and bannister, I like this part of the piece

Well, I'll post more when I start working on wedding invitations. I've got some ideas and some sketches. We'll see what I can come up with.

Oh other, artistic news. WizWheelz (my summer job) also makes guitars, Etavonni (innovate backwards) under the same ownership. Pretty sweet carbon and aluminum guitars. Pretty sweet $10,000 guitars. While the carbon and aluminum may seem sacrilege to some guitar people, they're all technical and tone chambered up. I guess, I don't actually play.
But anyway, Ben and Jeff, who work for both companies are starting up their own guitar company (normal wooden guitars). Ben, who is the Production Manager for WizWheelz and Etavonni and a video game fiend (we play during lunch hour), has asked me to help them design a body for their new guitar. Super Sweet! I'll post what happens!

Oh and another thing, I'm now a published author. Kinda. In a newsletter, The Bent Rim Bugle, for an organization that I belong to, The Michigan Mountain Bikers Association, I was published. I wrote a piece about racing at Mt. Snow, Vermont and submitted it. They really liked it! I'll have to scan it in since there is no web version. But still, cool none the less that I can say I'm published.

Kinda.

Thanks for reading!