Updatery, Patience and Contacting DCS

Howdy folks!

Well, we're on schedule to put new posters in the web store tomorrow, so here's your head's up on that.... the Jam in the Dam, Umphrey's McGee and PGroove St. Paddy's Day posters will be new in the store tomorrow some time after lunch. I've also been trying to get some One-of-a-Kind items up in that section but I'm not sure if that will happen before tomorrow. I'll try...

Which brings me to the part of the title of this blog post - Patience and Contacting DCS.

For the last several months Jeff and I have been trying to figure ouut how to cut our hours back here at the shop. We've been working from about 9am until abuot midnight pretty regularly for the last several years. Why? Because during the day we have so many interuptions and distractions, we actually don't get any work done until after the rest of the sane world goes home to eat dinner and plop their booties in the easy chair to watch the evening news. We would very much like to get our work done during normal work hours, too, so we can have time for personal art projects and to work on our garden.

In light of that, we've been trying to streamline the order process, the design process and our print schedule. It takes time to transition. It also takes time to work in the web store trying to fix the listings there and add new product. We're also trying to redesign and completely upgrade the software for our web site. Mistakes are easily made when we have to stop to answer the phone or get pulled away to do something else. And we get pulled away a LOT.

How can you guys help? Well, for one thing, please be patient with us on orders. We take a little longer than we used to getting orders processed and shipped, but we're taking more orders than we did back when we shipped the same or next day we received an order. We know you're anxious to get the prints you've ordered, but give us a couple of weeks before you start getting worried. We're also trying to make sure shipping notices are sent when your shipping label is printed so you'll know what date it shipped and have the Delivery Confirmation number.

The time we need to work on these things will hopefully benefit everyone. The ordering process should be easier and less quirky and the web site should be easier to navigate. We managed to get the coding for Paypal payments added to the site yesterday in time for the release tomorrow. I'm not promising perfection, but it should help speed up the ordering process since I won't have to send out Pay Requests and wait for those to be paid until I send the invoice to Rick to be shipped.

For those of you who don't know, let me explain the ordering process:

When an order is placed, it comes to me encrypted. I then decrypt the order and copy and paste the info into Quickbooks where I manually process credit card payments. Credit card payments do not go through when your order is placed, so if you accidentally send 2 identical orders, you will not be charged automatically for both. We set up our store that way to prevent card fraud and having to void and refund payments on duplicate orders. This is why you do not get the Quickbooks invoice right away when your order is placed.

After the order is input and paid, I email a copy of it to the customer and to Rick Ramirez at Temple Ball Gallery in North Carolina where the orders are then shipped out to locations all over the world. Like Jeff and myself, Rick also has a multitude of irons in the fire. Sometimes it takes him a week or so to get orders shipped, especially when we do a release and take a lot of orders at once. Rick is just about the only person in the world I would trust to ship all of our orders, partly because i know he takes his time to assure that your posters are packaged right to arrive at their final destinations in mint condition.

I know some folks like to call to check on orders, but we took the studio phone number off the web site. For concerns about the order itself, please send an email with your order# (it should be something like FD03545) and your questions to me at the sales-at-drowningcreek-dot-com address. That gives me a chance to look into it if there is a problem instead of trying to figure it our while I have you on the phone. I usually write back very quickly on inquiries regarding orders. If you have a question about shipping dates, contact Rick-at-templeball-dot-com.

We're headed in great directions, folks, just be patient with us while we get further on down the road.......

Love and Rockets,
Judy

Who Ees Thees Johnny Thief Person?

So, it has come to my attention that there are probably more than just a few people out there wondering exactly who this Johnny Thief person is that collaborates on posters so much with Jeff. Well, that my friends, is a long story. Some of that story can be found in The Art of Modern Rock if you have access to that. If not, well read on.....

Back before Jeff and I met, Jeff was working as the AD (art director) of Island Screenworks in Myrtle Beach, SC. He had a staff of 10+ artists and interns working under him including Johnny Thief DiDonna and one Mike Martin (Engine House 13). Johnny was Jeff's right hand dude and was one of the few who would pull the late nighters at the shop working with my workaholic partner. As they realised that Island would not go on to do posters as planned, Jeff, Johnny, Mike, Mike's wife Cari and myself started Low Brow Ink. We printed our first screened gig posters in Jeff's and my dining room 10 years ago in 1997.

Anyway, as life will do, we all moved soon thereafter to different locations. The guys continued to collab under the LBI moniker until the shipping became ridiculous. Mike started Engine House 13, Johnny picked up a tattoo gun, and we changed the Studio name to Drowning Creek.

Now Johnny is at least living in the same state as us, even though we suck because we haven't visited him since he and his partner, Matt Lukesh, opened Seppuku Tattoo which also hosts the Drowning Creek Gallery.


Anyway, to make a long story short, Thief is more than just a collab partner... he is a Brother in Arms. Soon we will be adding much more "history" lessons about Drowning Creek to our web site. There will be much more about Mr. Thief, but until then, you can go to this thread on gigposters.com to see some of his amazing tattoo work.

UM St. Patrick's Day Poster Explained

Well, we read some of the responses on the latest UM poster Jeff and Johnny Thief have done and think maybe we should start regularly explaining the imagery on our posters when they are released.
Jason K came the closest:

1st) Luck of the Irish (gambling luck)
2nd) St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland (though likely a metaphor for bringing Christianity to Ireland and driving out the pagan religions)
3rd) Pay it. (snucka)

but missed the other factor of the band's fondness for Texas Hold'em. They've hosted a game on Jam Cruise the last 3 years that we know of..... and the poster is GREEN for St. Pat's.

Ramblings from the Creek

I find myself sitting down to do updates sometimes and not really knowing what to say or how to verbalize on some subjects. For those of you who have spoken with me in person I'm sure it's hard to imagine me without anything to say.... it's true sometimes, though.

Over the last 6 months or so we've been pretty quiet here. Not intentially, we've just been very busy trying to get some things back on track. We derailed a little last year in several areas, did some soul-searching and have been working to make new things a part of our reality. A new web site has long been in the planning stages along with pictures of the studio and other projects, but we never seem to have the time to make that happen. As I posted yesterday, we're in the first stages of prepping just for that. We've been on an older server for the last several years, but now we need to upgrade that so we can use newer scripting.

Jeff is moving into a new/old stage in his career.... he wants to paint. In fact he has been painting, though he had to stop briefly and cancel participating in a gallery show due to residual problems from the Bell's palsy. It's geting better and I expect him to be sitting at the easel again very soon.

We're still trying to find time to work on the house and our yard, but travel and work has made that a wee bit difficult. Seems we no sooner get back from a trip, and partially caught up from the absense than we're off again to a new location. Most of the trips are work-oriented. Yeah, we have a great time on Jam Cruise, in Amsterdam, at music festivals, but they're still working trips. Burning Man is really our only non-work related trip. All of these trips are about connectivity with other like-minded individuals and groups. It's about music and vision and growth on different levels.

We get lots of emails asking about our travel schedule and lately in particular whether we will be going to the Flatstock in Chicago this year. I wrote one of my subscribers yesterday with the following in reference to that question:

I'd love to say we'll see you in Chicago, but honestly, I doubt we'll ever be able to do another Flatstock. The one in Austin is too close in timing to Langerado, the one in Seattle is too far away and conflicts with Burning Man, and the one in Chicago is sandwiched between Burning Man and Bonnaroo. Traveling with the booth is a big excursion and we aren't getting any print work done when we're out of the shop. We may even cut back further this year on our travel so we can have more art time in the shop and time to work on our house. Last year and the year before, we no sooner got back in the shop than it was time to leave again. If we have to make choices on how many trips we take, Burning Man, Amsterdam, and Jam Cruise are going to come first.

So there it is folks. While the Chicago Flatstock is a-happenin, I'll be busy getting costumes and crap together for B.R.A.T. Camp in the desert.

I'm also working steadily to clean out the studio. We purged the walls a few months back and WOW - it was like we could breathe again in here! So in light of that and the fact that we're total pack rats and have filled numerous flat files and storage rooms over the last 6 years in this building, we're taking some time to purge those as well. We've got a ton of misc. items both from our studio and the stuff we've collected over the past years that we've decided to sell. I've been slowly adding some of those items to the One Of A Kind section I put up in our web store. I'll also be selling some stuff on eBay and a few production items through the classifieds on Gigposters.

When we get the new web site going, we'll have an RSS feed that will signal when new items go up, but until then I'll just be loading stuff up as I have the time. I'll make some announcements via our newsletter to our mailing list, but the vast majority of the OOAK items will just silently make an appearance in the store. We've been asked why we don't sell test prints like some of the other poster artists, so there will probably be a few of those. I tried taking uncut sheets out with us vending last year, but they are large and I worry about damaging them in travel, so as I go through and catalog the uncuts we've been saving over the last years, I'll be adding some of the uncuts to the OOAK section.

Anyway, this has gotten long enough for one post..... I promise to start adding pictures of the studio (that's part of my work area above) here and frequent updates about new items I add to the store here.

Happy St. Pat's Day to all.....
Judy

Channeling Griffin... Again....

Ayup, it has eyeballs on it, folks. If ya don't get "why," ya need to do a little reading up on Rick Griffin....
From Jeff's Tribe page:

About once a year I do a piece in homage to one of my favorite artists, Rick Griffin. Rick's amazing work has inspired me through the years and I love drawing Griffin styled poster art. Jam in The Dam Festival in Amsterdam once again gets the royal Griffin treatment. I named the piece "Aoxomoxoa Memories" since it was inspired by the artwork Rick did for the GD album of the same name. The reason for a "Dead" theme of the artwork this year is Dark Star Orchestra is on the bill and will be celebrating the last shows the Dead did in Amsterdam. I thought the artwork was fitting for such an event and it was a blast to do. Cheers to you Rick!

And the Gnashing of Teeth Begins......

OK, this is the FIRST notice we are putting up in regards to the need for us to move the web site to a new server. Over the next week or so, we'll figure out exactly when we will move the site and we'll give alternate email addresses since email will be lost that comes in through that server, too. We've put off doing this for quite some time as it always makes everyone here a little homicidal during the process, but we want to update the web site and store and we need to be on a newer server that will handle the code to do that.

Light a candle for us......

A New Ad for Seppuku Tattoo

Seppuku lays the smack down......

Perpetual Groove St. Pat's

Lookie, lookie! Another PGroove poster!! 2007 is looking to be the Year of the Groove already.... this poster is another Johnny Thief/Jeff Wood collab featuring A most Irish Lady Luck. Unfortunately, the poster will only be available on the 2nd night of the 2 night Variety Playhouse gig. Look for it Saturday, folks..... we'll have some available later on the web site as well.

Alone at Last......

Well the boys are off in South Florida getting ready to play at Langerado for a few days. Sure, they're SUPPOSED to be working, but without moi there to keep an eye on them..... So, if you're down there, stop in and say hello to them and secretly check to make sure they are working for me, okay?

Meanwhile, back herre at the shop I'm trying to get caught up on everything. I have a TON of emails to write and a few orders to get out the door... if'n you're waiting on either, please be patient! I had to pack everything for the guys to make their trip before I could get the other stuff done!

Love,
Judy