June Issue Preview 🦞
Silo cups full of dirt, potato chips, exoskeletons. It’s summer!
Summer, huh?! It’s a lot. Just one of those things, I think, the house always wins. And yet, we keep playing because there is salt water and ice cream sandwiches and SUNSHINE and salt and vinegar potato chips, all too good to pass up.
So here we are in June (just barely anymore, I know): And to match it, there’s a new issue of Treehouse in print, for paid subscribers, winging its way to mailboxes presently. Here’s a little tour of what to expect..
Sterlz
I’m very, very pleased to welcome my pal and talent Sterling Bartlett as this month’s cover artist. Sterling can really do it all (really), but over the past number of years Sterling’s comic practice has been soaring. In 2021, he released How Did We Get Here?, which he followed just recently with Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone in 2023. Wry and witty and smart and at times just plain goofy, these comics are really special, so I asked Sterling to make something “comic-y” for a cover—the result is a pretentious lobster. Perfection.
Hammers
This month’s project is a tablecloth dyed using a Japanese method called Tataki Zome. It’s simple and straightforward, but the results are beautiful. At its most basic: You are hammering flowers into cloth, transferring their color in the process. There are different variations and results to play with—securing flowers in place with packing tape or removing individual petals, for instance—and the finished piece can range from abstract washes of color to a more literal, figurative flower pattern. Fun. You will need to deal with a headache afterwards from All! The! Pounding!
Circles
Rounding1 things out—and maybe a respite from all that hammering—is something a little different for us here: A visual meditation from friend-of-the-newsletter, Julia Bembenek. Drawing on her background as a yoga instructor and her masters in Eastern Classics, Julia’s project Window offers a heady practice that weaves in plenty of readings and philosophy and art throughout. For Treehouse, she created a visual meditation around the theme of circles, which she represents through direct, graphic sumi ink paintings.
And then, as is my want, there’s a little end-moment from the Met’s creative commons collection, whee! (But you’ll need the issue to see that one.)
Speaking of windows, ooee. (LINK)
Sort of neat thing here for the boat-y members of this Treehouse community: Unused, unopened plans from 1977 to make a historic Spray sailboat. (LINK)
These could benefit from entirely different fabric, but are really sweet lil chairs. (LINK)
Hm? (LINK)
