I’m back from the Dish conference in Nashville, which was a great experience. Candice and Cordelia went along, and we met up with former PSTCC students Julian, Teela, and Lydia, who are now at Watkins and doing well. The 3-day conference was organized by AIGA Nashville.
We were entertained and informed by David Plunkert on Thursday night at Watkins. He does editorial illustrations, theater posters, and with spouse Joyce Hesselberth has launched PrestoBingo, selling prints of monters and robots and such for kids. I bought a great poster he designed and Hatch printed. I also ran into Kenneth White, Noel Lorsen, Siri Nadler, and Jim Sherraden.
Friday began with Rise and Shine, a student portfolio review at Rocketown, an urban indoor music venue, skate park, and coffee bar. Candice participated, and I saw strong portfolios from MTSU and Murray State students as well. The judges chose a winner each for freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior porfolios, as well as a best of show. This lucky guy took home a MacBook Air.
Next we heard a presentation from a fellow at Apple whose wide-ranging chat covered everything from Leopard features to photos of early Apple products. For lunch we found our way over to Plaza Arts, where they had pizza in a back room and a discount coupon for art supplies. I picked up some drawing pencils and a kneaded red eraser for my kneaded red pencil. Studio tours were next, and our organizational skills and sense of direction were tested. Armed with Cordelia’s phone navigator and pages of maps and directions, we managed to find all three of our assigned studios.
Hammock was the first place on the tour, where Keri Davis gave us a personal tour, t-shirt, and conference room presentation. Hammock is a magazine design firm that is branching out into web. Next was the Anderson Design Group, where Jade Novak showed us around and talked about Paper Monkeys, Anderson’s spinoff brand. We also met a former Pellissippi and UT student who was busily designing beneath an amazing skylight. Sitening was our last stop: a growing company based in a great craftsman house on 21st Avenue near Hillsboro Village. Shelly Dennison introduced us to the staff, told us about their upcoming rollout of Raven, and showed us her clean, minimal web design work. Our tours were terrific, with warm people, great design work, and a nice variety of work and work space.
We finished our tours too late for the ice skating, so instead we scarfed cheeseburgers at Rotiers and headed for the honkytonks on Lower Broadway. We headed to Tootsie’s upstairs room where at one point I was hearing country songs about prison from both bands at the same time. (I really picked the wrong week to quit drinking.) Tootsie’s is worth a visit just for the layers of graffiti and ancient photos on the walls. Cordelia danced with a local cowboy before we boot-scooted out to the alley and down a few doors to Robert’s. It was a little less crowded up in the Show-Bud balcony bar, where we had another “holler and swaller” before heading down to Mulligans, where we met the Nashville contingent and heard the Irish tunes from Def Leprechaun.
On Saturday we opted out of the morning program heading instead over to the First Church of Letterpress, better knows as Hatch Showprint. The folks there showed us around the whole place, including the finer points of setting up and printing with historic wood type on their array of presses. After grabbing lunch at a coffee shop we walked through seedy-but-cool Printer’s Alley, then over to the Arcade where we saw photos by David McClister, drawings and sculpture by John Casey, and the paintings of Josh Keyes at the TAG Gallery. This show was wonderfully creative, and made me think more about some drawings I’m working on.
Cordelia headed back to Rocketown for a job-hunting presentation from the folks at Emma. I’ll post her notes from that session later. Then there were closing remarks and great goodie bags with paper samples, posters, water bottles, and other designer swag. For those of you that missed Dish, I highly recommend it for next year.
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