Sink planning! I wrote down many thoughts years ago, here they are.

1. In the three weeks that you were on tour, how many individuals did you depict in murals? Can you share one or two of the more memorable stories you came across in your search for subjects?
 

While traveling, we painted 5 murals total - 1 in Berryville VA, 1 in Philadelphia, 2 in Brooklyn, and 1 in Burlington VT. In those 5 murals I was able to include only 35 of the dozens and dozens of womxn submitted in pictures.

My call for submissions was very simple: …

Hello there! I write to you from the depths of winter, by which I mean I am under like 5 blankets right now. Bunkering down in the cold and the dark is already getting a little old, but fortunately there's a little point of light - a holiday! A celebration! That's right - The Giant Metal Baby's Birthday!

We painted in Burlington for the better part of a week. Since we couldn't bring the truck, we had a little camp set up with our paints etc in the storage room of the Battery Street Jeans thrift shop (the yellow door on the left). This whole chunk of buildings had one landlord, who was totally into the project and said we could paint wherever we wanted - we were pretty much only limited by time and what we could reach....

Our story continues...

When we last spoke, dear reader, Sarah and I were about to make our way up to Philadelphia, with sights set on Brooklyn and beyond. The past week has taken us from a leap of faith in Philly, to wild chance encounter in Brooklyn (Greenpoint!), to family in West Hartford CT, to ... a total breakdown in Glens Falls New York...!

We took the scenic route to DC to get Sarah used to driving (and stay cool - those trees are doing the best job!), stumbled upon a mural party, reunited with a good friend. At her house, stars aligned and we made plans to leave DC right away in the morning to paint our first traveling mural in her tiny home! It will end up parked in DC once it's completed. 

You guys! Friday's kickoff party was a blast, thank you so much for coming out. Extra big thanks to J Chew and Sarah for bringing everything together in a beautiful way <3 J took lots of nice pictures too, check it out:

This week: some Girls stuff, some Truck stuff ~>

The past week has been pretty eventful - this whole project is starting to feel really really real! There's two GGG mini-murals and a bunch more in the pipeline, I got to be on a podcast (!), we have some sponsors (!!) as well as SHIRTS....!!!! Not to mention I can now proudly invite you to join us at a First Fridays kickoff event at Studio Two Three! Read on!

Yesterday I did my own oil change for the first time ever!

Girls in Carytown! // Studio gets a sink! // GGG Tour Plan Progress!

Help us gather gather gather some Girls Girls Girls to paint onto walls

In order to paint a mural of local ladies in each city we visit, we need to start gathering ladies. In addition to meeting wonderful people along the way, we want to open up a call for you to tell us about the women in your life who are powerful, sweet, interesting, active, loud, passionate, comforting, determined, inspiring, a n d  b e y o n d . . . Who around you do think should be represented larger than life, in the company of many others, as an example of woman-kind? 

POP-UPS IN RICHMOND
The Giant Metal Baby will be making appearances around town! We'll be offering tours of the truck and asking girlsgirlsgirls of all ages to grace us with their pictures and a few words about themselves.

Come say hi at one of these fine events, have your picture taken (or come prepared with a picture of local lady you think is boss as heck), and maybe you (or she) will end up in a mural...!

The Baby made it's debut last week!

After getting the desk in on Thursday, I cleaned up the construction zone inside the truck as much as possible and trundled on over to Endeavor RVA for the mobile studio's first appearance at First Fridays. Sarah and I rushed to slap some paint on the truck to explain what it was and clear up the fact that it's not a food truck (the #1 question I get asked). 

And of course, the whole reason for the rush to clear construction dust and slap new paint on the truck was to SHOUT TO THE HEAVENS that we are launching HerrSuite's FIRST TOUR!!! 

In the past several months, several BIG things have happened. The biggest is that the mobile studio is now POWERED BY THE SUN! The engine is still a gas engine, so motoring around town is still killing the planet, BUT all the work I do while the truck is parked (working in the truck on designs - using the computer, painting, planning OR working from the truck on a wall - mixing paint, washing brushes) will be using electricity coming from a 1000w solar system. See this post for specs. This will power all my lights, my computer, chargers for various devices, maybe even a small air conditioner and heater.

The solar system is complete! Here's a rundown of the process, though this makes it look a lot faster than it was. Once again, huge thanks to Bert Green of SolarMill who did all the heavy lifting research / ordering / installation for this. 

I feel like the archetypal Hare working on the truck lately. So many things that I want to do RIGHT AWAY, and so much time to do them since I'm in between mural jobs! Lots of very speedy, accomplish-able tasks to do, I'll have no problem bounding forward.... But somehow days keep passing without me doing anything at all?? 

Anyway, this has been holding me up for the past, like, TWO MONTHS.

I bought my truck just a few days before Christmas of 2015. Now it's been juuuust over 1 year, and I am... not quite as finished working on it as I thought I would be. The Baby is a Tween now - not quite of a marriageable age yet, but growing every day! 

Now that I've packed everything into the truck and am using Build, RVA as my home base, I've decided to shift focus from interior building to solar. Once I have power, it will be much much easier to work on the rest of the build. To that end I am about to push 'order' on a big shopping list: 

Wowza. The giant metal baby has experienced quite a growth spurt in quite a few short weeks!

I did a presentation about the truck! You can hear the audio here, and see the slides from my powerpoint that were playing while I talked

The walls are covered! I had a huge assist from a contractor friend who very generously decided to send a couple of his guys out to just throw up the plywood over the walls and the ceiling sheathing. They saved me probably 5 hours of work!! 

The Giant Metal Baby has been awarded a grant!!! Richmond Cultureworks Grant Program is a marvelous resource for independent artists and 501(c)3 organizations that need a little boost for a special project.

I JUST GOT A NEW WINDOW (and the left windshield pane replaced) at long last!! As simple as it is I’m super excited because that felt like a big roadblock for moving forward with anything at all. I dropped the truck off with Able Glass Services just a couple blocks away, and picked it up the next day, easy peasy after a bit of a wait for the weather to be good. 

I have had an awesome week of talking to very helpful people about my designs. Bert Green of SolarMill, Thom Stanton of Timber Trails, Shaylen Broughten of SABarts and her husband Chris, and Matt Blair of B&C Creations. I'm just going to keep linking to these folks again and again because they just keep being super handy with advice and assistance <3

Right now all of this is crystallized in my brain, so before it disintegrates here's a big info dump of everything I learned and will be applying ASAP.

I think I forgot to mention last time that I did a hi-tech mockup of my layout just to make sure it felt right in the space. All of my Art Foundation skills snapped back into full use: 

SO! Since this whole time since my last post has been planning and researching and fiddling with details, I didn't feel like I had 'blog-worthy' things to share. All that has now accumulated into something totally shareable: a floor-plan. 

I found a new ROLE MODEL! A family friend did me a big favor and took me out to meet Jamie, proud owner of Virginia Beach's only MOBILE SIGNAGE SHOP. Jamie provides vinyl lettering and graphics services out of his 1989 Chevy Grumman step-van, and has been doing it that way for 25 years. Very recently he acquired a new truck, and is already ahead of me in the renovations process to outfit the second work vehicle in his tiny fleet. 

Oh man, I realized I haven't really done a good solid 'BEFORE' post. That's largely because I only just recently took the time to sit and take pictures and really inspect all the little things about the truck in it's current state that need repairs. So, here's the official 'before' photoset: