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:

Big doings in the past week or so! I've found a home for the Metal Husband (although to be honest I think Metal Baby is a more appropriate name) and gotten it parked there for the time being ~indoors~!! Very Fancy.

As we all know, Winter is Coming (specifically it's coming tomorrow morning, better put on your snow pants Richmond) so getting the Metal Baby under a roof is a big deal. 

It happened! Christmas came! Heaven opened and delivered unto me....

In the past two days I've gotten some incredible energizing advice from people with exactly the experience I need to hear from. The first is Kyle Durrie of Power and Light Press and the second is Mary Morgan at Seredni Tire on Lakeside.

I'm thinking I want a step-van. I'm still open to other options, but the step-van is really the LOOK that I want. Door-to-door, hop in hop out, simple...

Whenever I decide to focus on One Thing, instead of filling all my newly-empty brainspace with energy and focus on that One Thing, my brain says wow! look at all this time and space and energy we have now! we're unstoppable! let's GO!  So I've been having some trouble keeping all hands on deck for the studio.

Well, so much for the Broadberry. It was vaguely helpful to visit - I learned that the vehicle is a '77 Chevy with only about 40,000 miles on it - but they didn't seem to know anything else about it, really.

www.bringatrailer.com is my new drug. I don't even care that I can't buy anything on it, it's the treasure trove of search terms I've been looking for. I never thought I would be tempted by what essentially old van porn? But so it goes. Everything is so beautiful!!!

It's hard to keep all of my different lines of thought straight. Sometimes I feel like it's a very direct process (buy van, make repair plan, do repairs, wow!), and sometimes I wade too deep into the strong currents of possibility. The sweet spot in between involves keeping a lot of strings separate and ready to braid into one plan. I like both of those metaphors so I'm keeping them, but the strings one is more helpful right now. 

The strings I'm holding at the moment (in no particular order) are: