The Chicken or the Hat? Artist Judith M. Lindenfelser

There are a couple of things that I have loved all my life, hats and chickens being on that top 10 list.  Lindenfelser allows me to post both on the same page. She is a Milliner that keeps chickens in Alaska, okay that is 3 things, chickens, hat making, and Alaska.  My father was stationed there in WWII and though I have never been there I have always dreamed of the Alaska my father knew and loved.

"Tales From the Coop - Breakfast Reading is a collection of essays that revolve around Lindenfelser's experience raising chickens and selling eggs in Alaska. She has kept Outside Birds for nearly thirty years and sold their eggs. When her egg customers became curious about the chickens, ducks and geese whose eggs they were eating, Lindenfelser began including a 'Tale from the Coop' with their egg deliveries."

But wait! That is not all. She makes hats!

Judith Lindenfelser knits hats out of Lopi, a long-fiber sheep's wool from Iceland, at her home in Chugiak. Hat styles range from modern, including several with dreadlocks, to vintage, with many reminiscent of the early 1920s. Photos by Joshua Borough

Lindenfelser’s hats all have names. There is a small black cowboy hat named after Dale Evans, the famous cowboy queen of the ’40s. Next to it sits Clara Bow, a cloche, or flapper-style hat, named after the silent films actress. The Lucille Ball hat has antique curlers attached. (So cool!)

Spawn Till You Die

Today I was searching through my closet for some T-shirts that were 100 percent cotton with NO spandex. All cotton shirts can be difficult to find nowadays with skin-tight fashions that add polyester and spandex for a close fit and easy care. You cannot imagine how hot just a few percent of tight synthetic fibers can make you feel when it is already 103 degrees Fahrenheit and humid outside. Then I found them, the art shirts, the shirts we can't part with.  All designed by Alaskan Artist Ray Troll.

"About “fin” artist Ray Troll:
From his tree lined studio, high on a hill above the Tongass Narrows in rain-swept Ketchikan Alaska, Ray Troll draws & paints fishy images that migrate into museums, books and magazines and onto t-shirts sold around the planet. Basing his quirky, aquatic images on the latest scientific discoveries, Ray brings a street-smart sensibility to the worlds of ichthyology & paleontology.

 Ray moved to Alaska in 1983 to spend a summer helping his big sister Kate start a seafood retail store. The fish store is long gone but Ray is not. There's something about Alaska that has led four of the Troll siblings to call the state ‘home’. . ."

His first T-shirt from handmade silk screens, "Let's Spawn."

Turned into this . . .

To setting up a gallery and selling billions of shirts and art posters. The designs below are my favorite from the early 90's when our friend T.J. Tremmel had a T-shirt Gallery down the street from us and we discovered Troll's beautiful art of nature and humor.

Troll says of his Amazon mural the "Natural History magazine used the mural on its  cover in September of 2001. It was my very first national magazine cover, but as fate would have it the tragedy of 9/11 happened and it got lost in the chaos of those times."

What is cool now? Helicoprion Exhibit this summer in Pocatello, Idaho. Here are a couple of design examples. The others are much more bizarre.

Lastly, I love getting to read the descriptions of how a design came into being.

"HAPPY HOUR IN HELL
100 percent cotton, pre-shrunk, heavyweight T-shirt. Front print.

Shirt color: Black

I’ve had the immense pleasure of playing music with my band in the Voodoo Room down in Astoria, Oregon over the last few years as part of the annual Fisher Poet’s Gathering. A couple of year’s ago I did a poster for one of our gigs there depicting a flaming human skull sporting a top hat.

A couple years before that Tony Martin had come out to give a few lectures at Emory University in Georgia. While I was there Tony and his wife Ruth regaled me with tales of the dark legend of Emory University and Dooley, the Lord of Misrule.

So that’s how this one came to be spawned. I adapted to the poster to fit the mood I’m in when I need that one last drink very badly!"

Good idea.