Look, I don’t know how to really write about my experiences, how to express what the place did to me. I feel a certain shyness in talking about what was such a transformative event, for fear of sounding too sincere, too intense. In this day where irony reigns supreme, it’s too easy for all real emotion to both feel and be treated like pearls in the mire.

So let me just say the last month I took a trip with one of my best friends to the island nation of Samoa and it was the most incredible experience of my life. No exaggeration, had I not obligations and (not-insignificantly) the love of my life here in Utah, I would probably not have come back. Ever.

As it stands, I am seriously looking at establishing a fairly permanent part-time presence there — a wonky sort of extreme snowbirding, if you like — for the future. I joked elsewhere that I had friends out on Upolu that I would have sold children into slavery to see again, and actually getting to see them again after six years (in what as a very “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” situation) is really up there on my list of terrific experiences.

I feel like it’s a rare thing to feel such a connection with a place on so many levels, both visceral and cerebral, in such a short time. There were definitely experiences from my time living in Ke’ei and Waipahu in Hawaii that I felt primed me for Samoa — indeed, those experiences are primarily what qualified me to go on this venture — but there was something else, something that felt altogether like coming home.

So enjoy these pictures, I’m sure if you know me in real-life I’ve probably already talked your ear off for the past three weeks… and if you don’t, this is hardly the medium in which to get all gushy.

Offering An illustration by Jory Dayne

A few weeks ago, our paper rep from Zellerbach/Xpedex contacted me about a promotional project they were working on, a gift box of mini-prints on sustainably harvested paper in celebration of Earth Day, and asked if I’d be interested in participating.

The deadline was insane, so I pulled out my sketchbook and thumbed through to see if I had any ideas that would fit the theme. Fortunately, sustainability and stewardship are both things I think about a lot, so I fleshed out a sketch I had done a while ago, and had finished art off to our rep in about three hours.

Today I got a sample print back and I’m pretty stoked. The Mandate Press handled the job, and I’m really chuffed at how my drawing turned out letterpressed — I was nervous about the size and metallic ink; had I known Mandate was at the helm I would have just chilled out about the whole thing. I have no idea how the kit is being distributed, so I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for any details.

In the meantime, remember kids: if you have the option, always ask for FSC certified papers for your projects, it’s one of the only ways to secure a sustainably produced sheet, and has a profound impact on the environment. And put out your campfires. And don’t talk to strangers!

A New Hive Adventures in Apiculture by Jory Dayne

About six years ago, when I was living on the Big Island of Hawai’i, I had the opportunity to visit the hives of Big Island Bees. That was my first exposure to the world of beekeeping, and I walked away with more than a jar of their white organic Ohi’a Lehua honey. I left wondering if I could ever do something like that — I had felt a weird affinity there, strangely at home with the idea, despite the fact I’d never owned so much as an ant farm growing up, and had always been a little timid around bees.

Fast forward a few years, and I see the staggering New Hive from the guys at Black Sheep & Prodigal Sons. I learned about colony collapse disorder and the real threat it posed to the bees and the animals whose food depends on bee pollination (read: all of them, including us). From that point, I did what I always do whenever I get keen to something: I started reading anything I could get my hands on, and annoying everyone with an endless barrage of tidbits that I’d just found out. I learned about the history of beekeeping, honey productions, and even the worship of bees; I read up on beekeepers today with hives on their apartment rooftops in big cities, about large-scale pollination operations, and different Honey varietals: tupelo, clover, wildflower. I started collecting honeys where I could find them: amber mountain honey from Mendon, Utah, Black buckwheat honey from New York, and deep-red honey from Taiga Cedar in Russia. Partly I was wondering how different they could possibly taste (very) and partly it seemed like a very small way to support the beekeepers doing what I thought I could not.

About a year later, I discovered Sunset magazine’s One-Block Diet, an effort to espouse locavore trends and revive a lot of skills that had been slipping from the American landscape: serious gardening, canning, and beekeeping. Here were people with no real experience just jumping into apiculture, and I though “well, if they can do it…”

Intersecting all this interest in such a niche process was a deep seated longing that had been growing in me for a while. I’ve spoken with a lot of friends who work in the digital industries, and we’re all sort of uneasy with how fickle the whole thing is. Our work is unbelievably ephemeral. We push plastic buttons all day for a living. A few weeks ago, Calpernia Addams jokingly asked via Twitter, “What would your helpful #ApocalypseSkill be If a zombie apocalypse happens?” And I think for most of the designers I know, the answer would be similar to mine “Food. I would be food.” Contrast that with my dad, who at four years younger than I am now, had built a two-story home for his new family from scratch. He just knows how stuff works. He can make things happen. Meanwhile, I know teenagers who (no lie) literally did not know that you could make cookie dough at home. I know folks older than me who didn’t know that simple gravity was the chief provider of pressure for most of our tap water.

As a society we’ve lost a lot of knowledge that was critical for survival just a few generations ago, and we’ve become largely segregated from many processes crucial for basic life. This all just boils down to me wishing that I knew how to do more with my hands. That I knew how to make something, anything. I feel like I, and most of our society, have lost most of the tethers to our land, and that loss registers palpable somewhere within me for reasons I don’t really understand. Somehow, bees feel like the beginning of a solution to that problem.

So for the past months I’ve been making all the necessary arrangements, and being pretty vocal about it: I told everyone about my plans. This wasn’t simply me being loud, obnoxious me — to be honest I didn’t want to chicken out and I knew that my own pride would keep me going if my actual determination didn’t. If I kept telling people I was going to keep bees, I would eventually have to start keeping them, if only to save face. I got my first hive, a great little garden top with a copper roof, painted it a crisp white and set it into the garden at my folks’s place out in Riverton — it didn’t seem like a great idea to set up at my house: I’m only renting and there are a bunch of little lawsuits kids in the houses around mine. Meanwhile, my parents have a huge yard with tons of fruit trees and a sprawling garden; their neighborhood is surrounded by farmland and sits right against the mountains — the bees would have plenty to eat and little to disturb. I got my equipment, read a half a dozen more books on the matter, and waited.

Last week my bees finally got here, and despite all my planning, I was still more than a little nervous. I’d planned on attending a few workshops but the weather has been so cold here, making any hiving prior to this last week all but impossible. I realized that despite all the preparations I’d made, my actual experience with bees amounted to exactly zero minutes and zero seconds, and here I’d have 8,000 on my hands in a matter of hours. Then I remembered something Novella Carpenter said in this mesmerizing Urban Farming video from Chow: when she needed to know how to butcher a coney from her backyard farm, she looked it up on YouTube and found ample resources. So I did the same, and about 30 minutes later I had watched three videos on hiving a package of bees — seeing as they were all different, but all worked, I figured there was probably relatively little that could go wrong, and I just settled down about the whole thing. I drove down to Hansen Hives in Sugarhouse, picked up my shoebox sized package of bees, and drove them back to the hive.

And it went off without a hitch. Better, actually. I kept the bees calm with some sugar-water, and they poured down into the hive without hysterics. I thought I would panic when they were all humming around me, but frankly, I was totally smitten with the whole bunch. They were crawling all over my hands, but none of them were being aggressive at all, and the whole rigamarole was over in a matter of minutes. I didn’t get stung once (not that I’m afraid to be, I just expected to be) and I only squished three. I don’t know how serious I am about harvesting honey, I just really love the bees, and more than content to just be a steward. Right now they are working the Hawthorne trees around my house like there’s no tomorrow, and my folks are just as taken with them as I am. I think this is the beginning of something big for me, but I don’t quite know yet what.

Six-Hundred & Seventy Mile Stereo A Visual Travelogue & Love-letter to Instragram by Jory Dayne

Last week I got back from a quick weekender to Los Angeles with Dave, Jac, and Jac’s brother-in-law Mason. We drove out to see our friend Josh get a $30,000 scholarship to FIDM’s Debut program, to photograph some dresses from a collection he’s been working on, and to just get the hell away from this relentless chill.

While we were out there, we stopped in at James Jean’s Rebus exhibition at the Martha Otero gallery in Melrose, shopped around at Suru and Crimie, drifted from shop to shop in Silverlake, and wandered around the Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas on the way back. When Jac and I travel, more than seeing the sites, we’re there to eat the food. Last time we were out there we were introduced to the Pantry and Fred 62 (Thanks, Kyle!) — this time we drug Dave and Mason to those again and added a few favorites to our roster: Casita del Campo was a campy delight, and BerlinCurryWurst was an absolute dream. Plus, the waitstaff at both are extremely easy on the eyes, to put it mildly.

One thing I was glad to play around with throughout the trip was the Instagram app on my iphone. Acejet 170 recently published an entry about the app’s ability to “polish a turd,” and while I woudn’t go that far — I’ve taken more than a few unpolishable shots — it does save, for me anyway, more than a few pics from the bin. It manages to make the mundane lovable, and seems to encourage keeping a visual accounting of your comings and going. Pair it with Momento, and you have a well-designed, dynamic daily record.

If you’re on Instagram, look me up: I’m under the user name “jorydayne”

All in all it was a visual smörgåsbord: inspiring and arresting; it left me not a little overwhelmed, but on the whole deeply satisfied. Back at home it’s still blustery and frigid, but there are tell-tale signs of spring popping up everywhere. This is the busiest time of year for me, and I’ve got projects coming out of my ears.

The Girl & the Robot Written & Illustrated by Jory Dayne

Look, this much is certain, Robyn is a busy, busy woman. I don’t know how she does it, but she is everywhere, on every track, and she is killing it every time — and I, for one, welcome our new robotic overload.

If she isn’t teaming up with the Savage Skulls, she’s singing in the background of a Likke Li video — if she’s not recording with Royksöpp, she’s laying down tracks with Snoop Dogg. I’ve had Body Talk in all its incarnations on a near constant rotation since it came out last year (or frankly, well before) and I still haven’t tired of it.

One moment she’s making punch-dancing look cool, the next she looks like she’s jumped straight out of The Littles. She’s impish but elegant, and ballsy as all hell.

Over at These Roving Eyes, Jason’s gone so far as to mark her as this generation’s Björk, and if you need confirmation, check B’s own stone-faced observation during Robyn’s gorgeous performance of “Hyperballad” at the 2010 Polar Music Prize.

Anyway, all of this to say that “Fembot” is the jam, y’all — and that when that Swedish android rolls up into Salt Lake, I am going to be there with bells on.

Antelope Island Photograph by Jory Dayne

This past Saturday, Dave and I drove out to the shore of the Great Salt Lake. The whole area is a study in gorgeous desolation: a bizarre amalgamation of a long-forgotten Coney Island-esqe amusements, Soviet-style refineries, and blasted heaths. A plywood billboard, barely 10 feet tall declares that the Great Saltair is closed, but the beach is still open. A half a mile away at the deserted marina, boats float noiselessly in the harbor, heavy under snowy blankets. The wind whips over the shore, through the masts, and pulls the clouds down low over everything. But out there on Antelope Island, where you can just imagine the buffalo hunkered down in their giant herds for the winter, the sun is cutting through the dusk…

It feels like it’s been winter forever. And while I can handle a strong winter, it’s the intermittent sunny days — breaking 50°F at midday, only to plummet hours later into the low 20s, accompanied with freezing rain and snow — that really get me. I’m leaving next week for a trip to the coast, to Los Angeles, a trip that I seem to be making more and more often. Hopefully a little sun will tide me over ‘til Utah decides it’s done with all this blustery nonsense.

I’m Real, Real Good at Designing Parade Floats Brilliant Ideas by Jory Dayne & Co.

One thing that you might not know about me is that I am a three-time award winning float designer. Another thing you might not know about me is that I hate designing floats. This is my curse and my glory. Every year my office gets wrangled into designing a float for the literal procession of summertime parades that stretch from June to August, and every year the theme is “pioneer-something” (lest we forget, lest we forget).

So we’ve pretty much taken it seriously every year, up until last year, when we realized that we are, y’know, designing floats, and come-on. The more “out there” a float is, the more you love them. So last year we did a float with a robot-piloted, rocket-powered covered wagon blasting off out of a jade-toned rainbow. And we got an award. This year we are hoping to top that, and here are some of the ideas that we came up with on our white board:

1. The Big Green Float float. They kept saying they wanted a “green” float. Sustainability! Buzz-words!

2. “Press forward with the pioneers” float. (It’s the official theme for this year’s parades. And the 411 with all the cool moms this year is that the hip kids are all about chatting on their iPads, tweettering, and something called a Ke$ha?)

3. The “somebody said ‘Macy’s day parade float,’ but I thought they said Macy Gray parade float” float. Maybe not such an obvious hit at first, but remember, we could probably get Macy Gray. Some of Utah’s best friends are Macy Gray.

4. The Indian leg-wrestling float. Pioneer games are such a hit, especially if you have cherished memories of being asked to wrap your legs around your church youth group leader’s for a “quick little demo,” “just between us.”

5. The Santa Queen Float. The Santa Queen is a diner in Santaquin (see what they did there?) that I am wont to frequent, and with a name like that, wouldn’t it just be a great drag burlesque dive bar and/or float idea? And finally,

6. Whistler’s Mother float, which, instead of being a great float, could also just maybe be a big drawing of the painting Whistler’s Mother.

My friend and long time co-worker/collaborator Steven Stone has recently released a pretty comprehensive portfolio of his work. I was privileged to work on about 0.1% of the site, and am so excited to see it live. Steven’s been working with everyone from Harley Davidson, Jeremy Jones, Milk studios in NYC, and many others.

The above image is from Steven’s series called Brujeria and I cannot get enough of it. It’s a nice break from the usual bikes and boards he usually shoots, and just underscores what a versatile photographer Stone is.

Go check out the rest of his work →

Tuesdays are rapidly becoming my default painting days: I typically have little to prep for Wednesday’s work, there’s left-overs in the fridge from Monday, and Dave volunteers at the library ‘til late.

I’ve got the whole house to myself, so I lock myself in the studio, crank the music up, and get to work! This piece is about 10″ x 10″, and a combination of acrylic, photoshop, and vector.

View this entry on jorydayne.net

Christopher Dowling commissioned me to draw a fewheadcuts for the contributing photographers in his upcoming publication, Printed. Judging by the calibre of its participants, Printed promises to be an incredible piece, and I’m thrilled to be involved.

Left to right, top to bottom: Megumi Maruo, François Coquerel, Christopher Dowling, Severin Koller, Mark Peckmezian, Red de Leon, Alec Soth, Miranda Lehman, Nanako Koyama, Jason Koxvold, Alena Waggershauser, and Noah Kalina.

View this entry on jorydayne.net

While I enjoyed the blog format and keeping a record of my daily accounts, I wanted to establish an evolving body of work that, while driven by daily minutiae, was representative of the level of work I am capable of, and that lent itself to an elegant gestalt: part documentary discipline, part design calisthenics.

In starting this up again, I started to question whether or not I should even bother. Truly we live in an age of information overload, and the last thing the world needs is another blog. But this is my thinking: with so much information via sites like twitter, personal blogs, and whatever else have you; we have an opportunity now to build better relationships between clients and collaborators. Relationships that can be built on a mutual appreciation of character — on a congress of common values and ideals. And all digital detritus considered, I think that’s pretty rad.

To that end, I am hoping this site becomes an engaging blend of personality and portfolio. I want this to be a place where people can see what I do, but also get a taste for who I am.

So all that having been said, lets get down to the business of re-introductions:

My name is Jory Dayne. I’m a graphic designer and illustrator chiefly because I’m thrilled by a good dialogue.