#also there’s a video of me putting salt in the kiln with our big ass 10ft angle iron and my tail is just swinging around

[fuck-kirk]

We had a Halloween party and ran our big salt kiln at the same time. Resulted in an interesting look…

[craigwinslow]

2018: Ripples from Jet Fuel

Oh, hello again friend! It’s been 1.5 years since my last update... 

If you look back, I used to write and share a lot more. I often feel discouraged at the nature of these massive “catch-up” posts where I essentially dump a bunch of images on you. Then again, it’s kind of comforting; I’ve had my hands full, and it’s been some very positive momentum.

Immediately after wrapping up my Adobe Creative Residency in May 2017, my focus turned toward a massive opportunity at The Neon Museum in Las Vegas. For the rest of 2017, I worked on designing an entire, first-of-its-kind, permanent exhibition called ‘Brilliant!’ which opened Feb 2018; a 30 min immersive audiovisual experience, reviving their broken neon signs with digital light.

It was one of the most challenging and rewarding projects I’ve worked on to date; an incredible affirmation in my own abilities, for The Neon Museum to put so much trust in me to enable my vision for the project, and it continues to be a fully collaborative partnership. 2019 will see much more out of ‘Brilliant!’

I’ve often referred to the Adobe Creative Residency as jet fuel for my creative career, and it’s absolutely true— at the time, I had a college degree, 3 years experience at JDK, and 3 years experience working for myself. Landing the Adobe Residency amplified my momentum tenfold, financially enabling me to explore, improve, and share on a global stage. (Applications are now open for 2019 by the way!)

This however, led to a massive amount of stress, which I had to constantly cope with as I pushed myself harder than ever to achieve as much as possible in those short 52 weeks. But, what happens... when the jet fuel runs out? After your dream job ends? 

It kinda... didn’t end. The rest of 2017 led right into working on ‘Brilliant!’ which felt like a massive extension of Light Capsules, but neon, and Las Vegas. Similar stress levels continued, but it was such viscerally, wonderfully, satisfying, fulfilling work.

The people who have experienced ‘Brilliant!’ tell me about their emotional responses, it’s rich with history, nostalgia, and a feeling of childhood magic— I could not possibly be more proud of it.

Following launch, I finally took a proper break: a month in Europe with Maggie to Amsterdam, Haarlem, train to Berlin, train to Copenhagen, and a weekend in Paris. It was incredible. I visited museums. I relaxed. I read a freakin book. (Ready Player One. Yes, I thought the movie fell super flat.) 

Halfway through the trip, I had already started working on my next big opportunity, with the Portland Trail Blazers for the NBA Playoffs. Their CMO saw my SXSW talk near the end of my Adobe Creative Residency, and wanted to bring me in to work on new concepts— ripples from the jet fuel of my year as a creative resident, provided doors to open and opportunities I wouldn’t have expected.

Here’s a selection of 2018 projects I was most excited to create this year, followed by a look into the future at what 2019 might look like.

~

BRILLIANT! A NEON MUSEUM EXPERIENCE

360º permanent audiovisual exhibit at The Neon Museum in Las Vegas, NV. — Read more here!

PORTLAND TRAIL BLAZERS NBA PLAYOFFS

Concept design and creative direction for the pre-game opening of the NBA Playoffs. — Read more here!

LIGHTFORM x GEMMA O’BRIEN

Projection augmented mural at Lightform HQ, collaboration with Gemma O’Brien for Lightform. — Read more here!

INTO THE MOON

Projection design for a music video directed by Micah Dudash for Casey Dubie’s “Into The Moon,” supported with projectors by Canon. — Watch the full music video here!

PICKATHON COSMOS

A massive projection mapped sky canvas for the 20th annual Pickathon, co-curated with Eric Cade Schoenborn, showing various digital artists’ work. — Read more here.

LONDON LETTERHEADS

Collaborative projection mural with Anna Frederick for PVS’s The Grand Exhibition at London Letterheads; also gave a Light Capsules talk, taught two pen tool workshops, and showed a reprise projection of Light Capsule No.009.

THOUGHTWORKS PARADIGMSHIFT

Concept work, specialty lighting, projection mapping, and stage/content design with the core ThoughtWorks P/S team. I was also honored to be a featured artist for their Signature Event, creating multiple graffiti projections and a laser/projection kiln light installation called “Harrop’s Kiln”

WHITE NOISE NOW // HEAT

Our follow up to SALT, we brought the massive, recently unoccupied, surprise location Blodgett Oven Factory to life with a site-specific performance of light, sound, and movement. One night, one experience. Full video & documentation is in the works. — Here’s a peek.

SEATTLE PIER 86

Public art collaboration with Chris Rojas, creating a variety of projection mapped historical and locally-inspired content for Seattle’s largest projection mapping installation to date.

KAMP GRIZZLY HOLIDAZE

Closed out the year with a proper doozy of a party— KAMP brought me onto their core team to create some special light installations for their holiday party: detailed shopping carts with faux neon, commissioned a custom market sign, controlled live visuals on a 4 meter projection-mapped sphere, animated a powerful stage laser— oh, and an entire experiential light room where I created “NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL CYBER” augmenting a designed array of 500 CDs + 17 mirror balls + haze.

There you have it, 2018.

Oh! Also I had some past Speaking Scenarios!

WeMake Celebrates 2017 Keynote Speaker — Portland, OR CIID Open Lecture — Copenhagen, DK Nevada State College — Henderson, NV PSU Show & Tell — Portland, OR NAB Show Panel on Future of AR/VR/XR — Las Vegas, NV AIGA Vermont WTF!? Series — Burlington, VT New Mexico Highlands University — Las Vegas, NM

Reflecting forward.

Back when I started this independent venture in 2013, I started setting annual ‘mantras’ to focus on overarching goals, a mental mind-state— something to balance my gut against when pursuing projects and concepts.

It’s been tough, self-defeating at times, and borderline overwhelming, a pressure to always be sharing, socializing the medias, while balancing getting the work done, and having a personal life. Those who love what they do, know that work/life balance isn’t B&W. It’s oddly comforting though, taking this all as affirmation that these past years I’ve been gaining speed, continuing to actively tumble up the rabbit hole.

Previous mantras: 2013: Do More, Go More 2014: Do More, Go More 2015: The year that moved me. (From The Past, Build The Future) 2016: Go, Hustle, Be. The year of YES. 2017: YES. Let’s do this. (smarter, better, together) 2018: Let’s do this, together.

Looking back at 2018, “Let’s do this, together.” absolutely rings true. Nearly all of the above projects involved heavy collaboration and getting multiple partners together to achieve such lofty projects. No one can do it alone, but also the goal isn’t ‘more people’ it’s bringing together the right people. 

This year I learned the massive benefit of building the right team for each job. I’m now feeling more internally stabilized, striking a balance, and have found a better flow.

2019: Seek, Select, Assemble.

Seek— Pursue the difficult.

Select— Nod to advice I received many years ago from Austin Howe: “Continue to be selective. It will pay off.”

Assemble— Bring people together, contribute to community, enable other creatives’ dreams, build powerful collaborative teams to explore new concepts.

A peek toward 2019...

Winchester Mystery House — I’ve been working on some special concepts with their team and we’re narrowing in on a few to hopefully bring to reality.... Tim Burton — Recently announced by The Neon Museum, I’m hoping to be closely involved... dare I say, “collaborate?” with the legendary director himself in 2019. Light Capsules — I’ve been scouting so many locations, near and far, now it’s time to make it happen. NYC. Vancouver. Colorado. Atlanta. Crookston. New Orleans. Jacksonville (OR). Chicago. San Jose. Salt Lake City. Ireland. Lviv, Ukraine. A whole new website... it is time! Japan — In April I’m heading to participate in Tokyo Letterheads and explore Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara. Incredible new tools —I’ve been fortunate to be testing new tools, ones that have already started to spark entirely new design workflows... Lightform, Torch 3D, The Wild, and Google Earth Studio/VR are four in particular I’m super excited to continue exploring.

Stay focused, stay positive, kick some ass. Hello, 2019.