More on this year’s festivities later…

Rachel Vorm and I recently completed work on a Web site for the local video production company, Yellow Bird. Among their projects is a recently completed documentary called “Eyes on Africa”, produced for the non-profit organization, Global Partners for Development. The documentary will be airing on the California Public Broadcasting Station and on the Starfish Network through Dish on Demand. You can take a look at the site by clicking the image below.

Over this last year, three more people have joined the Shrieking Tree group: Wesley, Danny, and Nicole Anderson. The fourth, and most recent addition, is Rachel Vorm. Due to an overwhelming amount of projects, Rachel hopped on board last month and worked with me on a Web site for the video production company, Yellowbird. I’ll have a post on that later, but for now I want to leave you with a piece of her art and encourage you to check out her personal site for more interesting stuff.

Artwork by Rachel Vorm.

Yesterday we gave you a look at Steph’s story from the upcoming book, From a Growing Community, Iowa’s Homeless Youth. Today, we’re giving you the other half of the book preview: Trevor’s story. Later this week you’ll be able to pre-order the book for $10, which is half the price it’ll sell for when published in May. Profits will go to Iowa Homeless Youth Centers. (Click any of the images below to enlarge. Then use the arrows to flip through the pages.)

Well the Community Bash went off very, very nicely. Thanks go out to Aeon Grey, The Envy Corps, Patrick Fleming of the Poison Control Center, Seedlings, and The Nutleys for playing that night, as well as Logan Christian for excellently mixing them, and Nick Ridler for booking them. Also due for thanks are Zach and Ben Anderson, owners of Crown Cleaners, for donating the Community Bash t-shirts (designed by Smash) that were sold that night, and Andrew Nixon for selling them. We have some left over and will probably be making them available online soon. Thanks to everyone’s help, Shrieking Tree was able to raise over $1,300 for Iowa Homeless Youth Centers that night!

Now for those of you who weren’t there to see it in person, I’ve got a look at the first printed pages of the upcoming book From a Growing Community, Iowa’s Homeless Youth, edited by Danny Heggen, and designed by Wesley Norman, Nicole Anderson, and myself. Photographs were taken by Wes and I. This post will cover Steph’s Story, while tomorrow’s post will cover another, longer story — Trevor’s. Later this week, we plan to make a 12-page PDF available of the entire book preview along with the option to pre-order your copy for half the price the book will eventually sell for. The final book will include 9 stories from Iowa’s homeless youth and over 60 pages of full color images. Profits will go to benefit Iowa Homeless Youth Centers. (Click any of the images below to enlarge. Then use the arrows to flip through the pages.)

Here’s another recent addition to the Shrieking Tree Web Factory site: A photo gallery containing twelve images I’ve snapped over the past two years. I also have two new business projects I’m creating Web sites for – One is a glass manufacturing company called Zetian Systems, located in China; the other one is a glass installation company called Embassy Glass, which dwells in Las Vegas, Nevada (where I’m currently living). Amidst those projects, I am also working on a Web site for my brother Wesley, who is, in my opinion, an amazing photographer. A music video for another artist is also in the works. Busy, busy, busy. 

I shot this photo while doing on-site photography for Embassy Glass’s installation projects.

A gallery of some printed material that I’ve worked on from 2000-2006 is now available to view at the Shrieking Tree Web Factory, including this digital painting I made for an Elmo album, below. 

This digital painting was based on a concept by Kirk Brown.

This past week has been spent mostly taking time off from music and working hard on the Shrieking Tree Web site – Smoothing out animation and updating project information. If you’ve visited recently, you might have noticed that there is a small bar of grey text beneath the main attraction. I have now added a voiceover news button, so you can hear a little bit about the latest Web projects I’m working on (straight from my mouth). There’s also an audio clip about pricing, for customers who want to know more about cost. To the left of those are two other options – “History,” and “Norman.” The history option contains a small history of my Web work, along with a list of over 40 projects I’ve worked on over the past few years. “Norman” is slated to be the replacement for what I do here: Writing updates about all the projects I’ve got my hands in. I figured that it might be nice to let the Cardboard Canary site rest as a time capsule to the years that band was around and keep the new stuff elsewhere – so Shrieking Tree will (hopefully) eventually be my new journaling home. So that’s it for this past week. Nothing too exciting, but a few things that I thought would be useful to get finished. Next up: Recording to “Anxious Am I”; and “The Usual Delve.”

For those of you who watched Cardboard Canary play shows in 2002, you might remember that we frequently performed with a band called Sophia, which contained our friends Kirk Brown, Jason Staniger, and Chris Blaess. I’ve now added one of their songs called “Wish Pool” to the Sophia page in the Shrieking Tree portfolio.

This is the logo that I made long ago for Sophia, based off ideas from Kirk Brown.

For those who are interested in my Web work, take a look at the newly redesigned ShriekingTree.com. Eventually, I hope to have music and photographs there as well, but for now, the portfolio should provide an interesting look at the history of sites I’ve developed. This weekend is slated to be another weekend of recording, focused on finishing vocals for “Phyllis” and polishing up those on the other four songs. Yes, friends, we are still pushing forward!