Obama '08

Thanks for visting Treatzone! We hope you'll stop by often to find: the latest things we love . . . quotes that inspire . . . and just what we're up to in general.

    With love + luck,
    Matthew & Sandy

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We just added a few button sets to our Etsy shop. They're made from vintage wrapping paper--a favorite material of the moment--as well as vintage sheet music. Each set is unique but there are three basic elements in each: one girl with a parasol, one snippet of music with text, and one yellow rose. We love how the sets end up sweet or sassy, flirty or dramatic, depending on which girl is paired up with which phrase.

Currently in the shop, we've got the sassy brunette with "maybe you", the demure redhead with "so true of you", and and the sweet blond with "moonlight". (And if you'd rather take a chance and have someone make the decision for you, Little Paper Planes has more sets available here.)

We've kind of been hoarding treats from ebay lately. The books above are the most recent delivery and may make their way into a print series or a collage--or maybe we'll leave them intact and just use them as inspiration. We've also been bidding on lots of vintage wrapping paper and romance comics from the 50s and 60s, which will also probably make their way into a Treatzone project in some way or other. (In fact, some of it already has.) There's just so much good stuff out there it's sometimes hard to know when to say when!

We just shipped out a wholesale order to the lovely Tracie of Broadway Paper, who found us through this blog post by the equally lovely Mary of Suffix Abuse. It's exciting to send a batch of our cards and notebooks all the way to Milwaukee, as well as see the list of shops with our treats grow!

So if you live in the area, we hope you'll stop by. I'm a little sad that I can't go myself, because it definitely looks like the kind of place where a paper junkie could spend hours.

Photo from the Broadway Paper website.

As always, we are working away here at Treatzone! We just added some new gocco prints to our etsy store: a series called Devotion on assorted vintage wrapping papers, and the Primary Education diptych above. They are a perfect fit for the new School Days Poppytalk Handmade Market we are participating in starting this Monday. We hope you'll visit our table!

Just a quick reminder that Matthew and Steve have an art opening tonight at Echo Curio in LA: RamblinWorker + Treatzone = Little Zero. It features the collaborative work behind their new t-shirt line, as well as their individual art. Sadly, I wasn't able to join them, so if you are in the area please stop by and wish them well for me!

We're very excited to announce that we now have treats available at Little Paper Planes! In addition to our cards and Cruel Sea prints, you can also find some online exclusives like our Gilded and Gelded prints and button trios.

And if you're in the LA area this weekend, you should be sure and check out LPP founder Kelly Lynn Jones' opening at Little Bird Gallery on Saturday night--in addition to catching the Treatzone/RamblinWorker show at Echo Curio, of course!

I've been super busy making new art for an upcoming show with good pal Steve Mac: Ramblin Worker + Treatzone = Little Zero, at Echo Curio in LA next weekend. The drawing I made yesterday of T-Rex playing a casio keyboard might be my personal fave. With Rocker Cat on guitar, I've got a creature band in the works--perhaps soon to be joined by an octopus on drums? If you're in the LA area next Saturday, please stop by and see the whole gang!

Oh I'm so sad! I wanted to share this beautiful recording of Sure on this Shining Night, sung by baritone Nathan Gunn, but the site appears to be down. I'm going to post this anyway and hope that it will be back up soon. It's one of my all-time favorite art songs by one of my all-time favorite composers, Samuel Barber. (I've spent most of my life as a classical singer, and although I'm taking a break of sorts--long story--I still really love this music.)

Text by James Agee:

Sure on this shining night
Of starmade shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.

The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.

Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder
Wandering far alone
Of shadows on the stars.

Last night we saw the new Herzog film, Encounters at the End of the World, and all I have to say is, I love this man and every new work I see makes me love him more. His latest is a documentary about Antarctica, to which he brings his usual combination of the philosophical plus a sense of humor and humanity. Definitely try and catch it on the big screen if you can--there are some amazing sequences of dives under icebergs and excursions in snow caves that would lose something on the small screen.

Photo from the Herzog website.

Sunday morning we bought a Vespa! It's been a longtime dream and the opportunity just fell in our lap and we couldn't pass it up. More photos soon!