This one’s from Bob. People always marvel at how well we get along. Here’s how a typical conversation between Seth and Bob goes.

Purchase a limited edition of High Five! here.

The silk-screened print by Seth depicts Seth and Bob’s successful attempt at lifting Jeffrey Deitch off the ground with balloons. Check out the “success” here

Purchase a limited edition of High Five! here.

Over the past two days, we’ve been in three different states and cities, so I’ve had to remind myself continuously where the heck I am.

Asheville packed a lot of fun into a few days. Right down the tracks from where we were parked, the Wedge gallery and micro-brewery served up $10 pitchers of a beer that Seth will actually drink (that means it’s really good). We also made some new friends and revived some old friendships: thanks to Stacey and Lee for taking us to the falls, and thanks to Justin for the great dinner and company!

So we left Asheville yesterday afternoon where the day before Seth and Bob painted murals in the mural garden, a local wall dedicated to harrassment free expression, we were told by the folks at Flood. From the looks of it, few mural painters grace the mural garden. The walls were completely covered with tags, though, and several by a tagger called Doink.

The only rule at the mural garden is to completely cover another person’s work, taking care not to leave anything half-covered. The garden was close by, so the guys schlepped some paint cans down the railroad tracks to the wall. A tagger called Doink had a few things up. Seth painted this over his tag:

Behind this wall are some shorter silos on which Bob painted a tractor emiting a cloud of nasty smoke whose nastiness comes from several tags showing through a light coat of gesso and white paint, but I don’t have any pictures of his, so he’ll have to add a picture HERE:

Flood had a great library where I found an illustrated version of the Bible by world-class painter, Thomas Kinkade. I just wanted to share this.

Here’s a little sampling from the inside. I’m not sure how his imagery relates to the content.

We got the bus cranked and probably spent thirty minutes tuning our CB radio: thumping it, testing channels, figuring out (or not really figuring out) what SWR, USB, LSB, SSB, talkback, af gain, rf gain, roger beeps, dimmer, squelch, and 10 codes are all about. Finally we hit the road and got a little CB action. There was some work on I-40 and a trucker was telling another trucker that he better “geeit on over when they says merge, don’t be scaird now!”

It wasn’t but a couple of hours and we found ourselves in the rapidly dwindling mountains of Knoxville, Tennessee. We made a quick stop to see the folks at Yeehaw Industries who run one of few letter press shops in the country. They use mostly post-consumer papers and cardstocks, which is just one reason why you should buy stuff from them. Another reason is that they make really cool stuff, so check them out.

After leaving Yeehaw, we found ourselves at a crossroads: head to Nashville or head north to Kentucky. While we all want to go to Nashville, Dawn and Seth did some research on temperatures around the country, and we were figuring the westerly route might bring us into hotter climates, so we’re heading north for the Great Lakes, Canada and…oh yes…Alaska.

But first a stop off in Lexington, Kentucky and then Cincinnati, Ohio. Today we met up with friends Brian and Blakely who treated us to an afternoon in the Raven’s Run nature preserve. We hiked out to an overlook of the Kentucky River.

Tomorrow might bring a visit to the Wild Turkey distillery, which offers free tours. What would a visit to Kentucky be without taste-testing some whiskey? Until next time…Jamie

This silk-screened print by Dawn was inspired by our visit to Titusville, FL, where we watched a midnight rocket launch at Cape Canaveral. When we were about to leave, we got our bus into a little pickle of a ditch and had to push it out…or did we?

Purchase a limited edition of High Five! here.

Inspired by a fight over something pretty stupid, we thought it would be interesting to take a different perspective on all the things that have gone wrong over the past year. High Five (something we never do) was born. Neon colors don’t show up very well on digital cameras, so imagine all of these a bit brighter than they are depicted here.

buy the whole series here

A limited edition Hand Silkscreened portfolio by Transit Antenna Crew Members : Seth Gadsden, Jamie Self, Bob Snead, and Dawn Snead is now available. Entitled “High Five!” the series details a new perspective on all the problems Transit Antenna has had during the past year. This edition was printed during our stint at Hub Bub in Spartanburg, SC. Throughout the next ten days we will be posting a detail of each print. The portfolio includes a cover page and 10 signed/numbered prints in an edition of only 20! All prints are on 8.5 inch by 9 inch paper. You can buy a whole portfolio now for only $250 (that’s only 25 Bucks a print!) Lower numbers in the edition will be sold on a first come first serve basis, so order now!

We left Spartanburg after being there for over a week and enduring the stifling heat. We know it’s time to move to cooler climates when the vegetables rot in a day, the bread is gooey warm and not in a good way, every time we open the fridge a stream of defrosted water flows around our toes, and even the Governor flees South Carolina to blow off steam in the mountains of a state with way less moral propriety than his own (just like the other 48).

But whenever we find ourselves actually tolerating the weather (sweating bullets, making ourselves nearly sick), I think how far we’ve come in adapting to our ever changing environs. Being from South Carolina, none of us would have ever said before the trip that it’s okay to live not even outside, but inside a heat-trapping vehicle sitting in a parking lot! I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you.

Before we left Spartanburg, we gave Alex, Betsy, Jonas and all the residents gifts of the assorted prints we made, including this lovely garment that Bob made. It was inspired by a (perhaps intentional?) design error in the promo material the resident artists made for an upcoming event called the “Make-a-thon.” The flier pictures a crab scrawling something with a red pen that looks an awful lot like “Make-a-thong.” Seth was a trooper and modeled it for the camera.

So we packed up the bus and left the graffiti wall that our bus looks really cool against, and took a cue from our Governor and headed to the mountains of Asheville through the Saluda grade. Man, the air is so much cooler here! We had some difficulty scoring oil as we rolled through town, but when we changed our oil filters, they didn’t leak when we put them back on, which was AWESOME—never happens! I told everyone to thank Tootsie, who is our oil goddess, just so you know. (You might say a word or two each night to help us out.) Yes, we’d already been turned down by several restaurants with “contracts” whose oil containers were chocked full, but marked by the ubiquitous Blue Ridge Biofuels sticker, but our luck was changing. I wasn’t worried.

Finally, we scored a full tank, not marked by Blue Ridge Biofuels, and headed to the Wal-Mart for easy access facilities and sleep. In the morning, we all bought ourselves some new digs: shorts, tees, nicer shirts for me since all mine look terrible. Next, laundry. Next, heading to the Flood Gallery and Art Center where we were greeted with serious Southern Hospitality.

Flood is a collective gallery, studio, and residency space that also houses (what do you know!?) the Blue Ridge Biofuels operation! What a coincidence. Nice folks at Flood. They’ve got so much going on, biodiesel making, glass blowing, sculpture, blacksmithing, artist residencies, exhibition spaces, a library, writing workshops and readings, and a haircutting salon where I will tomorrow chop all my hair off. There. I said it. Now I have to do it! I was thinking something like this:

That way my ears won’t sweat.

Anyway, we’ll be in Asheville for a couple of days parked at Flood, another place where our bus looks cool, and will report soon with information about our whereabouts and all the new stuff you will soon see in our Transit Antenna shop.

Until next time…Jamie

by Josef Kristofoletti.

by Josef Kristofoletti.