I grew up in a part of Upstate New York where the average snowfall is close to 162 centimeters per year. Every year there is a good chance that a few “snow days” will happen due to schools closing because of inclement weather. Every morning that it snowed, my brother and I would hover near the radio eating our breakfast cereal and listening to the different small towns whose school districts announced that there would be no school that day. One of the nearby towns was named Pleasant Valley, and they tended to luck out and get A LOT of snow days. As a kid, I always thought that those kids were fated to live charmed existences.
Fast forward 25 years in time: I was working at an ad agency in Los Angeles when one of my fellow freelancers told me about an exciting magazine that his friends were doing that was a compendium of writing, design, art, and photography. He mentioned that it had recently won a prize from the Utne Reader, and the next day brought in an issue of Sherbert Magazine for me to check out. The magazine was inspiring - an obvious labor of love by some folks with an interesting network of collaborators and a whole lot of good design sense…
Written by Ian Lynam
I struck up a correspondence with Daniel Weise, who along with Kalene Rivers edits the magazine. In one of his first emails, he revealed to me that he actually was from magical Pleasant Valley - and it shows! He has somehow kept some of that lucky magic that he had when he was a kid. Kalene seems to have some residual magic from somewhere or other, as well. They are the kind of creative polymaths that you want on your team. They create unique, fun art for galleries and on the street. Both of them have logged in the hours designing: Dan did a chunk of time at Heavy while Kalene was at Pentagram.
In April, the kids announced that they were going to open a STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE STAND on the Boardwalk in Coney Island. Their latest project is aptly named “Coney Island Shortcakes“.
Dan and Kalene took some time out of serving up refreshing desserts to heat wave-stricken New Yorkers to tell Ping a bit about their creative endeavors.
Before we get to the strawberries: Where did your collaborative efforts start?
Dan had been living in Denver, Colorado publishing Sherbert magazine, organizing art shows and other Sherbert related events, doing freelance design work, teaching design at the Community College of Denver and drawing & painting as much as possible. Kalene was living in NYC working for Pentagram and designing, making and installing her family of infamous Walkers around the streets of NY.
Keeping it real: one of Kalene’s walkers rocking the fresh gear and even fresher beats
Punk Girl installed in SoHo
Rave on
Headspin!
The first project we worked on together was for a show Dan had been asked to be in at the Andenken Gallery in Denver CO called “Order of Operations”, a group show with Evan Hecox and Jarrod Stuhlsatz. The pieces were a series of 4 foot wide x 20″ tall intricate cityscapes.
Kalene added a second layer of scroll cut cities that added an awesome sense of dimension to the pieces. The outcome of our first collaboration was a big success and we have been working together ever since.
You collaborate as Thundercut. What range of projects have you been working on so far?
We have been doing our street based installation work, signage and our gallery work under the Thundercut name. Recently we have begun doing print and web design under the same name to make ourselves a bit more legit.
Wood cut logo created for Halcyon Records in Dumbo
Any close scrapes with the law during your street installations?
When putting up the mermaid Walker in Coney Island on the morning of the Mermaid Parade we arrived around 8am to find the streets filled with cops setting up. Problem! Standing at the crosswalk sign where we wanted to put the mermaid, we saw a trash truck coming down 12th Street and when they got to the corner we asked them if they could stop their trash truck in front of the crosswalk sign for a minute to block the cops view. They said “sure” and even watched out for us and told us when the cops were coming. Thanks guys.
While filming our “how to make a walker” piece Dan decided to paste up a conversion vehicle after putting up the walker. He did it real quick and for the camera, but after finishing we walked away toward the intersection and noticed a cop car at the red light who had to off seen the entire thing… they didn’t say anything though and we just kept on walking….
Do you have any work in shows coming up?
Yes, we are about to send work to a show in Rotterdam in The Netherlands called Absolut Search (sponsored by Absolut Vodka & CBK).
We also got our “walker” movie accepted into the Impact Film Festival that is currently on tour in the Netherlands.
When did you start doing Sherbert and why?
Sherbert was started in the summer of 2001 and the first issue came out in January of 2002. The basic idea behind Sherbert has always been to try to inspire people with the things that inspire us and to build a community around those ideas.
As far as a magazine goal, we want to get Sherbert on a bit more of a set schedule, and start working on more collaborative projects with other publications and organizations. Really start pushing the community aspect of the magazine…
What can we look forward to in the new issue?
There are lots of new things to check out in the new issue, we are perfect binding and using a black stock on the cover, we have also increased our page count to 64 and this issue comes with a 6″ social distance ruler, a mix CD from NOBOT media (Denver, Colorado), a make it yourself post card from smiling disease (Portland, Oregon), and we even had a custom display face designed by Luke Prowse (London, UK). It’s our best issue yet.
A smiling bearded Dan inside the smallest work cubicle yet devised by humankind.
Now to the dessert! When did it occur to you to open a strawberry shortcake stand?
There are so many different reasons why we started the shortcake stand. Here are a few: We are both graphic designers and as a result we have spent way too much time in front of computer screens in the past 4-5 summers. Over the past year we decided we needed a bit of a change so during the course of the year we both quit our jobs to spend some more time focusing on our art work, put more time into Sherbert magazine, pick up freelance work, AND spend the summer doing something totally different than what we had been doing…
One of our ideas that we had been talking about for the past few years was opening a Strawberry Shortcake Stand at Coney Island.
Coney Island has always been one of our favorite places in NYC and it is always a frequent destination for us in the summer, so the idea of spending even more time out there was very appealing. There has also been a lot of talk about Coney island changing very soon. Developers have been buying up land, and as many people know there is talk of a great big indoor mall, where Coney Island is now. So we figured if we didn’t do it now we may never get a chance to do it again.
Some “customers of the day”:
even the dead can’t resist
sweet grandpa coming for a treat
adorable shortcake lovers from the stand next doors
Hawaiian strawberry addict
The idea to sell strawberry shortcake came about for a few reasons: Coney Island is a very American place, and strawberry shortcake is a very American dessert. It has tradition, it reminds us of our childhood, it’s really delicious and as far as we knew no one at Coney Island had anything like it. It is also a slightly healthier alternative to what was already there.
Is it a seasonal project, or….?
Yes it is definitely a seasonal thing. People only really go to Coney island in the summer time. The rest of the year it’s pretty deserted. As far as doing it again next year, it’s still up in the air….
What is the idea behind doing the Coney Island Shortcake- interview series?
We wanted to get to know the people of Coney Island better. We still have a lot of interviews to do, but we like what we have so far…
Have you seen the Japanese TV show that you were featured on?
No, not yet….
Well, it’ll be on YouTube soon enough, I’m sure. Big ups to Dan and Kalene for taking time out to be hassled.
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None found
i want that small silkscreen press 0.0
Posted by: 100kr on August 25th, 2006 at 2:02 am
I commend you guys. Taking initiative and doing something creative, fun and purely for the love of the sweet, sweet strawberry shortcake. The entire aspect of how your company functions and presents your products is refreshing and rarely seen now-a-days. I’ll be stopping by Coney to savor the tasty licks of creativity revel in strawberry-shortcake goodness.
Posted by: Morgan Antoinette on August 25th, 2006 at 2:05 am
They’re common in Japan. They are called Print Gocco and are made by Riso. See them here:
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Funny, I was just reading about the Coney Island Strawberry Shortcakes “project” recently when I found Jeff Staples’ blog… Cool and creative ideas guys!
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