This weekend numsi will be at The Talent Show in Minneapolis with a whole host of other Twin Cities talent. Come on by for exceptional modern wall art, prints, cards and short sleeved unique t-shirts, all at super duper summer special prices. The event looks like it's going to be fabulous, please come on by and say hello! All vendors will be donating an item to the silent auction, and there will be fantastic food and drinks by Tour de Farm and Bull Run Roasting Company.
Today we did a bit of a photo-shoot with our girls (A is 4 1/2 and O is 2 1/2), trying desperately to cycle through as many of the new numsi spring designs as possible before our luck and their good humor ran out. I took hundreds of photographs in the park, but I think my favorite may be this one I snapped later in the day as we took down an art installation. The plan is to get all the t-shirt designs online this week, please stay tuned!
Way back in December I participated in the Local Artist Gift Mart at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. It was a fun event featuring a whole host of talented local designers and makers, and the stark white Target Gallery was the perfect setting for the colorful numsi wares. I don’t think that I ever posted photographs, here are some taken by Gene Pittman, the Walker’s resident photographer.
After the event, one of the wonderful store managers mentioned that they may have a t-shirt only event in Spring, and lo and behold it is almost here! The press release has just been released and the line up of artists looks great. I am super excited to be participating, and looking forward to once again being in great company at a great event. Perhaps most exciting of all, numsi are going to be selling adult shirts as well as kids t-shirts. Let the making begin! April 17th, consider yourself marked in my calendar!
Walker Art Center’s Popular Artist Marts Expand to Feature T-Shirt Showcase
Just in time for spring, the Walker Art Center presents its first Local Artist T-Shirt Mart from 11 am–5 pm Saturday, April 17, in Cargill Lounge. The latest t-shirt designs for adults and children by locally based artists ranging from design collective Burlesque of North America to internationally renowned photographer Alec Soth will be on sale. Proceeds from all sales support the Walker’s artistic and educational programs. This event is part of MNFashion Week, April 16–25, 2010. For more information: www.mnfashionweek.com.
612.375.7633
shop.walkerart.org
Featured Artists
Saman Bemel Benrud
Benrud, the designer behind Minty Fresh Monster Apparel, is a Minneapolis native and recent graduate of St. Olaf College who was raised on comic books, video games, and the Internet. When he’s not designing t-shirts, he’s hard at work on large-scale drawings or doodling in a sketchbook.
Burlesque of North America
Burlesque of North America is a mob of graphic designers, illustrators, screenprinters, poster slingers, photographers, record collectors, exacto-knifers, pixel pushers, and BBQ mock duck eaters. Their t-shirts feature the perfect combination of humor and design sensibility and can be found gracing the chests of art-lovers from Minneapolis to Montreal, from Osseo to Osaka. Beyond shirts, Burlesque has been keeping busy designing and screenprinting album packaging, posters, logos, and stage backdrops for Rock the Garden, Arcade Fire, Rhymesayers, 89.3 The Current, Nike, Kidrobot, First Avenue, Target, and many others.
Kevin Hayes
Lovely Mpls is Keven Hayes’ Northeast Minneapolis graphic design and print workspace. His handcrafted work reflects his interests in the urban landscape, typography, calligraphy, contemporary music, and street culture. Using screenprinting, letterpress, and fine art techniques, he incorporates paper, wood, textiles, and a variety of other materials to create a truly unique experience for those who encounter his pieces.
Helen Jerlach
Helen Jerlach created Numsi Design shortly after the birth of her first child to create the same aesthetic she strives for in her “grown-up” world—simple, crisp, and minimal, yet beautiful and arresting. In addition to adult and children’s t-shirts, she produces wall art blocks and notecards.
Sara Lintner
The idea for Sara Lintner’s Too Many Suitors hatched in her senior year of college and expanded to larger-scale production after completing her BFA in Graphic Design in 2006 and settling into her first full-time design job. Her creative touch even reaches to the labels on her t-shirts. As the perfectionist Virgo that she is, Sara has been working diligently to perfect her line of high-design, yet affordable goods.
Alec Soth/Lester B. Morrison
Under the pseudonym Lester B. Morrison, acclaimed artist Alec Soth has published several books and a t-shirt through his publishing arm Little Brown Mushroom. Soth’s photographs have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 2004 Whitney and São Paulo Biennials. In 2008, a survey exhibition of his work was presented at Jeu de Paume in Paris and Fotomuseum Winterthur in Switzerland. The Walker Art Center will premiere his first major U.S. survey, exploring the past 15 years of his work, September 12, 2010–January 2, 2011. Soth has received fellowships from the McKnight Foundation (1999, 2004) and Jerome Foundation (2001), was the recipient of the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography, and was short-listed for the highly prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.
Sarah Nassif
Putting aside a scientific career, designer Sarah Nassif opted to use her botany degree as inspiration for her original line of textile motifs—modern takes on leaves, prairie flora, and trees created from her photographs of the Midwest and beyond. Her Rectangle Design line of hand-screenprinted t-shirts features water-based inks. Remnant fabrics, vintage notions, and environmentally sensitive production methods figure strongly in her designs.
Christine Solheim
Christine Solheim, originally from Wisconsin, learned to screen print in high school. After designing t-shirts for herself and her friends for years, she now sells her Future Lint t-shirts online. When not working at her job at a K-12 public arts school or making art, she can be found playing baseball, sailing, or riding her bike around town.
I am very excited to announce that there is a great range of the limited edition text works panels now available for purchase at the delightful store i like you in Minneapolis. I dropped off a huge box full of panels and the matching text cards this afternoon and I can’t wait to go see how they look in store. Have you been to i like you? It has green astroturf on the floor, a fabulous play area and it is jam-packed with amazing local wares. The owners Angela and Sarah are lovely and you are almost guaranteed to find a great gift or treat for yourself or a friend. Totally worth a visit, you can find the shop at 501 1st Avenue in Northeast Minneapolis.
Just before I packed up the panels they looked so lovely sitting together on our dining table that I couldn’t resist snapping some photographs. Between the colors and the sunshine outside, why it’s almost like Spring has sprung!
Very excited to say, without really saying anything too revealing, that this weekend I am working on orders for not one but two stores in Minneapolis. numsi artwork is coming! One store will get a whole host of limited edition text panels and the other will be getting a selection of panels and clothing. All will be revealed once deliveries are made. I am excited!
Of course if you know of any stores that should be stocking numsi, please send them my way, or me there way, either way works!
One of these days I will get a press page up, but until then I just wanted to share some of the lovely things that have been said around this here internets in the last week or two.
“Modern eco families will love finding the perfect niche in their home for this 12 inch by 12 inch masterpiece…”
Babble- Droolicious
“Numsi decor is a sophisticated focal point and conversation piece with a modern aesthetic that will befit a child’s room from cradle to college, and beyond!”
Inhabitots
“Numsi is a great selection of very well-designed products for kids that I promise you’ll be willing to live with as well.”
Small for Big
“If you want artwork which won’t look babyish once they’re out of the nursery, check out the contemporary wall art panels at Numsi.”
Gifts By The Stars
Thanks everyone, it is certainly appreciated!
Hello! Super duper excited, once again to announce the latest numsi giveaway, this time with the always awesome Inhabitots, home of “modern green design for children and babies”. Could there possibly be a better tagline that numsi products could fit under? I don’t think so! Can you tell I am excited to partner with them? Anyway, here are the details. Go visit inhabitots and sign up for their lovely newsletter, then go back and leave a comment on the giveaway post saying which of the numsi animal designs you like best. Bob’s your uncle, a 12″ × 12″ panel in the animal design of your choice could be winging it’s way to you by the end of next week. What a great ‘I Survived Winter, Welcome to Spring’ present to yourself or a loved one!
Hooray! numsi finally has 25 fans on Facebook, this is a big day! Everyone has to start somewhere, right?! It means that we can claim our username instead of directing people to an address which ends /58848327295. Alas, /numsi is taken, so you can find us at www.facebook.com/numsidesign. In the coming months there will be all sorts of exciting things going on there. Sign up to receive advance notice of giveaways, exclusive coupons and sneak previews of new designs and products.
I’m super excited to have partnered with Mari from Small for Big to giveaway an awesome numsi orange hexagons patterned wall art panel, suitable for bigs and smalls. Check out her awesome blog for ways to win. And good luck!
They always say that when raising children the hours are excruciatingly slow and yet the years fly by. Whoever they may be, isn’t that the truth? My mind is boggling that the little numsi’s are 2 and 4, and what blows me away most of all is not that my oldest will soon (ish) be 5, but that my youngest will be 3. When did that happen? Seriously, when did my cuddly little baby get so tall and opinionated? Where did my little girls go? And who are these boisterous, loud (so very, very loud) stubborn, opinionated kids in my house? Strange indeed. On the plus side, they are very funny, we were talking the other day about how I’m English and their Dad is Danish. I asked the kids where they are from, and numsi2 said IKEA. Which, you know is almost the truth.
Anyway! Back to shop news, it seems impossible to believe that February is almost over, again, where did it go? We’ve had more illness- pneumonia wiped out myself and the kids for a couple of weeks- and lots of snow (Hello Minnesota), and I feel a bit like a hamster on a wheel. I’ve been running and running but time keeps running faster. So the shop updates are long overdue, my etsy site is still tragically empty, my big mailings are yet to go out…But! There are new things going on, albeit very behind the scenes. I’ve arranged a few giveaways with some very exciting blogs for the coming months, I’ve finished a few new designs, my online catalogue seems to be becoming an epic to rival War and Peace, but at least I am on the closing stretch at last, and I am scheduled to partake in April’s T-Shirt Mart at the Walker Art Center, here in Minneapolis. I’m super excited about that, if all goes to plan numsi should be branching out into adult wear. Which would be fantastic because I seriously have nothing to wear.
Speaking of t-shirts, I recently made the first numsi custom order, answering a Tweeted plea for Valentine’s Day gift help from a fellow Twin Citian, toy designer, artist and blogger extraordinaire, and all-round awesome lady, Mari from Small for Big. She was looking for an I love you shirt that was mod + cool for her daughter, and I had alot of fun making one:
Obviously I haven’t yet managed to put up information for custom orders online, all in good time, but if you have any requests I would be more than happy to work with you. Please send me an email, or tweet me, or Facebook me or whatever you like.
So before I go, would like to leave you with a quick taster of the new designs coming soon to numsi. Any day now, we’ll be seeing more tufted deer, piggies, zebras, ostriches and gibbons around here. Stay tuned, it should get interesting!
