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Christoph Hitz
On the go...
posted: June 8, 2009
It's been a while since my last post, I'm busy redesigning my web site, making it web 2.0 compliant, planting and tending my vegetable garden, designing freebie logos, walking our new dog every morning, exploring new ways to promote promote my art work, time flies even when the economy sucks. Here are a few recent editorial illustrations.
Think positive for the Boston Globe today.
Parallel lives an essay by Caroline Dworin for the City section of the New York Times
Background check on private eyes; The Wall Street Journal
Florida real estate predicts another down turn in the housing market; Barron's
Renting a Blackberry for the road; The Wall Street Journal
Pulling the strings in a down turn market; Forbes


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Limited Edition Stimlus Package
posted: April 6, 2009
Cut, score, glue, cut, score, glue, cut ...
This time of year I start some of my garden plants from seed with a grow light. In the first years of my garden I would go out and just buy the plants from the nursery. Over time, my wife Deborah taught me how to sow and start seeds from scratch. Then came the step of saving the seed from last year for the next season, at this point I started to appreciate the vast world of heirloom plants. Reading the heirloom plant catalogs I couldn't help but notice some funny names for tomatos like: Missouri Pink Love Apple, Henderson's Crimson Cushion, Orange Oxheart, Riesentraube, Zebra...the list is very long. Then I came across the history of the Mortgage Lifter Tomato and I couldn't resist the idea of turning this legacy into this years spring promotion:
The story of the Mortgage Lifter Tomato has been around since the 1940s. Charlie owned a radiator repair business that he had purposefully opened on a mountain where trucks climbing the steep grade would overheat. In his spare time, with no plant breeding experience, Radiator Charlie created a huge tomato by cross- breeding 4 of the largest-fruited tomatoes he could find. Every year he cross-pollinated plants using a baby's ear syringe, selecting and saving seeds to replant the next spring. Eventually Charlie was satisfied he had created the largest, tastiest tomato he could. He sold plants for $1.00 each and claims that tomato sales paid off his $6,000 mortgage on his house in 6 years. Each spring, gardeners drove as far as 200 miles to buy Charlie's seedling tomatoes.
I didn't have the foresight to collect seeds for a large mailing. Somehow faith dealt me a lucky card and I hooked up with Ken & Doug from the Hudson Valley Seed Library. I proposed the idea of a shared Limited Edition Stimulus Pack, and they said "We love it". I printed 150 8x11.5 seeds and cut, scored and hand glued 150, 6x4 seed envelopes and inserted a glassine sleeves with the "Mortgage Lifter" seed.Ken had all the seeds sleeves sealed with a special planting instruction sticker.In addition, I did hand write all the addresses and off they went to a selected bunch of art directors and editors of garden, finance and realtor magazines. I had a gas creating this collaborative stimulus package.
Here is look into some sketchy seed packages of my private stash of collected seeds. I've saved seeds from a single plum sized yellow tomato with a frosted velvet skin that somebody brought to David Goldin's 4th of July party. I plan to cross bread that one with the mortgage lifter and call it "Velvet Madoff" the possibilities are endless...
........................................................................................................................................... Please take a moment and read and sign this partition against a horrific bill that will screw up organic farming (bill HR 875)backed and sponsored by no other than genetic engineering corporation Monsanto.
I can't find the link editor bar in Drawger 2.0, so you have to copy and paste for now.
http://www.seedlibrary.org/
http://www.leavemyfoodalone.org/
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Bigfoot Sighting
posted: March 27, 2009
I had some time to kill in Woodstock while waiting for some promotional material to be be printed. After getting a coffee and a croissant, I booted my laptop, only to find out that Bread Alone has no wireless network, like the name says. Bummer, since it was a beautiful blue crisp spring day, I finished my breakfast and started strolling through the town of Woodstock, I stopped at the hardware store and made my way over to  bookstore, The Golden Note Book. After checking all the newly released books, I noticed at a huge heap of memoirs, not my favorite section, unexpectedly  a scratchy drawn face glanced at me from a book cover that read: ME WRiTE BOOK, It Bigfoot Memoir. A fictional Memoir about one of the planets most speculated monsters, a book by Graham Roumieu is loosely drawn with pen and ink and gutsy water color, the text is hand written and part of the double spread art, the memoir evolves in a snap shot style and is downright hilarious page after page.
What's peculiar about  this treasure of a funny book, it can't be pigeonholed into, young reader,cartoon book, graphic novel etc. all that stuff goes out the window, the "ME WRITE BOOK, it Bigfoot Memoir" is simply for a wide audience with a sense of humor.

It turns out the busy author Graham Roumieu has produced his third Bigfoot book already.
Check it out, bring cash.
 
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Car Czar, come again?
posted: January 15, 2009
This isn't exactly a quick read cover, visually I wanted to intrigue the reader, make him/her linger, think and be amused before opening the magazine.
On any given day, my studio radio is usually tuned to my favorite radio station, WAMC. A few weeks back all the news from NPR and the BBC seam to be humming with dire news regarding the American car industry. The CEO's had just testified in Congress and the media stream started to swell with the new buzz word: "CAR CZAR!" I couldn't believe my ears, weren't the czars extinguished just about 10 years after the car was invented? Who was the evil genius who said, "It has to rhyme to sell?" The proposal of a reviving a Russian royalty title in conjunction with the a job title to oversee the big 4 crisis seamed preposterous, something from a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Would his royal tzarness have to power to ax production costs, slash robot labor and lay down the law of green technologies? Heck, was this proposed tile inspired by the Russian car industry with such memorable companies like: Lada, Avtovaz, Gaz, Pobeda and Kamaz all shinny examples of the Soviet Union's past achievements? Hell no.

On a loose sheet of paper next to my lightbox I started to doodle some czarist period creatures.  Somehow the press and the politicians seam to hash out a fictional saviour figure that begged to be drawn. By now I was sick of hearing "Car Czar" this and that, heck why not give the appointee a German, Italian or Japanese title at least they know how to build cars! In the meantime, my sketch had grown into this dark doodle with plenty of slash and burn capable type "A" characters. Handing out alternative job titles to my freshly minted creatures made me feel like I was in charge of my dire news inspired doodle.

With the Bush presidency in it's final days, my "Alternative Car Czar" cover layout got returned by The New Yorker with the standard rejection note. I'm glad the times of hoodwinking people with words like "enhanced interrogation", "engagement theater","Freedom Fries" and for that  matter "Car Czar" are soon over.

Exhuberant riddance.

Did I mentioned I had a blast doing this layout?  I did.
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