Mark your calendars for December 15th

Just giving an early warning that Animalia will participate in its first craft fair on December 15th at San Francisco's Bazaar Bizarre at the California Academy of Sciences Nightlife event. Not only will this be a great craft fair, but the Cal Academy Nightlife event is pretty amazing in itself. I'll be sure to remind everyone again closer to the date!

New goodies at Animalia

As promised, I've listed several new products--come check em' out!

Gemma Correll's cute and funny cards, 

Jennifer Parks' alluring animal hybrid prints,

Melanie Kimmett's  beautifully illustrated cards,

And more antique altered plates by Beat Up Creations

 

 

Animalia is alive and kicking

Dear friends,

I've been remiss in blogging for my beloved Animalia due to being green about the gills recently. But I've emerged from my sickly hibernation and am chomping at the bit to return to the world of the living. Three animal-related idioms or metaphors in two sentences--yay for me!

Here's what's coming up at Animalia:

A site redesign will be unveiled in the coming weeks. I'm happy to say that Stuart Hobday is lending his expertise in this operation. After the redesign is done we will finally finally have an OFFICIAL launch of Animalia. (Which means I'll try to get some press attention!)

New work soon to be listed:

A print by Lee Piechocki:

 

More beautiful and hilarious (a challenging combination to master) plates from Angela Rossi. Here is a sneak preview of a couple:

See the full gallery on Posterous

 

Alluring animal flavored artwork from Portland's Jennifer Parks:

 

The humorous stylings of Norwich, UK's Gemma Correll:

 

Some lovely modern cards from Melanie Kimmett:

 

And yours truly (Rachael Posnak) will be unveiling some new work soon. Here is one piece in-progress:

 

And more stuff coming down the pipeline...Thanks for your support!

 

 

 

 

Graphic Designers gone wild at Animalia!

Cuteness and coolness abound this week at Animalia as we welcome two more talanted artists, Shannon Kennedy (of Sass & Peril) and Leah Duncan. Isn't it about that time of year when you start buying people a bunch of awesome presents? Well, look no further—these designers have gifty goods prowess comin' out the wazoo. Wow, I'm really good at marketing copy writing! I should get a job at the Gap or something (I think they like it when you say "wazoo").

From Leah's website: In 2008, after working as a graphic designer for advertising firms and screen-printing companies, twenty-something Leah moved to Austin, TX, picked up a bic pen, and started rawing, determined to make a living doing what she loves. Leah taught herself illustration, how to sew, and surface pattern design. Three years later her goods are sol internationally and her licensed clients includ target, urban outfitters and teroforma. Inspired by her neighborhood in East Austin and her Native American roots, Leah creates a world where quirky meets beautiful and folk meets modern.

From Shannon's web site: Shannon Kennedy has nearly a decade of experience working as a Graphic Designer for major Fortune 500 companies in addition to starting her own line of goods. After working many long hours and enduring “I need it yesterday” deadlines she decided to focus on her own art away from the computer and started screenprinting again, a skill she learned while studying Graphic Design in college. This hobby turned into a full-time business in the spring of 2011 and has evolved into a cohesive line of hand screenprinted paper goods such as art prints, stationery and journals and textile goods such as pillows, totes and garments. 

Also check out Shannon's video on her site describing her process: http://sassandperil.com/about/

There seems to be a graphic designer-gone-unfettered theme here. I can relate!

Hi nice people.

You can now check out Animalia's offerings directly from Facebook:  http://tinyurl.com/3epa28p

Leah Duncan coming soon!

Leah sure knows how to send a pretty package. Can't wait to get these goodies listed.

Chimp Diorama in Etsy newsletter. Thanks Etsy folks!

http://tinyurl.com/3ohk9ka

New Life in Dead Sea

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/09/110928-new-life-dead-sea-bact...

Please welcome Cassandra Smith and her painted antlers to Animalia!

No, the antlers aren't a part of her own anatomy, although that would be interesting, wouldn't it? Cassandra Smith paints naturally shed antlers in beautiful designs that literally bring the natural world and the art world together. Check 'em out!

Cassandra's bio:

Cassandra Smith is an artist and freelance curator working in Milwaukee, WI. She is also the co-owner and editor of Fine Line Magazine, a quarterly, international fine arts publication.

In 2006, she graduated from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design with a degree in sculpture. After graduating, Cassandra co-owned the now defunct Armoury Gallery which exhibited contemporary work by local and national emerging artists. She has since curated several shows in the Milwaukee area. Among other places, her work has been show at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Hotcakes Gallery, Paper Boat Gallery and the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts.

See the full gallery on Posterous

 

Fresh Artists at Animalia!

I'm excited to welcome Emma Kidd of benconservato and Rikkianne Van Kirk to the Animalia familia! Check out their work in the store: Animalia

Emma Kidd:

 Rikkianne Van Kirk:

Zip tie bear

http://www.dots-ky.com/gallery.php?directory=Projects/massimal_BAB&currentPic=0&id=work

More exciting artists coming soon at Animalia...

Rikkianne Van Kirk

Emma Kidd

Cassandra Smith

A good day for seagulls and strange creatures in bathtubs

 

What? You don't have an archival print of a pink squid?

Well, Animalia can solve that problem. Hot off the press, this 12" x 18" giclee print of an original watercolor painting by R.S. Posnak (uh, me).

http://animalia-store.com/category/prints

Untitled

Why am I only now learning about Kate MccGwire? Her work is pretty incredible (and very animal-centric).

The blurb from her site:

Kate MccGwire's practice probes the beauty inherent in duality, exploring the play of opposites - at an aesthetic, intellectual and visceral level - that characterises the way we conceive the world. She does this by appealing to our essential duality as human beings, to our senses and our reason, and by drawing on materials capable of embodying a dichotomous way of seeing, feeling and thinking. The finished work has a consistent 'otherness' to it that places it beyond our experience of the world, poised on a threshold between the parameters that define everyday reality.

See the full gallery on Posterous

Brand New Prints by Ali Aschman

Welcome to the Animalia family, Ali! These are hard-ground and aquatint copper-plate etching printed in brown Charbonnel ink on white 285g Fabriano Rosapina paper. Signed and numbered by the artist.

http://animalia-store.com/products

Big Things Are Happenin' at Animalia!

Lots going on in the Animalia world. We were featured on the well-known (I was told) German weekly, Zeit Magazine. Thanks Zeit Magazine!

In the coming weeks we'll continue to introduce new artists into the store, and I'll be working on revamping and beefing up (no pun intended) the Animalia website. I'm excited to say that Rena Tom, founder of the store Rare Device, will be working with Animalia on a consulting basis to help us brush up on our business savvy.

So look out for a new and improved website and the official launch of the store before too long!

 

 

Mooks have arrived at Animalia!

Hold onto your hats, ladies and gentlemen. Animalia has scored the genius work of Kimberly Laurenti of My Grey Sky. She makes ambiguous macabre/cute figures called "mooks," that I like to think of as the offspring of a ghost and a marshmallow. The mooks at Animalia wear removable animal masks or hoods. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Animalia's got t-shirts and Brooklyn artist Jenny Belin!

Save the animals! Help artists pay their rent! Make your friends jealous! Insert incentive! Buy 'em up!

Les Chiots

When I was in college I studied abroad for a semester in southern France. Fiercely shy, I found it hard enough to speak my mind in my native language, and speaking French, a language with which I didn't have much experience, was a daily struggle. Feeling alien from the culture and unable to connect with the people, I turned to my host family's dog for emotional support. She didn't care if I pronounced sit or stay incorrectly, she didn't give me disdainful looks for dressing like an American; she loved me for me. I wrote the following story about my experience with this dog several years ago, but I thought it might be appropriate for the Animalia blog. If it's stupid, then I blame it on my youth--I don't feel like rewriting the thing now. :) Warning: it's a bit grim, so if you're extra sensitive, don't read it.


Les Chiots
She killed them with a cloth soaked in ammonia. They were hours old and the size of rats. Wrinkly, blind and squirming, still wet. In fact I never saw them, but this is how I imagined them.

Cannelle had been in the hallway crying the night before. I cracked my door to see what was going on. She whimpered louder and limped over to me, her belly hanging to the ground, but I quickly shut my door because I’d been told not to let her in my room. I went to sleep and the next day after school, Eva told me she and her brother had killed the puppies. I wasn’t sure if I’d understood correctly; I was almost never sure if I understood correctly. “Pourquoi?” I said, but Eva only gave me a pitying look. They had seemed annoyed that Cannelle was pregnant, but they hadn’t told me this was the plan.

They let their dog run wild. It seemed like everyone in Montpellier did. She had followed me to school one day a couple of months ago, the dog. Maybe that was the day she had her romantic encounter. Or not, because it seemed like I was the sole object of her affections. It was right out of Lassie. It was a two-mile walk, and I’d already gone half a mile by the time I realized Cannelle was behind me. I stopped and shooed her away. “Go back!” I said. And then I said it in French as well for good measure. She turned around and appeared to be obeying, so I continued walking. A few minutes later I looked back and found her, still following, but at a distance of about 50 feet. “Fuck it,” I said. I didn’t have time to take her back home.

When I reached the school, I entered the courtyard to find my friends, the dog closer on my heels now. “She followed me,” I explain ed to them. They laughed and petted her. It was time to go inside the building for class, so once everyone went in, I had a talk with Cannelle. “Reste ici,” I said. She sat down on the beige dirt of the courtyard and looked up at me in a painfully loyal way. She was a scruffy Benji-ish dog, about knee-high. She had a habit of moving her upper lip up and down on one side almost constantly, so it seemed like she was always sneering and relaxing, sneering and relaxing.

I went inside the building and closed the door, which was usually left propped open, and walked upstairs to my class. It was a fairly empty building; it seemed like ours was the only class held there, occasion- ally I would see someone I didn’t recognize walking down the halls. I could never figure out where they were coming from–I never saw another class being held and there were no offices in the building. Class was starting when I walked in. I moved to the back and sat down. The class was Grammar and Pronunciation for French as a Second Language students. I was scared of the teacher, or maybe not so much scared as spooked. She was in her 50s, wore shiny black leather pants and a somewhat revealing top to every class, which was fine, but she also spit a lot when she talked. She was something of an advocate for Gascon, a language that was spoken in parts of South-western France and predates contemporary French. There has been some controversy surrounding the language, as the French government at one point banned its use in an attempt to promote French as the primary language of the country. There is an effort now to try and revive the language and teach it in schools.

At any rate, Madame Boger would work herself up any time the subject of Gascon came up, which it seemed to do quite often, and the more worked up she got the more spittle exploded from the corners of her mouth, until at some point, it truly looked like she was foaming at the mouth. She would take out her handkerchief and dab, removing some of it, but always missing a couple of drops that remained glistening on her chin. She also had a very strong southern French accent (so strong even I could pick up on it), which I always found to be curious in a French pronunciation teacher. As in the U.S., a southern accent in France is often thought of as unsophisticated. I worried that I would have two strikes against me in the country: one being an American, and the second having a southern French accent.

A few minutes into class, just as Mme. Boger was launching into a childhood reverie about GasconCannelle burst through the doorway and, without even looking up to get her bearings, darted to the back of the classroom and jumped into my lap. The class laughed nervously. I feigned surprise–for some reason I didn’t want to let on to the teacher that this was my (host family’s) dog. “Hmmm...well, I suppose I’ll take her back outside,” I said. I carried her outside, her head over my shoulder like a baby. I set her down, repeated my commands, left her in the courtyard, and made sure I closed the door tightly behind me. Ten minutes later, it happened again. The teacher began to catch on that this was indeed a dog for which I was responsible. This time, once outside, I decided not to return to class. Cannelle would undoubtedly worm her way into the school again and interrupt class for a ridiculous third time. I started back toward home with Cannelle close behind. It became apparent soon after that adventure that Cannelle was pregnant.

The evening that Eva told me about the fate of the puppies, I went out with some friends and drank two bottles of wine. I talked much more than was my habit, peed in the scratchy bushes along an urban path, and then left my friends when I spotted a phone booth to make a drunken call back to the States. When I got home I was ill and disoriented, my body burning. I threw up in the toilet in the tiny water closet, afraid neither the toilet nor the room were big enough to hold the portion of my insides that were surging out.

Empty and raw, I went to my bedroom and plopped face-down on the bed. I was on the verge of passing out when I heard a whimper at the door. I got up and let the dog in. I hadn’t seen her all day, I didn’t know where she’d been. Perhaps they’d had to stash her away somewhere while they did the morbid deed. I went back to the bed to lay down. Cannelle’s whimpering didn’t stop; it got quieter but kept on. She stared up at me on the bed for a moment while I petted her head. She jumped onto the bed and sprawled over me, her face in front of mine. Her legs were stretched out and felt as if they were gripping me. As I blacked out, her soft whimpers were the last thing I heard.

SNAKE ESSAY

Wow, I'm really not good at updating this blog. I'm hoping that will change–I'm going to have a very serious conversation with myself and threaten myself with various punishments. We have many exciting new products en route to Animalia as I write this, so tune in for that soon. For now though, I'd like to harken way back to my first post in which I wrote about begging my mother for exotic pets. I was recently at my mom's house, and I searched for the essay I wrote to my parents about my need for a skunk. While I was not successful in finding that, I did come across my brother's essay about why he should be able to have a snake. Oh, the teenage boy and his fascination with scaly creatures....It's pretty funny, so I thought I'd share. By the way, my brother DID get a snake, and I DID NOT get a skunk. Fair? I think not. Anyway, the last page of this is missing, but most of the good parts are here:

New Products at Animalia!

I'm happy to announce that we have several new products at Animalia. We have lovely letterpress cards made by Elana Wetzner (of Spoon&Sailor), handmade journals and more letterpress cards by Marianne Dages (of Huldra Press), and the coolest altered vintage plates EVER, made by Beat Up Creations. I'd like to thank these artists for joining the Animalia team, and I invite everybody to come and buy the crap out of their work. www.animalia-store.com

Animalia is born

Welcome to the Animalia blog!

Animalia is a store that sells all things animal: art, design, housewares, books, ephemera, clothes, etc. This is the very first blog entry, and today is the very first day we’re open for business. We’re starting small: we’re only online now, and our inventory is mostly made up of friends’ and family’s arts and crafts. Our dreams, however, are big. We hope to have a brick and mortar store someday in the not too distant future, and our product lines will expand and diversify as we go along. Please contact us if you have suggestions of products we should carry.

I started Animalia because I love animals. Shocking reason isn’t it? I’m a graphic designer by day, and since my work life began, I’ve always hoped to find meaning in my work. It’s not easy to find when you’re working for other people to sell their products or ideas or whatever in order to pay your bills. So I’m starting my own thing—selling art and books and anything else that excites me and adds something interesting to the world. The feel good part of the business is that we are donating ten percent of our profits to local wildlife conservation organizations. The other feel good part is creating a cool m’f’in store that is like no other.

Warning: Even more autobiographical content follows

My childhood consisted of one failed campaign after another of trying to get my mother to allow me to have “exotic” animals as pets. This started when I discovered the animal section in the library, and checked out a book about a family in New York that had pet skunks. The book detailed the raccoon-like messes the skunks made and the formidable scratches the owners had sustained. A pet skunk sounded great to me! I wrote a four page essay designed to persuade my mother that a skunk would be a perfectly reasonable pet. I detailed the descenting process, wrote a diet plan, and delivered the wonderful news that skunks, were in fact, legal in Georgia, where we lived. Shockingly, my noble campaign failed. I don’t know what my mom’s problem was.

The next book I checked out from the library was an account of a family in Brazil that started a sloth rehabilitation center in their house, which was at the edge of the jungle. Well, I knew we wouldn’t be able to find a sloth in Georgia, so I thought it was reasonable to suggest that we move to Brazil and live a life like this family—completely dedicated to sloth rehab. My mom made a joke about a Betty Ford clinic for sloths and then brushed me off as usual. Sheesh.

Don’t worry animal lovers! Before you start penning an angry diatribe, know that I am now an adult and I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a wild animal as a pet. But I must admit it was my dearest wish as a child to dress a marmoset in a bonnet or feed a lemur with a baby bottle or paint the toenails of a chameleon. My childhood obsession has translated in adulthood to appreciating animals in their natural habitats and hoping that I can do something to contribute to their well-being.