A Few of the Rynearson Daughters Contributions Part 1

Many of you know that my younger sister Rhea is a master printer at Studio Z in Northern California. I'm about to show you some of her work, but if you haven't seen it before you should check out Studio Z's website: http://www.studio-z.com/ Rhea's boss,Zida, does the design work, Rhea the print work. It is old world style letterpress printing, as in, they set type by hand and run the paper through presses, sometimes multiple times for a single piece of paper. It is highly specialized, labor intensive and rare. They use only the highest end paper and Rhea will painstakingly work on each project, ever a perfectionist. There are only something like a dozen such companies in all of the United States. Any one who knew our father would already know without me having to say that he was pretty impressed by this. When he visited Rhea he would spend hours at the shop with her mesmerized by all the equipment. Rhea says he also had a bit of a crush on Zida, but that's no surprise.

Ever since Rhea and I were young we have occasionally collaborated on projects together. We are very different in so many ways - but when it comes to creativity we both inherited our parents artist eyes and often what I can imagine but can not create, Rhea can, and visa versa. I wanted to share some of these collaborations we did for Dad's benefit. I'll post it in a few parts, Rhea really is the mastery behind these as she did all the printing - I only added small touches to help her along the way.

Dad turned 50 in 2001 and he threw himself a four day party on the coast of Oregon at an inn right on the ocean over Thanksgiving weekend. That weekend is a story in itself but what I'd like to share now is the menu Dad asked Rhea to print of the food that would be prepared for an actual sit down Thanksgiving dinner (very rare for our family - usually our Thanksgivings are endless cook-offs and constant eating with no real formality) on one of the nights. Since it was Dad's 50th and decade birthdays always inspire practical jokes, Rhea and I wanted to add something funny to it as a surprise. At some point I had come across one of Dad's old high school ID's with a rare picture of his teenage beardless goofy dimpled face. Rhea and I conspired. I sent Rhea the ID, it was scanned and a picture of Dad was glued onto each menu card. Rhea had printed the menu and then created a menu card that held the menu and was sealed with a place card saying "Thanksgiving Dinner At the Oregon Coast 2001 - Family and Friends of Steve Rynearson". What no one knew was once the seal was broken and anyone went to open the menu the picture of young Dad would be revealed. It went off perfectly and Rhea and I were pretty proud of ourselves. If I remember correctly, Dad gave one of his famous giggle laughs that he gave when he was truly amused.

(please note you can click on any of the images in this blog to see the image larger!)