August 24, 2009
Well. I almost did it. Missed the last entry. On Wednesday last week I was feeling a bit down and it grew progressively worse. On Friday I awoke in a state of delirium with a fever and thus spent the last three days moving from my bed to my couch and feeling rather miserable. Oh well! Unforeseen circumstances cannot be accounted for. I'll do the seven entries in a row another time. maybe next week. But more likely the week after that.
Anyway I see some things have gotten done since I was gone. In the office is a cool bench built from window wells and the spray booth in the back is very near completion. Tomorrow or wednesday I'll post some pictures as I promised I would last week. Show you what the warehouse looks like right now! And in the future weeks I'll keep posting pictures of the warehouse to show you how much this place is alive. You may come for three days in a row and find that nothing has changed, but then overnight you'll find everything has been moved about, furniture has been brought to storage, things have been built, and improvements have been made. That's one of the things I like about working here. The commotion. On days when a lot of employees are here everything is being moved all around and the office is buzzing with new ideas. Other days when not so many people come it's a bit more of a laid back experience, which is also very nice.
I'm all healed and back so expect more to come in the next few days!
August 20, 2009
This entry may seem like a bit of a departure from the theme, but it does relate! When I first started working at the Green and Red Project my knowledge of how a business is run was very limited. I understood that your cost determines how much profit you can make, but I didn't know how to market products. I also didn't really know how to make any products. Over the past few months I have been forced to learn a lot. I say forced because it came upon everyone to try to visualize your demographic, and then create the products that those people would be most attracted to. I've learned that just because you think something is awesome and everyone on earth would love it, does not mean everyone on earth will love it. In fact many people will not. I've also seen people trying to market our project, bombarding the press and anyone who will listen to them with information. So another improvement! An improvement in all our knowledge.
Shortly I will be going to a Mets game with my father. If they play at all like they did last night I may rue that decision. I think I may bring them some good luck though. I know this has nothing to do with anything, but I've slowly been running out of things to write about. You may have noticed by the dwindling length of my entries. Next week I'll go back to current events and some more interviews. I think I may get one with Brian Mende, a board member on EnergyxEnergy. See you tomorrow!
August 19, 2009
Today's entry is about an improvement that happens anywhere over time. We have become more efficient workers and our skills have become more developed. This is the way things naturally occur. Think of a carpenter on his first day at the job site. Picture his clumsy virgin hands fumbling over his hammer. His repeated missed strokes and the shining taunting head of the nail glaring back at him. How weary he becomes after his first day, the exhaustion of his first week, the wretchedness of that first month. Now turn your thoughts to that same carpenter one year later. Think of his calloused hands as they firmly grip his hammer. The one earth-shattering blow he swiftly delivers upon the nail, driving it down with one giant push. We here at the Green and Red Project have improved our skills like the carpenter. Our once clumsy hands have become accustomed to their duties and accomplish their tasks with practised strokes. Oh how we have improved!
August 18, 2009
Smiles all around! One thing that I have come to notice about the second part of the project is morale is up, and in a business morale is something that weighs heavily on workers productivity. I think this may be one of the most important improvements of all. When people are happy they are willing to work harder and when less stress is put on the board members better ideas come out of them. This boost in morale is caused by a few factors. For one we now have coffee, that's the big one with me. the second would be our food supply. Other factors like a clean workspace and our new airconditioner in the office help as well. Miracle worker Steve just put the air conditioner in, and thank god for it. The office is a sweltering sweat pit in the summer sun.
An improvement like this one is something that you can't see persay but you can definetly feel it. Everyone is in a much better mood and the amount of work that is getting done lately just goes to show how important a happy worker is. The team that I work for is short staffed right now though. Many of our employees have abandoned us for college. We are accepting applications, so if you are a High School student in Glen Rock and are looking for some work please apply!
Also I saw that movie District 9, not as good as I was hoping. Just wanted you all to know.
August 17, 2009
Since the second part of the project began there is one man I have seen here everyday rushing around the warehouse. Everyday he is here it seems some new improvement has been made. Steve Mcnally has become one of the most valuable employees we have here at the warehouse.
Steve has been working with us at the warehouse for less than two weeks and in that time has already developed new methods for saving us space, begun construction on our spray booth, and installed a few things to make the warehouse more comfortable of a workspace. The first step he took was to oversee and help us clean out the warehouse and reorganize it. I talked about this in an earlier post (August 6th) but I cannot stress how valuable this reorganization is. Following this Steve turned the top of our sand-blasting booth into a shelving unit. This will allow us to open up even more space in the warehouse. Space is a commodity that we always sorely needed and each of these steps has created more than we could hope for. Furniture has become more accesible and the cleaner workspace seems to give us more peace of mind.
Steve has also added a refrigerator and a small counter for a coffee pot and other accesories. This sounds like a trivial addition, but it's very good for morale. Daily barbecues have become commonplace, accompanied by various failed attempts to create fire. Nick Ivory is not the most ideal fire-starter. He does, however, have a natural born talent for grilling sausages. I myself just brewed a pot of coffee and it certainly made writing this seem like much less of a daunting task.
Many other smaller tasks have fallen to Steve as well. As I write this he is working on unclogging our perpetually clogged drain. Over the remainder of our time on this project I see Steve Mcnallyas being one of our saviors. He is a man who knows what needs to be done and has the skills to see each project he undertakes
to it's conclusion. Everyone here on the project should make a point of thanking him for his efforts. Thank you Sir!
August 16, 2009
Seeing as today is Sunday, a day of rest, my entry will be short and sweet leaving you plety of time to attend your weekly mass. An improvement that some thought has been going into here at the home of the Green and Red Project is a new Master Plan. Now this is not a physical addition that will imrove our work in someway, but instead more of an organizational method which we will use to become better employees.
August 15, 2009
A lot of thought has been going into forming new and more effective methods here lately. These next seven days I will inform you as to seven new and exciting additions to our warehouse. At the end of these entries, on the eighth day, I'll post pictures of each of these new things.
Today I walked into the warehouse and witnessed the start of construction on our long awaited
spray booth. No, it has nothing to do with getting a sexy spray on tan. This spray booth is a structure made of 2X4's and sheets of plywood and will enable us to stop slaving over buckets of paint to complete a piece. Now it will be as easy as filling the gun with the chosen color of paint, pointing the nozzle in the correct direction, and spraying a gentle mist of paint over a piece of primed furniture.
Let us examine the main advantage of this method. It will save us a vast amount of time. This then enables us to produce more furniture at a faster rate, thus making the furniture cheaper for you to buy. This time saved laying base coats of paint also gives us a chance to spend more time on the details. By making the workers less worried about their cost-efficiency they can make more creative and awe-inspiring furniture.
This is our first step in making this business more effective. Hopefully the first of many! Also, for anyone who may have been wondering, I had a wonderful trip and recommend a visit to Montreal for anyone looking for an affordable escape from the states.
August 6, 2009
A Fresh Start
One of the first things we've done here at the warehouse to make things more productive for the second part of the project is to clean this place up. Before this week the furniture in the warehouse has been a labrynth. Piles of furniture forming a nightmarish maze that was near impossible to navigate. Now we formed some lovely rows making every piece of unfinished furniture accessible to each worker bee. With this structure change we begin the second, more productive, chapter of the Green and Red Project. It took multiple hours of heavy lifting and many mop heads, but here is the finished product.
August 3, 2009
As I was driving here I was trying to think of how to start this update and found myself thinking as if I were continually writing a column. The thought pattern stuck and I have yet to shake it. I can only hope I don’t spend the rest of my life commenting on everything I’m doing. I also realized that one of the most awkward things that can possibly happen to a person driving a car is when you get stopped at a red light and find yourself staring at the person in the car behind you in the rearview mirror. Then the light turns green. And you don’t notice. But they DO notice you’re staring at them. And thus not moving. And they begin honking. Horrible.
Part Du! And so it begins… again! This time it will probably run a little bit smoother then before in my opinion. We used to not entirely understand how this project worked. Well, that’s unfair, I should say there were quite a large amount of people who worked here who did not know how this project worked. Who also seemed not to understand the basic concept of a business, to make money. And this is a business. So we should be making money. Now though, Part Du! Where we intend to make money! How much is unclear, but, nonetheless, we do intend to make money. As long as you, the average, or not so average (or slightly above average!), consumer come to the open houses and buy what we have produced!
Truly the push, although it’s more of a shove, of the end date back is a blessing. It is going to give us a chance to actually get people here that want to work, and above all know how to work effectively. This shoving of the end date will also give us the ability to produce more quality merchandise for you all to purchase. I hope this excites you as much as it does me. The houses will also be built in a way that will be much more pleasing as a final product. All positive things eh? Negative things? There may be a few, but if we turn into pessimists now who knows what could happen. All the knowledge we have gained from the past few months will now be applied. That is a lot of knowledge. Our learning curve has been pretty steep as time has flown by. The chart would look similar to that CO2 chart Al Gore unveiled in that movie An Inconvenient Truth, that’s a pretty intense curve.
I’m excited, I’m also going to Canada. So when I return I have promised Sue daily installments for at least seven days, a marathon of column writing in my personal opinion. Although I guess it isn’t very much from a professional’s view. So expect many more updates in the very near future. New and exciting updates! So keep checking back and keep visiting the page! Also I hope you all enjoyed that interview with Jayson. He’s a great worker and an all around excellent guy. If you know him, shake his hand, if you don’t, pretend to.
Out!
July 23, 2009
Interview with Jayson Julianda
Jayson Julianda is a recent graduate of Glen Rock High School and a large contributor to the efforts of Energy2. H
e is our go-to man for all things artistic on top of his normal duties which include painting and sanding furniture. Included are some pictures of his work from outside the project as well as those done on the job.
Q: How did you hear about the project?
A: Steph Polak [Marketing/Sales for E
2] asked me to help design and paint the pick-up truck.
Q: When did you first become interested in art?
A: I guess when I was at home with my grandma I would just draw allthe time. I used to draw people's faces and big pictures of dinosaus. She would watch soap operas and give me paper and pencils to draw with so I'd leave her alone.
Q: Who is the largest artistic influence in your life?
A: Chris Terrone [DIY/Videography for E
2], no not really. Lee, he is a graphic artist from New York. He paints murals of life and events. My favorite is a vietnam memorial mural. He'd paint people from New York City, people, and scenes of street life. I like that because it's where I'm from, Queens, and it shows how my family and friends live.
Q: What's your favorite type of media?
A: Anything I can find, really. I like just using pencils and sketching os spray paint to do pictures and murals on walls in Queens. Steph [Polak] knew this and asked me to do the truck.
Q: Tell us about your involvement in street art
A: I just try to do any walls I can. I like this because it helps me get my people's message out to help show who we are. I moved here in fourth grade but I still would go back every week so I stillgrew up surrounded by that culture. The first time I went out me and two of my friends went out to a rundown subway car in a train yard. We brought our paint hidden in our backpacks and just started doing whatever. Just started experimenting with what I could do. Then we thought someone was coming, I dunno. I think it might have been a homeless person, but we heard something and got scared and ran away. I still go out and do graffiti, but I've also started painting and doing watercoloring. Graffiti is what made me more of an active artist but I still think it was my grandma that started me.
Q: Do you think your cultural influences your art?
A: Yes, yes, the Phillipines relates to Queens because people in the Phillipines don't have anything. It's also similar to Queens because they don't have anything, either. And this relates to my art because I try to express that through portraits of people and city life.
Q: Does your involvement in the project help you to express yourself?
A: The opportunity to paint and be creative and work at the same time is what makes me love this project. Sometimes I just have to stain furniture, but other times I'm given a canvas or something more creative to work on.
Q: Do you find it an encouraging environment to work in?
A: Yea it is because of my boss Chris [Terrone] gives me ideas and is always helpful when I'm working on a project.
July 11, 2009
On the Refurbishing of Furniture
There are two things that come into my mind when I think of the production of furniture. The first is monstrous factories filled with wood shavings, soulless furniture produced with indecipherable manuals to be sold at sores like IKEA. The second is old Italian men creating luxurious pieces to be sold at prices astronomical to the average consumer.
I realize that these are the extremes of furniture production but one cannot control how the mind works and what is associated with what. Our furniture defies both of these visions of production.
Some pieces are produced somewhat frantically by boys with sweaty palms and shaky hands. Others seem to sit in a state of incompletion for weeks only to mysteriously become the finished product with a few quick dashes of paint. My personal favorites are those handled by the artists among us. These gods of refurbishing use gentle strokes of the brush like the wind caressing willows weeping limbs to perfect their masterpieces. Some as complex as a flurry of snow tossed upon the earth on a winter's evening, each edge defined with a loving touch. Some simple enough to evoke all the same feelings that da Vinci strove to bring out. I tend to hyperbolize nonetheless we have some cool stuff going on. Come judge for yourself on August 8th and 9th or miss the opportunity to see furniture as divine as the celestial bodies, as awe inspiring as the deep valleys and peaks of the Swiss Alps and as cheap as the air you breathe.
- Doctor Davis
June 30, 2009
So It Begins
Intro to Project Perspective
The first time I met Susanne Rabens was at Glen Rock's local bagel shop where I am an employee. She was rushing about searching for teenagers to get involved in the project. At the time I thought nothing of it, just some eccentric woman running up and down the streets of Glen Rock spouting some kind of nonsense.
Many months have passed since that day and it turns out none of her talk was nonsense. The Green and Red Project has blossomed from the small bud of 11 Glen Rock teens acting as board members to a small army of about 55 oily and hormonal students from Glen Rock High School. I enlisted as well and have so far worked on a variety of projects, from tearing up floorboards and knocking down walls to attempting to make candles out of old light bulbs and shelves out of books.
The amazing amounts of creativity I've seen on the project are mind-blowing. The artistry of many employees is to be admired by all. Many a boring piece of furniture has passed through these young hands and been transformed into an explosion of color and helter-skelter design. This is extremely unique furniture. A coffee table that somehow reminds me of Finland, and occasionally Sweden or the dresser that makes me crave Skittles with its bright and flavorful colors. You won't be finding anything like this at Pier 1.
The community this project has formed is also another example of the outstanding qualities of the project. Truthfully, it doesn't even feel like work anymore, it's more like living in some bohemian commune and going to improve on it every day. And soon enough you all can move in with us and buy all of our creations.
Enough from me though. In the near future I'll have interviews with our creators, administrators and drones. Expect pictures our beautiful refurbished furniture and the stories behind it from its makers. Thanks for reading my children.
- Macauley Davis