See My Vest, See My Vest

All I have ever wanted to drive (besides that nineties-era Porsche 911) is a tiny electric pickup truck.

But wait: Hello! This is Matt & Erika; Studio Kirkland is our little house brand that covers different creative projects our family tackles. In this newsletter: an incredible vest upgrade, tracking tiny trucks, and some books.

OK FIRST: look at this vest

A big part of Erika’s artistic practice is taking a discarded garment and giving it new life. Upcycling doesn’t really cover it, because it’s so transformational. But please, PLEASE look at this cool vest:

Erika picked up this old fishing vest as a yard sale. Unlike most of her projects, this item was in wearable condition. She painted fish onto it. She added fishing lure inspired accents. It’s so incredible. She wears it to gallery openings.

Tiny Truck Tracker

OK, yes, tiny trucks. I (Matt) am not a big car guy, and but I am always excited about weird little EVs. I’d like to haul some stuff for various art projects, but I really don’t want to drive a giant gas-guzzling Ford F-747. So I make do, cramming lumber and supplies into a Honda Fit. You can imagine my excitement when the Slate EV was announced last year - a tiny electric pickup with barebones features? And relatively cheap? I’m in.

In fact, I’ve been tracking a bunch of ‘little electric truck’ startups - most of which are vaporware or die an early death. I guess it’s hard to start a car company? Anyway, like most people would, I made a little website in 2025 to track and compare their progress: the Tiny Truck Tracker.

It has updates and comparative stats on all the tiny truck startups. And this week the Slate brand moved from ‘give us $50 to reserve your spot’ to ‘give us $300 to pre-order your truck’. It feels like they are the best candidate to actually produce a tiny electric truck and get it on to the road. Fingers crossed.

Reading

• Just released this week: Our friend Lara Call Gastinger is an incredible botanical illustrator, and has a new book: A Perpetual Journal Practice.

  This is both a how-to book about keeping a perpetual journal (where you have a single page spread for a unit of time, like a week, and then return to it year after year during that week) as well as a full representation of one of Lara's sketchbooks. We've been fans of her work for a long time (we traded a website for an original painting back in like 2005!) and so it's delightful to see how her work has progressed and refined. Beautiful stuff.

• And Retro is out this week! I got to read an early version of this (while I helped Jess with a promo site), and it’s so fun. It’s a time travel book where the actual time travel isn’t the point of the story.

• No personal connection here, but I loved Francis Spufford’s Nonesuch, which my book club just read last month. An urban fantasy, set in blitz-era London, and also kind of a time travel story.

• The actual book I took to the beach last week was Lake of Souls by Ann Leckie - This includes a bunch of stories from the 'Universe of The Raven Tower', and these are largely unconnected to that book and plot line. But they operate on the same rules: Gods are real, they interact with humans all the time, and those gods are fed on sacrifice and prayer and that gives them power. But importantly, they can only speak the truth: if they say something untrue or that hasn’t happened yet they must expend their power to make it true. And therefore, a god can accidentally destroy themselves by promising something they can’t deliver. Thus: most every utterance of a god is conditional or prevaricatory, and when you make a bargain with a god you know they will keep their side. But you have to be very, very careful with the wording.
  
  The short stories are great, with lots of different ways to play this out. It ends up being a pretty rich vein of story format - almost like the invention of a new kind of detective story. I guess there are riddle and genie/djinn stories that have a kind of ‘oops the monkeys paw actually grants your wish but in a way you didn't see coming’ moments, but these are much more varied. I am very impressed at the idea that you can just still invent a new kind of story genre.

Other Stuff

• We’re deep in to Dracula Season, although just entering the quiet lull of July.

• And Honeywood Daily is cruising along, with the architect and builder breaking ground on the house.

Next Up

We’re brewing up two exciting new projects, hopefully with details to share by next time. One involves pizza, and the other involves a trip to a University Extrusion Lab. More soon!

- Studio Kirkland