the story about the leg

so, it occured to me by way of a conversation with my friend katie freshley [hi katie!] that some of you have never heard the story of the bird.  or birds.  as in the ones on my leg.  allow me to share, because it really is an incredible story.  and so we begin...

last summer, i started the process of getting a new prosthesis.  most of you know i am down one wheel.  this was due to a friendly, rare birth defect known medically as proximal focal femural deficiency, or to us commoners, she was born without a femur.  it's pretty uncommon, mostly cropping up in kids who's moms took the thalidomide to curb morning sickness, but instead, ended up with babies who had deformed extremities.  not my mom, however, she didn't do drugs.  for those of us who's moms didn't do drugs, we are just the 1 in 4,000,000 lucky ones.  so anyway, it was time to get a new leg, and i headed to my covered prosthetist to start the process.  it is a process, by the way.  my prosthetist, or leg dude, as i like to call him, informed me that because of the high tech substrate they use for the exterior, i could have some sort of prettiness on it in lieu of the boring black shell that would house my residual limb.  this thrilled me.  as a designy girl, i was on this like white on rice.  the issue came with the endlessness of it...  what would i want on there for the life of my leg?

i gave this some serious thought.

there was one clear choice, at the end:  as an avid charley harper fan, and a bird enthusiast, this had to be the thing.  my leg dude told me it was easiest done with fabric, so i went on a massive search for charley harper prints on fabric.  the issue here was, though it existed, it was tied up in a lawsuit between the fabric maker [design maven and harper fan todd oldham] and the company he made it for [a la-z-boy furniture series].  no dice.  i decided to contact fabulous frames, a local framing chain, to see if they had a solution, being a major retailer of charley harper things.  i spoke to a gal named megan carl, who invited me to come see her and figure out what we could do.  so i went to see her.  after a jovial conversation [it turned out that we had a mutual friend], she said they have no fabric, however, she got the blessing from her father [the company's owner] and brett harper [charley's only son] to use the images and print something on a vinyl-type substrate.  we then contacted queen city reprographics, where i telephone-met michael cipolloni, who became my guy through the process [as it turned out, he and i had a bunch of mutual friends as well, although we had never met before].  he was a harper fan too, so that was cool.  megan gave me the password to their FTP site, which housed every harper .psd you could ever imagine.  i about fell over.  from there, i dumped the birds into photoshop, isloated them from their backgrounds, resaved them, sent them to michael, and waited.  a million phone calls with michael later, i went to my leg guy to take my newly-finished leg for a test drive, and when i got there, the birds were on it!!  i had no idea they were going to be there at that point, so it was quite the pleasant surprise.  it looked a little something like this:

photos courtesy rob @ charley harper studios, via their blog


sweet, no?  :)

the technical aspect of this is incredible.  cincinnati reprographics sent over some dudes to the leg dude's office to actually apply a sheet of some vinyled material, much like in the way you would see on a metro bus or something like this.  pretty rad.  the birds are all charley's, mostly from his ford times era, on a neutral background.  i was so excited, you have no idea.  i was invited by rob and rena to come tour the charley harper studios, which is oddly about 10 minutes from my house, and that's where these photos were taken.  after the studio tour [whoa!!], i was then taken on a tour of the home of charley harper.  [!!!!!!]  i was floating through the house, i didn't want to leave.  if you've never seen it, it's the most immaculate example of midcentury modern classiness tucked away deep in the woods of one of the most unassuming neighborhoods cincinnati has to offer.  stunning.  i feel like the luckiest gal alive having had the opportunity to tour the home of one of my heros... this never happens.  well, i guess it can, but it really doesn't, you know?  awesome.  a few months later, the circle comes complete, as mike and i were shopping at whole foods.  we were walking down an aisle, when suddenly someone with a slightly familiar voice asked, "is your name jill, by any chance?".  i turned to the fella, who had a huge grin as he introduced himself.  his name was michael cipolloni.  i gave him a hug and showed him his handi-work.  it was rad.  :)

and there it is.  the story of the leg and the birds and the amazing people that made it all happen.  pretty great, eh?  :)