How did such an opportunity come about? Well, dear cartographically inclined reader, it all started when we received a rather flattering invitation from Atlanta art blog, Burnaway, to contribute work to an upcoming exhibition of theirs. The exhibit is called Lot & Parcel and it’s all about maps and Atlanta neighborhoods.

If it pleases you, do come peep it. The opening party will take place in conjunction with Burnaway’s first annual fundraiser and is scheduled for this Saturday, June 19, from 7 to 11 pm at The Goat Farm (aka the E. Van Winkle Gin and Machine Works, aka Murray’s Mill, aka 1200 Foster Street).

Our map is of our home turf: Poncey-Highland. Our description is below:

“Poncey-Highland is an unusually unknown place given its central location. Moreover, even most of those who are aware of it would find it difficult to describe its boundaries.

With that in mind, we decided to investigate the various definitions of Poncey-Highland that exist amongst those who call it home. To do this, we asked Poncey-Highlanders to make maps, from their respective memories, of the neighborhood. We culled our representative from two neighborhood institutions, one new, one old: Manuel’s Tavern and King of Pops popsicle stand.

Their responses are depicted in tinted transparent paper on our map. The actual neighborhood boundaries are indicated as black hairlines: Ponce de Leon to the North, Moreland to the East, Freedom Parkway Eastbound to the South, and the proposed Beltline to the West.”

To wit: “Although their forays into a wild variety of projects (furniture, interior architecture, products, web design, videos) could be mistaken for the experimentation of ebullient, wild-eyed youth, it is more likely that the firm is representative of a shift in the way that a new breed of designers is responding to the current economic climate.”

The spread features the photography of our good friend and frequent collaborator Jason Travis. The text and images were art-directed and assembled into a cohesive whole by MA Creative Director (and Armchair Art Director) Kevin Byrd.

Melissa and People of Resource have a brief but vivid history together. When we’ve needed extra hands and brains on deck, Melissa has enthusiastically pitched in. Her talent and intelligence have been a boon to us and we were honored that she would trust us with the fabrication of her lamp prototype, a project many months in the making.

The video above details some of the work that went into bringing this piece to life. For more on the concept, see Melissa’s description below:

“I started out trying to create a lamp that would also function as a calendar. Wanting to get something that dealt more with form than numbers, I thought for a long time about the ways that we’ve marked time throughout history, and how we experience time in seasons. I also didn’t want to limit the accuracy of the lamp by location, and in the end what sifted out was the concept of the solstice. It’s just so wonderfully ancient, and the length of the day marks our lives in an innate way that transgresses barriers of culture and location.

From a form standpoint, it breaks the year into two segments of continuous movement as we move closer and further from the sun. The diameter of the nested hemispheres reflects the eclipsis, (the arc of the sun through the sky) which becomes measurably longer and longer, as the length of the day increases.”

It’s been a busy month for us, so we at People of Resource elected to leverage our 8×8 exhibitors booth toward a bit more progress on our many projects.

Depicted above is our attempt at a vertical studio. “Getting things done is the new black.”

Consider this your invitation to join us for a beverage or two at our studio in Poncey-Highland to see the result of Florian’s explorations of distance and contrast.

We were impressed by the students’ enthusiasm, ideas, and skills. On top of that, they are stellar people conducting their studies in some incredible facilities.

The first part of the workshop was conducted over three days on campus in Savannah, culminating in a design competition with the prize being admission to the second workshop. That heralded second workshop took place in our own studio in Atlanta.

We have to confess – we had a blast and the workshop was revelatory in terms of providing opportunities for us to reexamine our own processes and assumptions. We’ve gotten a lot of traction out of the conversations that have emerged before, during, and after.

We’re busy combing through the mountain of documentation we created, but as soon as we have a handle on it, we’ll be posting a more comprehensive study of this endeavor.

We have to say, what we witnessed was both humbling and inspiring.

From A&E: “I’m Heavy is an intimate look at the remarkable journeys of individuals whose daily struggle with their weight has overtaken their lives. Viewers will get unprecedented access into the lives of participants – who come from all walks of life but share the inability to manage their escalating weight – as they go through a six month program. The process will begin with an intensive in-patient treatment and therapy program where participants will learn the knowledge and techniques necessary to inspire dramatic results and we’ll continue to follow them as they transition back to their daily lives. Two individual transformations will be told in each episode, from the points of view of both individuals, and their friends and family affected. Will these overweight individuals be able to overcome behavioral problems and food addictions to achieve true life change?”

The show is slated to premiere in 2011.

With a brand new apartment on Wall Street, she’s elected to explore the possibilities of a more modern space. Toward that end, Sharon commissioned People of Resource to create new custom furniture for her home, but also to modify some existing vintage pieces. We’re excited about this approach because it aligns very nicely with our own predilection toward mixing new and old.

Depicted above (photograph kindly made by Sharon herself) is the first piece of this project: a vintage marble coffee table for which we turned some new walnut legs. Forthcoming will be a solid walnut dining room table, six dining chairs, and another carefully modified vintage piece: a magazine rack from the home of Sharon’s grandmother.

People of Resource’s first collaboration with SEEDR revolved around a project initiated by SEEDR in partnership with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Georgia Tech’s Tennenbaum Institute: a cold-chain Polio Vaccine container. People of Resource contributed design consultation, a functional white model, and on-site rapid visualization for the project’s most recent collaborative workshop.

For Yellawood’s Spring 2010 marketing campaign, Armchair developed a contest wherein Yellawood fans could win various prize packages. Our contributions were toward a Backyard Games Prize Package: thirty-two custom-painted croquet mallets and the eight Yellawood-clad crates that contains all the games.

Our good friend Jason Travis made the photograph you see above. You can find more images of the project in links to Flickr in the sidebar of this post.