Mule

Jack Baumgartner and I met each other on social media about 10 years ago. The man’s depth as a human and an artist has inspired me to push and pull on what I do and why.

Our phone conversations have followed the same format since the beginning - we say hi, immediately fall into some halfwitted yet full hearted bout of philosophy and curse words and then I say, “So I’ve got another crazy idea...”

It started with our first certificate. I didn’t know anything about design so I told him, “I dont know anything about design,” and asked to him to just go for it. The elements included things about my journey I had told him about but also mysteriously included elements I had not. It became an amazing woodcut that he used to print the first certificates himself.

The second project was the inside label for the guitars. He came to me with a beautiful sketch of a mule head and leaves and a banner for the customer’s name. I told him it was great but perhaps a little too ... obvious. He said, “Im so glad you said that because I have an idea that might be too crazy”. Perfect. And so the Pegamule was born. It’s first appearance was on that label. People have asked “what’s with the Pegamule?” And I tell them there doesn’t need to be a why except that before two passionate friends became friends there was no Pegamule and afterwards there was. And it’s pretty f****** awesome.

He’s always up for crazy projects and the one you’re about to see in a couple weeks is the craziest thing yet. The thing with passion, and passionate people, is that there’s no limit. It feeds on itself. If you get two or three in a room together powerful things can happen (here’s looking at you, Ivan). It happened again and I cant wait to show you what we’ve done.