Three double-sided banners for the Historic Belmont Firehouse. One side has a steam gauge, bell, hose nozzle, and the Portland Fire & Rescue logo. The other has community members, old and new fire helmets, a steam pumper and a wheel. Winter 2008.

This project was directed by Don Porth who requested a community scene, old and new fire helmets, and the steam pumper. I am responsible for the development of the imagery and took the photographs of community members and artifacts contained at the Historic Belmont Firehouse.

Logo for the City of Wilsonville’s Natural Resources department with a great blue heron, chinook salmon and willow leaves. Several signs printed with the logo are along Boeckman Creek in Wilsonville. The alternate option incorporates an oak tree. Summer 2007.

For the development of this project I communicated with Lisa Nead. Her desire was to include a heron and a salmon, either a big leaf maple, oak, alder or willow, and a river if possible. For inspiration she provided examples of Asian art and a heron she photographed (a rendering of which was used in process work). The oak tree version of the logo is the realization of a general concept presented by Lisa.

Visit the website at www.dogwakerpdx.com

Campaign materials for My Dog Walker and More including logo and website. Winter 2007/2008.

Clients Paige Allison and Tamela Cantor wanted a rose-head (for the Rose City) with a stem body walking a dog in front of a cityscape. They fancied the colors orange and pink. For the dog they wanted a substantial breed to indicate prowess in handling. I elaborated with thorn heels and the selection of the labrador.

For the website along with Tamela I contributed to structuring information, naming buttons, editing, and writing copy (including the section: Fifty Three Words That Rhyme With Dog.) While I am responsible for the photography, Paige and Tamela are attributed with gracefully handling six dogs on an outing at Mount Tabor and getting them to sit for the camera.

Image for The Grand Opening of Boeckman Road: June 21, 2008

The Boeckman Road Coffee Creek wetlands site with Pleistocene megafauna from the time of the Missoula Floods. The mastodon, dire wolf and teratorn are flanked by horsetails, a spore bearing plant which thrives in wetland environments. The stratified texture at the base of the image represents rythmites, or layers of sand and silt deposited in the Willamette Valley with each flood.

Concept and Graphics by Katherine Fitch incorporating the photography and ideas of Lisa Nead and the suggestions of Geologist Bill Burns.

Kolk logo and Pleistocene Megafauna for Missoula Palooza and The Grand Opening of Boeckman Road.

At the end of the last ice age ten to fifteen thousand years ago, catastrophic floods occurred every fifty-five years or so when a damn on Idaho's Clark Fork Valley containing Montana's Glacial Lake Missoula deteriorated letting loose mass amounts of water, ice and debris which flowed across Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington all the way down to the Columbia River and Pacific Ocean. The intensity of the water flow is estimated to have been more that ten times the force of all the worlds rivers combined. The agricultural fertility of the Willamette's Valley was instilled by lake bottom sediments deposited by the Missoula Floods.

A Kolk is an extremely strong vertical vortex that develops in deep flows of super fast moving water. A kolk is strong enough to pull a boulder from the bedrock and there are ponds today where water has flowed into the empty space since this happened during the Missoula Floods. An example of a kolk can be found just north of Wilsonville's Boeckman Road at Coffee Creek.

Pleistocene Megafauna are a diverse variety of large mammals that lived during the Pleistocene epoch from 1.8 million to ten thousand years. Eighty-five percent of them went extinct at the end of the last ice age. Climate change and hunting by natural Americans are cited as primary causes for their demise.

The Teratorn is the largest known flying bird and had an estimated wingspan of over 13 feet. The bird swalloed live prey whole through jaws that opened wide. Teratorns were more reptilian than eagles and similar to the condor. They were less adept at hunting small animals than eagles and hawks.

The Dire Wolf was similar to the Grey Wolf but slightly larger and slower and had a broader head, shorter limbs, wider legs and larger teeth. Live prey included pack-hunted animals such as ancient bison and horses.

The Mastodon was Native to North America and is thought to have first appeared almost four million years ago. The average adult was eight to ten feet tall and weighed four to six tons. Mastodons had coarse, reddish-brown fur, long, squat bodies compared to elephants, and stalker, stouter skeletons than mammoths. Compared to mammoths they also had proportionally larger, flatter skulls and nearly horizontal tusks. While mammoths were grazers, mastodons were browsers of spruce forest and open spruce woodland foliage including leaves, twigs, conifer cones, swamp plants, and grasses.