Julie Franklin (AB '91) has parlayed nature walks at Tybee Island into a thriving pressed botanicals business
Flying high at Bumblebee Press
Julie Franklin (AB '91) has parlayed nature walks at Tybee Island into a thriving pressed botanicals business
by Misty Herrin
ulie Franklin's father wasn't happy when she switched her major from business to art history. "He was worried about me. That's what fathers do," says Franklin (AB '91). "If I'd known I would end up starting a business, I might have taken a couple more of those classes!"
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 Franklin's work has been featured in Better Homes and Gardens and Martha Stewart Living. One of her framed botanicals hangs on the set of "Friends." |
Bumblebee Press produces handmade stationery and home decor items, featuring pressed botanicals and old-fashioned letterpress printing. Franklin's work has been featured in Better Homes and Gardens, Martha Stewart Living, and Variety—and one of her framed botanicals hangs on a wall on the set of "Friends."
Franklin's path to entrepreneurial success began with walks on Tybee Island with her cousin, a botanist, who collected plants for research while Julie watched and learned. It wasn't long before Julie borrowed her cousin's leaf press and began preserving leaves and petals, later using them as decorations for notecards. Friends began placing orders and Franklin's mother Emily (AB '62) suggested new products: bridge tallies, placecards, and invitations. Eventually, Ethan Allen called looking for pressed flowers to be framed for wall hangings. The buyer loved Julie's samples and ordered several hundred of each design.
"I went into overdrive," says Franklin. "My house became a factory—every room. All my friends helped out. I took out a loan and hired some help. We had three shifts going—collecting, pressing, spraying, and preparing paper. It was crazy!"
Franklin's designs are deceptively simple with natural materials typically resting on white paper in plain wooden frames. The format allows viewers to experience the sense of wonder Franklin felt while walking on Tybee.
Two years ago, Franklin added a new creative direction. An artist working across the street from her warehouse workshop in Atlanta's Inman Park district decided to sell his huge, black-iron 1928 letterpress, which added framed letterpress prints and stationery items to Julie's product line. New to the lineup are baby announcements (most of which are designed by Franklin's husband with inspiration from their young daughters). The letterpress has also opened the door to customized work for parties, weddings or corporate events. Not bad for an art lover with no formal business training.
"My father says Bumblebee Press is a good name for my company because bumblebees aren't supposed to be able to fly," says Franklin. "It's against the laws of physics," says Lehman Franklin (BBA '63, JD '64). "But they do fly because they work hard. Julie may not have gone to business school, but she works hard and she has a real knack for it."
Lessons in experimental archaeology
Rick Brown (BFA '73) sees reconstructing a Revolutionary War submarine as a means of teaching history
by Nathan Long
n the pale, early light of an overcast morning, men and horses struggle to lower a 6,000-pound wooden ship into Snug Harbor in Duxbury, Mass. Supported on a sturdy timber cart with cast-iron wheels, the three-ton vessel looks like a giant walnut with a brass crown. It is, in fact, a working submarine, and a monument to one of the greatest forgotten inventors to labor on American soil.
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 A documentary on Brown's reconstruction of the American Turtle, which was designed to sink a British war ship, is scheduled to air on the Discovery Channel in 2004. |
More than two centuries later, Bushnell's crude warship provides a modern-day lesson in what is known as "experimental archeology," a way of learning about the past by studying outmoded technologies and trying to reconstruct them as they were originally built. The forces behind this lesson are Massachusetts College of Art professors Rick Brown (BFA '73) and his wife Laura, who were undaunted by the fact that the Turtle was unable to embark on its history-altering mission, owing to the unexpected sickness of the ship's pilot. To the Browns and their art students who rebuilt Bushnell's period masterpiece, this chapter in American history is anything but obscure and Bushnell certainly not forgotten.
"They start to understand history in a very in-depth way," says Rick of his students' experience. "So for me this is a very rich educational journey."
Bushnell's letters and a careful analysis of building methods of the day were all the Browns and their team had to go on in recreating a facsimile of the submarine—no blueprints, photographs, or drawings. But their diligence paid off, says Alex Roland, a military historian at Duke University who provided an expert assessment of the sub prior to its maiden voyage in January 2003.
"I thought it was just brilliant," says Roland. "Their constructions were very plausible, very doable in terms of what craftsmen could have done in Bushnell's time, and they worked beautifully."
Students at the U.S. Naval Academy also analyzed the sub's design as part of their underwater vehicles class under Lt. Commander Rich Schoenwiesner. "What they were able to do," says Schoenwiesner," was take the basic principles and apply them to a basic vehicle and see that they actually work."
A TV documentary on the Brown's submarine reconstruction has already appeared in the United Kingdom and is scheduled to run on the Discovery Channel in the U.S. in 2004. While they continue to display their 21st-century version of the Turtle, the Browns are already looking forward to new projects, including one that will involve rebuilding a 17th-century synagogue destroyed during Hitler's invasion of Poland.
"Wild Brain" animator
George Evelyn (BFA '73) draws some of the biggest names in the cartoon business
by John English
hen George Evelyn graduated from UGA with a degree in art, he wanted to earn a living drawing cartoons—but opportunities for such a career seemed remote.
 Evelyn's favorite re-creation is El Kabong (see photo below right), a character in Cartoon Network's revival of Quick Draw McGraw. |
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Using the G.I. Bill to go to film school, Evelyn got his start in the business as an assistant animator for Hanna-Barbera, where he made small but important contributions to the Fred and Barney characters on "The Flintstones." He became a sequence animator for Korty Pictures and worked on an animated feature titled "Twice Upon a Time" that was produced by Lucas. "It was the hardest I've ever worked on a project," says Evelyn. "It bombed at the box office, but is now a cult film in art schools. It's truly one of a kind."
Evelyn spent the next 17 years at Colossal Pictures, where he refined his creative process: "I do story boards, which are the road map to make the film. I figure out how everything will be done, explain that vision, and then sell it."
From the outset, Evelyn has been involved with animated TV commercials; his blue-chip clients include Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Old Navy, Captain Crunch, Nickelodeon—and the familiar Dilbert campaign for Office Depot.
"Budgets for commercials tend to be high . . . . maybe half a million dollars for 30 seconds," says Evelyn, "so I can try a lot of innovative ideas."
Currently a director at Wild Brain studio, Evelyn is co-producing a series for pre-schoolers for The Disney Channel. With the grand old man of animation, Chuck Jones, in retirement, Cartoon Network is producing a series focused on Jones' work for Warner Brothers—and Evelyn has been entrusted with drawing Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner for the opening and closing.
Evelyn's favorite re-creation is El Kabong, a character in Cartoon Network's revival of Quick Draw McGraw (see photo above right). Reflecting on his career—which includes both an Emmy and a Clio—Evelyn is ultra-modest about his accomplishments:
"I like what I do . . . it's a great job. I tell students and interns that they should aim toward whatever makes them happy—and that they, too, can do this. Animation is art, commerce, and storytelling—all of which I love."
Say cheese straws!
Cathy Cunningham Hays' (ABJ '76) contribution to gourmet food aisles is 25 tons of cheese snacks per day
by Tracy Coley Curlee (ABJ '90)
he idea occurred to Cathy Cunningham Hays as she was unwinding from another long day as a media salesperson in Atlanta. She had just sat down to pay some Christmas bills—glass of wine in one hand, cheese biscuit in the other—when the light bulb went on.
 Three generations of Hayes women—mother Geraldine, Cathy, and daughter Lindsey—help with the business. |
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Nine years later, Geraldine's Bodacious Food Company (named after Hays' mother) grosses $3 million a year, producing 25 tons of cheese straws (8,000 packages) a day. Which is not to say that the road to success has been entirely smooth. After testing her product on friends and family, Hayes quit her job of 18 years to go full-time in the cheese straw business. At the time—this was June of '95—there were only four other cheese straw/biscuit companies in the country. As demand outstripped what she could produce in her home kitchen, Hays hired a local baker and began shipping all over the U.S.
"Are we ever going to see a profit?" her husband asked. "Probably not," she said.
Realizing she needed to be more aggressive on the marketing end, Hays pushed her product at food shows sponsored by grocery chains. In February 1998, a broker for Kroger approached her, looking for a cheese straws manufacturer to help them begin a new line of foods for their deli section. Kroger chose to sell Geraldine's Bodacious Cheese Straws over other samples, then asked the bombshell question: "Can you have the first shipment ready by September?"
Hays had no production facility and no money to speak of. "Fear was my greatest motivator in all this," she says. "Fear that I would have to go back to work for someone else kept me going."
Hays was turned down by 18 banks before finally convincing a lender she could make a go at it. Husband Dave came onboard as vice president and director of marketing, and the family moved from Dunwoody to Jasper, 90 minutes north of Atlanta, to be near the production facility. This was quite a culture shock for the couple's twins, who were 10 at the time. Jasper has no shopping malls, movie theaters, or amusement parks . . . just a main street and country roads.
The family is now well adjusted to small-town life, and Geraldine's Bodacious Cheese Straws is looking to expand its production facility a second time to accommodate six new product lines, including new dessert flavors.
"You better recognize and embrace luck when it comes your way," says Hayes, "because it's the only avenue to offset your mistakes. Couple that with a dream, desire, and determination, and you can accomplish anything you want."