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Joe Horacek

By Asha Timperley

When Joe Horacek sees someone wearing one of his hand-printed shirts he oftentimes just smiles and nods. If the opportunity presents itself he might ask about the shirt to see what the wearer says, but he’s not fishing for a certain response.

He’d rather lay low, make his art and share it with others, that’s really what his story is about – sharing art.

The soulful melody of Louis Armstrong plays in the background of the little house turned print shop. Tucked between a few other local storefronts on the corner of 33rd and A streets, Little Mountain Print Shoppe is Joe’s own little cabin on the mountain. It’s where his sketches and designs make their debut in the form of shirts and sweatshirts.

Joe is humble and soft-spoken about his shop. One day he’s printing shirts for Sanborn Canoe Company in Minnesota, the next he’s working on a custom local order or doing the bills, but in some ways screen printing is just a front.

For Joe, having a shop allows him to continue to create and design while having a tangible way to see his art come to life.

He opened Little Mountain back in 2011 after working at a screen printing shop in Iowa where he sat behind a desk every day. It exhausted him without ever tapping into his artistic roots, so he knew Little Mountain had to be different.

After buying his first screen printing press there was a lot of trial-and-error work. It was often one step forward and two-steps back during that first year, but it’s how he honed his craft. Joe said he also spent a lot of time learning and researching the best materials for making his screens and ink. Even the angle, speed and pressure he applies to his squeegee is an intentional part of his printing.

But all of those pieces circle back to Joe’s desire to simply create art that matters. He draws inspiration from nature, viewing it as one big garden from which he can create. He loves mountains, because they’re part of nature, but also part of his name.

In Czech, Horacek translates to ‘little mountain’ and Joe said when he learned that he knew it needed to be the name for his shop. It’s his way of paying homage to his family roots – his artistic father who helped him build the racks where his shirts are displayed, his accountant mother who taught him the finer points of QuickBooks and his brother and sister who support his business by simply wearing his designs.

Little Mountain is bigger than just Joe. It’s bigger than screen printing, and that’s the way Joe wants to keep it.

November 11, 2015

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Allison Newgard

By Asha Timperley

Every now and then Allison Newgard overhears someone refer to her as ‘the cookie lady.’

That kitschy title cues an internal eye roll, but here’s the thing, she actually fits that title pretty well. After all, she knows her recipes by heart, can smell when a cookie is done before it burns, makes her own vanilla extract and brown sugar…and she’s the owner of Kitchen Sink Cookie Company.

But the thing is, Allison is and was about 10 other things besides just ‘the cookie lady.’

When she was 21 Allison felt stuck, really stuck.

Living with her parents and 3-year-old son in her hometown of Hallowell, Maine, Allison had a college degree that she didn’t want to use and no idea what to do next.

Then came a question, “Allison, what did you want to do when you were eight years old?” posed her mother.

And with one question, Allison was unstuck.

She went to culinary school, graduated, worked in a restaurant kitchen, moved to Nebraska, worked at the University, moved back to Maine, then back to Lincoln, worked at three local restaurants and then started Kitchen Sink Cookie Company in 2014.

Her cookies are creative and spunky, with nostalgic flavor combinations like peanut butter, dried strawberries and Cheez-Its, inviting cafeteria flashbacks in her Magic Lunchbox cookie.

And while you might think baking cookies all day would be the best job in the world, it’s pretty demanding work. In a typical week she clocks of minimum of 10-12 hours each day, plus whatever farmers market she’s selling at on the weekend.

Sometimes she stops and thinks, “What am I doing? Why am I baking cookies??!?!”

She said she has plenty of doubts, but also tons of support from her husband and friends who keep her zoned in on the fact that being ‘the cookie lady’ is a big part of her story.

Allison knows her unorthodox cookies won’t change the world. They’re not actually magical or life-changing in that sense, but cookies are to Allison what hugs are to others – familiar and individually unique.

There’s no playing it safe when it comes to Kitchen Sink Cookies and that’s exactly how Allison knows it should be.

November 4, 2015

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Paul Jarrett

By Asha Timperley

He’s a nerd in a jock’s body. At least, that’s how his wife describes him.

Paul Jarrett laughs a little, describing his love of Magic: The Gathering, Battlestar Galactica and joking that he should have been in band or theatre club. Instead, he played Division 1 football and founded Bulu Box, a nutrition supplement sample box company, with his wife, Stephanie.

But what most people don’t know is that Paul started lifting weights in middle school out of necessity, not the pursuit of a spot on the football team.

As a fourth grader Paul was bullied like crazy – we’re talking throw rocks at his head crazy. His family lived in a small trailer park on north 27th street between a water treatment plant and the state fairground. As a kid he quickly realized that his bargain clothing and undesirable address made him an easy target, so he started lifting weights to fight back.

When Paul went to high school he tried out for football and instantly earned the favor of his coach with his aggressive physical abilities – the bullying stopped.

Now, he drives past the trailer park because it’s near the Bulu Box warehouse, and he said it feels like a whole other world. It’s where Paul’s story started. It’s where he watched his parents slowly buy one trailer after another and model a very entrepreneurial approach to business. But it’s also not where his story ends.

Paul isn’t just a kid who grew up in a trailer park.

He’s also the guy who gets stopped on his way home from work by people who want to shake his hand and thank him for the business advice via his latest podcast.

He lets his work-life impact his home-life and his home-life impact his work-life, because the lines are blurry.

He knows the name of nearly every employee at the downtown Walgreens because he chit chats with them every time he stops in.

He’s the guy with tattoos who meets with high-powered investors one day and is hanging with college students in a t-shirt the next day.

Paul Jarrett doesn’t belong in any one category. No one label fits him perfectly, and that’ just the way he likes his story.

October 28, 2015

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