History of the World Preview!!

 Here's some poorly photographed previews for the April Capitol Region ArtCenter show I'm doing with Owen Sherwood, "The History of the World", including a detail of my Charles Darwin portrait, "We are all descended from homeless people", and "The Bullet That Shot Abe Lincoln".  Whether any of these make it in the show or not, I'm having a blast working on them.  There's so much fun inspiration . . . from the History of the World . . .  I want to do a bajillion pieces!

Muffintop.

Been a little lax with posting - but I have been doing work with Owen at the This is you, no this is you blog.  Here's the newest addition.:)

A beet ouerverked, I tink . . .

A little in class demo for my Methods&Media I class that I finished this afternoon when I got back home.  I only worked on it for 30 minutes, and managed to totally overwork it from the nice under painting I had going on.  Ah vell.  Pootin veel be so sad at hees poortrit!

Medieval Times - Savior of Sports Entertainment Dining or Harbinger of the End of Human Civilization? . . . yess . . .

Recently wed Wes and Kiersten whisked Michelle and I away to a undisclosed secret location veiled in the shadow of the Pulaski Skyway, beyond the swamps of Hoboken, and past the black gates of the New Jersey Turnpike to the magical fiefdom of Lydenhurst.  There the secret revealed itself in the form of a towering parapet (as large as the local zoning board would allow at least) made of authentic poorly reproduced stone - alas, we gazed upon the castle of the Lyndenhurst franchise of Medieval Times!  Much merriment was had as the local king regaled us with his alternating basso/falsetto voice about the location of fire exits.  The lord chamberlain explained in the best king's english the castle smoking policy. . . It was as if time itself had peeled back the curtain of reality!

OK - enough snark - it was super fun.  If you love cheering for staged sporting events, if you love eating with only your hands in almost complete darkness, if you love regional theater rejects spouting utter nonsense in poorly imitated British accents . . . and I do . . . Get thee to New Jersey!  (Or check their web site for a location near you!)  It was an AWESOME surprise.  Nice one W + K.

Brooklyn Bridge Park

Had a fun time doing a little painting down at the Brooklyn Bridge park, and taking some super lame, but still fun Hipstamatic pictures.

Favorite Things

Got to take my favorite train ride up the Hudson River from NYC to Albany, and stare at some great rail bridges.  If you've never had the chance to take that ride, find an excuse to do it.  It is beautiful country.

This is you. No, this is you.

My buddy Owen Sherwood and I are going to be doing a two man show curated by Emma Copely (do check out her paintings) up in the Collar City, the Home of Uncle Sam, beautiful Troy, NY.  We both grew up right outside of Troy so it's going to be sweet to have a big space to fill and show all our old high school enemies that we are . . . artists. . .  As part of the show, we're doing a little project: This is you. No this is you. : a series of insults back and forth that we'll eventually be putting together as a sprawling piece for the show.   Fortunately, I had the good sense to make it a blog: Owen has the foresight of drunk garden tool trapped in a cabinet.  We're just getting started and it's a lot of fun,  so keep checking it out from time to time!

Hotel Fire

Summer

"As a Boy I Contemplate the High Dive/Sweet Moves"

DMV

Ahhh . . . The good times. FYI, the line was about four times as long as this drawing.

PC World! New Client! Yippee!

Some new spots for Beth Kamoroff at PCWorld about Google's semi-web-monopoly, and a recall of Sony laptops that were literally melting (!?) Aren't you glad you're a Mac person, reader? All this confirms one of my worst fears: apparently, computers are the future.

Doodle Dog

My Sketchbook . . . in a book . . . The world has turned itself inside out!

I was delighted to be a part of UK illustrator and designer Phillip Knight's new book "GARP: Sketchbook Process" which includes some really great illustrators and designers. It totally gives you the voyeuristic pleasure of picking someone's brain along with peeking in their sketchbooks. One of the other people featured and a new favorite is Iain Macarthur - I love his mix of obsessive tightness and pattern, coupled with his pure draughtsmanship and dynamism.

New Freddie!

A new Freddie Mercury portrait for the archives!

For Michelle

Happy Birthday!

Aahh . . . Brooklyn

Got to spend last night on Kiersten Essenpreis' and Wes Cox roof in Bushwick with our friends Jen and Jed Heuer to eat some lobster and celebrate my beloved Michelle's blank-ty something birthday with lobsters and cupcakes. (Hard to phrase that so it doesn't sound awkward but I want to link to everyone's site - they're all so damn good!) It was a lovely evening emotionally and physically with the great sunset and breeze coming in. Jen and Jed are headed off to Portland for the year next year, and there's the looming possibility of Kiersten and Wes eventually moving to Chicago, and I had the feeling I've had a couple times in the past ten years - things are going to change. Roof time with great people in the Borough of Kings seems just a little too nice to last.

The THING

Was up last night watchin' some netflix and got a-doodlin' on one of my favorite Jack Kirby characters, the Thing. Man made out of orange rock. Brilliant.

I hate to say I told you so . . .

Hate to repost, but since the oil is still flowing, I thought I'd throw up my 30Reasons.org poster from 2008. The week this got poster to the 30Reasons site (Nov 08), Obama drastically weakened his stance on offshore drilling which was quite a disappointment. I was really excited when he initially planned to put a hold on drilling new areas and reassess the current leases held government's incredibly corrupt Materials Management Office. Would it have stopped the current crisis? Probably not. Preemptive tactics may have disastrous results in foreign policy, but as far as environmental policy goes, it's a pretty good idea. It also made me realize what a theme it's been in my own work and especially the "Pink Gold" book I made in 2005.

No, it's Captain Crazy4Cult!

Tomorrow night in LA at Gallery1988 the Crazy4Cult show opens hosted by Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier. Here's a peek at some of my contributions inspired my me beloved Goonies.

GO BEARS!!

If your softball team seems to be mired in mediocrity and nursing a 2 and 8 record, there really is only one solution to be had - new uniforms. In between jobs last week and general paying gigs, I put together a new t-shirt design in hopes of a more productive finish to the season and a play-off berth. Thanks to a design by cousin James last season, we led the league in fashionable t-shirts, and I'm hoping with my contribution this year we can at least be a reigning dynasty in well-outfitted-ness.

P.S. - If you're in the Williamsburg/Bushwick area, go check out the Archive! It's great place runs by great people.

More Nevada Politics!

Another one for Rachel Perkins at the LV Sun. Jim Gibbons, the current governor of Nevada and political maverick/constitutionally confused whackjob has just become the fist incumbent governor to lose the primary in the state's history. Thus not being allowed to even run for his office against his democratic counterpart, he is now a stupendously lame duck - thus the overly large duck transport vehicle. I had a lot of fun on this one. Gibbons has a perfectly square head that's really fun to draw, and since I rode an overly large hollowed out water fowl to school for six years of roughest years of my life, I was happy to rock one here. I'll leave you with this quote - “Racial profiling should be for terrorism. If you look like and act like a terrorist, if you’re coming across as a bad person, you’re going to do harm to our citizens, whether it’s deal drugs, commit crime or commit a terrorist act. Absolutely we ought to profile everybody that looks like a terrorist. I don’t have a problem with that. But if they want to have a racial profile of Irishmen, then I’m going to question that.” - Soon to be former governor, Jim Gibbons (R).

Extra! Extra! REID all about it!

Had a fun job for the super nice Rachel Perkins at the Las Vegas Sun last week about the Senate race Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is struggling in. Basically, all of Reid's attacks have been aimed at Sue Lowden, while Sharron Angle has toiling away in relative safety and is now surging in the Republican Primary polls. This one actually made the Newseum Top Ten Front Pages of the day which was pretty cool. If you're a news nerd like me, the Newseum in D.C. is a pretty interesting concept.

California Draw'rin!

Michelle and I just finished up a wonderful vacation out in California and here's the little sketchbook I was keeping.