survivor of the editing process

HA!
When I've been contributing web content to Revue WM, I have been ending all my posts with the sign-off:

"and, also, there was so much hot tail there I could barely walk straight."

In the past, it was always excised by my editors. Apparently, they decided to look upon it this time as charming incorrigibility, because it made it to publication for the review I submitted this morning about the Blues Traveler show that was in Grand Rapids the other night.

Go check it out, team.

things are taking shape

our ArtPrize entry has at last gotten into the 3-d phase. what you see here are the long narrow platforms that we built for them.
what you see here is the first of the rough armitures

going out of business

Hey Team,

you might remember that I told you I would be participating in an art fair in Saugatuck. Well, said art fair was this past Saturday. It didn't go quite so well as the other art fair in Fremont.

To start the day, it was pouring rain during set-up time, so that blew.

Also, I had some of my linocut prints on fabric quilted up to sell, and nobody even asked about them. No one so much as looked at them with any show of interest. As for the paintings, I got a lot of superlative compliments, BUT COMPLIMENTS DON'T PAY THE BILLS, PEOPLE.
Then there was the entire comedy of errors revolving around the painted furniture. You may have heard reference to that venture in the past. I had hoped to do a mural commission in my hometown this summer, but nobody in these parts has any budget for that. So, I thought I could flip garage sale furniture and think of that as a mini mural commission. The wise Lauren Moyer once told me that in the gallery she works at portraits are very difficult to sell, but landscapes turn around nicely, so I settled on doing nature stuff on the furniture. Left to my own devices, I would probably have painted snakes and skulls and naked women and shit on the furniture, but in the interest of commercial viability, I instead painted tasteful and restrained flowers on the furniture.

Everybody seemed to think this was a good idea for making a buck this summer, but as it turns out, the concept is flawed in a few important ways.

First off, I found out quickly that I HATED DOING THIS. Painting flowers and plants is way boring. I had to force myself to go out to the garage and work on these beasts. Not like the portraits, which I'm usually stoked to work on and for which I forsake lesser pleasures.

Second, they were a major hassle to transport to the art fair. I had to borrow a trailer from a neighbor, and even after they were blanketed and strapped down, they still rubbed in transit so the paint had some gouges in a few spots when we arrived. Only one of the four was loaded in the van instead of the trailer, so it was still perfect when we got there.

The third and biggest problem with the furniture, however, was that I couldn't actually sell them at all anyway. Here's the real trouble: over the course of the day I must have had 30 variations of customers saying "This is wonderful! I love this! I have a bookshelf at home that I'm going to go do this to!"

So, it's official. Tony's Crappy Furniture With Stupid Flowers Painted On Them Inc. is going out of business, people.

So now I'm stuck with these miserable things that I somewhat loathe and apparently cannot sell. The moral of that story, team, is to only sell out for things that actually pay, and don't try to sell a product that people believe they can do just as well themselves.

Thankfully, the day wasn't an entire commercial failure because I sold a painting in the last ten minutes before the art fair closed. Zenstar Paradela now belongs to a lovely gentleman who was a fellow vendor at the art fair.

He's on the Christmas card mailing list now.

Though I'm glad for the cash, I'm weirdly sad about seeing that painting go. I've had it in my room since it was completed last September, and I have anthropomorphized it a bit in the mind.

We all gotta learn to let go, though.

more fun with textures

These are a couple more textures that I have been inking for me and the Gordon's ArtPrize entry

a summer portrait

I told you I was trying to get work done this summer, now I can prove it.
Like I said before, I am entering ArtPrize in the fall in collaboration with Gordon Zalewski of Legion Design. As part of our marketing for our entry, I decided I would do portraits of the artists. I have finished the portrait of Gordie, and I present it to you now here:
Yes, I am still working the gimmick of painting with patterned fabric collage, like I did here, here, and here. And I couldn't resist busting out my tube of solid gold either.
One important thing to note, is that I used my sexy new camera to photograph this painting AND DAMN THAT SHIT IS FINE! It catches the detail almost as sharply as a scanner and the color fidelity is spot on.
Now at some point I will have to do a self-portrait for our marketing, which is a truly daunting task. Over the years in art school I have been made to do a half-dozen or so self-portraits, and its always a mess.

have you seen this?

hey team,
I know i haven't been blogging much this summer.
for that I apologize. I promise that I have been working, but I have also been chilling at the beach. Which is what I am doing right now. I'll be on Isle of Palms, South Carolina all week. Likely not doing a single art-related thing. To remind you that I exist, I thought I should share this with you:
A Softer World

My homeslice Vince recommended it to me and I LOVE IT
I hope that you will also enjoy

my new baby

En route to Ireland, my old digital camera officially died. It had been a low grade model to begin with, and had been on its last lesg for some time anyway. Then the baggage handlers for Continental went above and beyond kicking the shit out of my bag, so when I arrived in Ireland I had a fracked up camera and had to steal my mom's camera for the rest of the trip to take pictures with.

I was due for an upgrade anyway! I took the money from the sale of scarecrow, (and a skosh more) to buy a superdope Canon Rebel T2i digital SLR with 18-55mm lens. My principal need for an upscale camera is for documenting work. When I work too large for a flatbed scanner,I have to be able to photograph the work, and you need a supersharp camera to accurately capture the details of a painting for reproduction. I forced the salesguy to set up tripod and lighting so we could photograph a 2d poster in the store, then throw it on a computer and review the pixel data, to make sure the lens and camera were both sufficient. And baby, that shit was HOT. This camera sees things 1000 fold more clearly then the illustration department camera I used to use at CCS to document.

Now photographers, please don't patronize. I'm sure your cameras are better. Congratulations. But for my budget, I am very happy with this camera.

And all my illustration homeskillets, call me up next time you paint something too big to scan. You are no longer a slave to scanner-bed dimensions, I'm hooking you up.