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Memory Beach part 3!

2011-12-05T08:55:00.000-08:00

We've finally arrived at the conclusion of the Memory Beach series, this final episode being very straigtforwardly and consistently named "Part 3".

Having departed from his love for the sandy washes of Memory Beach, our hero partied hard with his friend the sociopathic crab who it turns out did not cast the helpless turtle from part 2 into the bonfire. Instead, the trio has decided to go surfing, T&C style even! His heartbreak mended and his old love forgotten and fading into the ether, the octopus rides the waves with his friends and rally car as the world around them explodes with possibility and beauty. Yes, everything seems to be going quite swimmingly!

But our hero wipes out! Or does he? Perhaps he's casting himself to that charming, Norma Jean lookalike mermaid riding the sea foam? And what's with that dragon hiding inside the wave? Is the crab reenacting that famous scene from "Say Anything"? Why does the golden bass have such a tiny umbrella; is he fancy?

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's see the first draft of part 3:

No mermaids in this one yet, but that bass is pretty sweet.

The skeleton was fairly well in place with the initial sketch of part 3. I had been wanting to use that tremendous wave graphic for a while, partly because I love Raymond Pettibon's drawings of waves. I also found a really wonderful adaptation of Hokusai's "Great Wave" in Konami's arcade game "Mr Goemon" later familiar to American gamers as "The Legend of the Mystical Ninja" series.

Acquiring the graphic of the rally car took some doing. I selected the car in the first draft of part 2 from a screenshot I found of "Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally". I would need a 3/4 front view of that car for this piece, thus I would need to play the game to acquire that shot. Easy enough, right? Wrong. Since FGP2 only came out for the Famicom, the rom of the game would need to be opened with a Famicom-compatible emulator. It was easy enough to find a compatible emulator with screen capture ability, but figuring out how to operate it took me 2 hours.

Once I had the game running all I had to do was build up speed, ram into a rock on the side of the road, and take screenshots as the car spun out, which took all of about 3 minutes. Totally worth the 2 hours.

Continuing the transformation of the octopus' ex girlfriend, this scene finds her fading, Pacman style, into the salty air. Nothing but eyes, a shadow of a nose, and mouth being wafted away by the girls seemingly walking/resting on the wave? The UFO and the whale are there too, the latter apparently conjuring Hokusai's wave to wipe out two lovebirds lazing in their yacht.

And, as we so often see in the ruthless day-to-day of oceanic ecosystems, there's a family of ducks chasing the shit out of a shark, who seems quite alarmed! Yep. Sadly, neither the ducks nor the shark made the final cut.

Speaking of final cuts, here it is!

Definitely a climax!

I decided to push really hard and pack this thing out to match the intensity of feeling when new love arrives. "Bursting" is the feeling I was going for. However, there's also a bit of mystery mingled with those explosions of color. The misty, dreamlike clouds are very out of place and only barely obscure a large dragon resting inside the waves behind the mermaid, who is one part Marilyn Monroe, one part bass. The floral elements in the bottom left and upper right are mainly built from graphics found in Hanafuda arcade games.

The large fan reads "Nin Ten Do" which roughly translates to "leave luck to heaven". Many thanks to my good friend Anne for helping me accurately reproduce the Japanese characters in the restricted pixel format!

An element I did not plan but will gladly accept is the gradual flooding of the picture plane that occurs throughout the series. The water level rises and rises from one image to the next. I really didn't plan that, but I love it.

Thanks for reading about the Memory Beach series! Maybe we'll see that octopus again someday...

You can purchase the Memory Beach series in my etsy shop. $15 a piece, printed on #80 card stock. You can also see some really nice quality gel transfers of the series on my flickr.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Memory Beach is also available on Benjamin Benjamin Gallery's online shop. The version they have in stock is larger than the version on my etsy and it's printed with pigmented inks on archival Somerset Velvet 100% cotton rag paper.

Memory Beach, part 2!

2011-11-28T08:32:00.000-08:00

Happy Cyber Monday, oh you mortal immaterial shoppers of the black, bottomless caches of the e-ther! Let us continue the presentation of the Memory Beach series, shall we?

As I mentioned in my previous post, Memory Beach actually began in the middle. Why?

Well for one thing, I had this sweet screenshot from the end of Goonies for the NES and I had to do something with it. It has this ridiculous, gradient sunset that's painfully 80's and a pirate ship!?!? Super cheesy, almost reminiscent of those checkout aisle romance novels with Fabio on the cover. Now that I think of it, the schmaltziness of this setting no doubt set the romantic tone for this tongue in cheek series.

For another thing, why not?

Having established my location, I did some sketches to figure out what would transpire in this idyllic late afternoon and began appropriating images from my vast collection of screenshots and spritesheets. I gathered an octopus, a bonfire, a stereo, a rally car, and a crab together. At that point the top horizontal third of the painting was looking mighty bare, so I cobbled together a "polaroid" of a mystery girl (even incorporating the sunset into the background of the photo!), drew a thumbtack, and peppered the air with seagulls. In a case of found imagery dictating narrative, it seemed the octopus was working out his relationship with the photo floating in front the of the rest of the scene (note the shadow... niiiiiice). My commission for the yogurt shop was at a rolling start and I made my first transfer of the series:

It's super weird to look at this and remember how finished it seemed.

Then I found out the commission wasn't happening due to the size of my pieces. I pushed forward, created the roughs for the beginning and end, returned to the middle piece, and began working out a narrative progression regarding the heartbroken cephalopod. I also 86'ed that yogurt he was eating and gave him a beer and a Japanese fan, because fuck yogurt.

I'd been bothered by the clouds I used for the background, so changing those clouds out might've been my way back into this particular piece after the first draft. The lighting of the clouds in the above image is suited to midday and full-on night (read: superior lighting source), but not sunset (posterior lighting in this case). It took a little searching, but I soon discovered a wonderful genre of gaming for finding landscape elements; unfortunately, that's a trade secret ;)

I was also displeased with the barren beach. There's no texture or variation, and no one else on the beach besides the crab/turtle, octopus, and car. Pretty boring beach scene and a very boring party. I spent a long, looooong time digging through my collection of imagery/the internet for objects to flesh out and enliven the beach, including women. I decided at some point that each image should feature an inverse correlation between the presence of the ex-girlfriend and new, possible loves. As such, you will see the girlfriend change from a dominant apparition in part 1, to a photo in part 2, to her form in part 3 (next time!). At the same time, more and more women will appear near the octopus. Hopefully, this shift creates an optimistic, upward bent to the story. It's weird, I know, but my mind knows no "sense" when I'm working on something. I also decided the girl's photo should be burning, along with the Dear John letter from the top center of part 1, this is about as violent as the octopus gets about his heartbreak, because that's the way to deal with this kind of thing.

Also constants in the series are UFO's and a large sperm whale, which move through the backgrounds of each piece. Though the UFO's simply linger (observe?), the whale reveals some of his personality as the series progresses. In this episode, we see him cavorting with a dolphin, the two speaking morse code. Can you figure out what they're saying?

Finally, I reinforced the spatial depth of this particular piece by framing the midground with cropped-off grasses borrowed from a variety of hard-found sources and worked out the composition using the rule of thirds and constructing a repoussoir out of the surfboard (also surprisingly hard to find!) and the super-cool parrot.

Here's what it ended up as. Light years of difference from the beginning, and for the better I say.

The shades mean "Deal with it"

I would again like to thank the Japanese pornographic mahjongg video game industry, without whose perversion of an ancient and wonderful game I would not have been able to have that lovely roll of film filling out the upper left corner of my collage. Thanks, you gross jokers!

You can purchase the Memory Beach series in my etsy shop. $15 a piece, printed on #80 card stock.You can also see some really nice quality gel transfers of the series on my flickr.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Memory Beach is also available on Benjamin Benjamin Gallery's online shop. The version they have in stock is larger than the version on my etsy and it's printed with pigmented inks on archival Somerset Velvet 100% cotton rag paper.

Next week: parte tres!

Memory Beach! (also, prints for sale!)

2011-11-14T08:35:00.000-08:00

I finally have prints in my shop!!! I'm really glad to make the leap and hopefully start getting my work out there a little farther and wider, but what's more I can finally offer it for less than $50 a pop. You're happy and you get artwork for your bedrooom, bathroom, and boudoir, I'm super freaking happy and I get $$$paid$$$

I am happy to present the first episode of "Memory Beach", a series I created over the Summer:

Here's the initial draft:

I'm keeping the quality of these draft images low on purpose. Enjoy!

"Memory Beach" began as a commission. The owners of the pizza place I work at needed artwork to decorate a new business they were opening. I planned on creating 3 hand painted pixellated still lifes and 3 gel transfers from collages I would make on the computer. The commission fell through, but I decided to carry on with the collages and see where they'd take me.

I had no specific narrative in mind when I created the first piece, which ended up being part two in the series. Sure enough, as I began to cast characters and ask questions about where they came from, a story emerged, albeit a weird one. Memory Beach is about an octopus who drives to the beach to forget about his ex-girlfriend, who has cheated on and/or left him.

This project is a milestone for me.

۰ᴥ۰ I normally do not work in series, instead flitting around from image to image, so for me to focus and really dig in across multiple vignettes is special; hopefully, it's a sign of maturation.

۰ᴥ۰ Narrative or storytelling don't usually incorporate into my work, or at least I don't feel they do. Maybe it takes a heartbroken octopus to bring out the Bard in me?

۰ᴥ۰ I really pushed the sourcing and combination of imagery with these pieces. I raided vgmuseum, mobygames, learned to operate a Famicom emulator (it took me 2 hours hahaha), and just had an all around no limits attitude about where I got my imagery for these collages. Anything pixellated was game (hah!).

۰ᴥ۰ The series became an excellent opportunity to expand my understanding of composition. I went into this with a basic understanding of the rule of thirds, but when I read a little more and learned about rebatments in a rectangle/square, and the action points/"eyes of a rectangle" created by the intersections of the vertical and horizontal thirds in a picture, my use of composition really went from a middling kind of flailing about to a structured, guided application.

The whole process of making the work was a cycle of combing through hundreds of webpages and thousands of files, cutting bits out, arranging, rearranging, then coming back to it a few days later with a fresh eye, printing the image out (which basically functioned as my state proof), making notes, and repeating the process. The process took months, but it cultivated a density and firmness about the pieces.

I feel really good about the series as a whole and I hope to add a few more episodes onto both ends, but for now, we'll just go through the trilogy as it stands.

You've seen the initial draft. Here's how it ended up after about 4 revisions:

Those scissors at the bottom center were an absolute bitch to find.

I would like to go ahead and thank the Japanese pornographic mahjongg video game industry for all their unintended help, specifically regarding the girl and the lipstick/scribble. I couldn't have done it without you; that's about the only context I think I can say that to the Japanese pornographic mahjongg video game industry.

Also: sunburnt beach chicken!

You can purchase the Memory Beach series in my etsy shop. $15 a piece, printed on #80 card stock.You can also see some really nice quality gel transfers of the series on my flickr.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Memory Beach is also available on Benjamin Benjamin Gallery's online shop. The version they have in stock is larger than the version on my etsy and it's printed with pigmented inks on archival Somerset Velvet 100% cotton rag paper.

Next time: Part 2!!!

Oil!

2011-10-14T14:55:00.000-07:00

This drawing was created by building puddles of ink and water to the edges of every area designated as black. The ink, unable to absorb into the styrene sheet, was left to air dry. As the water evaporated, the ink became more concentrated. This concentration of ink throughout the drying process yielded areas of varying gloss based on the concentration of ink, with areas of higher concentration bearing a glossier finish.

Oil
Ink on styrene
16 x 24 inches

The white areas also have a layer of white ink on them. I had hoped the white ink might behave as the black ink did in terms of glossiness and unevenness, but I suppose the different material constitution of the white ink bore out a matte, somewhat crusty finish.

I enjoyed making this drawing because it took my focus into a purer area I think, less concerned with representation and more concerned with artful manipulation of material. The unpredictability of the process was important as well, and will hopefully bear different results in future trials.

The stryene was absolutely lovely to draw on as well. It is quite durable, totally invulnerable to water or sunlight, but also very easy to score, cut, and shave.

If I may suggest some music for your viewing pleasure:

ACAC, L5P, Woo yay!

2011-09-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

Things have persisted in being busy, dear readers!

The latest news down the pipe, fresh out the oven today actually, is from the good people at Fallen Arrows here in Atlanta. They are printing my drawing "L5P" on tshirts for the Little Five Fest this weekend. I will relay the details of their online purveyance to y'all as soon as such information becomes available. For now you can check out the shirt and accumulate shirtlust:

Drawn by hand... in the computer!!! (ﾟДﾟ)

After finishing my submission for the Artadia award and writing a bomb-ass artist statement (read it here), I went to upload all my delicious visuals and words about those visuals and... gremlins. Gremlins everywhere, crawling out of my eyes even. However, the Artadia folks are awesome and with their help all gremlins were quickly stomped to a lifeless, albeit still-twitching, goo.

Also! I am super excited to say that my submission to the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center's "Day Job:Georgia" show was accepted! Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaah! My entry is, surprisingly, not immersed in my persistent pixel aesthetic. Instead, my submission consists of about a year's worth of drawings on drink cups as well as an accumulation of drawings found in my workplace which were left by customers and coworkers. Here's a sneaky peak just for you loyal readers of LE BLOG:

If you can imagine around 100 of these on a wall, that's pretty neat, right?

Right now, I'm wrapping up the submissions to the Japan Media Festival and getting my stuff together for the show in Sandersville during the Kaolin Festival. I'm pleased to say my animated collaboration with Aaron Keuter will be part of the Sandersville show this year! Just in case you can't attend, don't know what I'm talking about, or are simply impatient to see this at every opportunity (in which case, thank you!), here's what I'm referring to:

If things go as planned, it'll be showing on a television with headphones so no one gets unconsentingly, completely blown away by the music ;)

Of course, I cannot fail to remind readers that several of my newest pieces are available for purchase at Portland, Oregon's Benjamin Benjamin Gallery. You may find them on the gallery's online shop.

Did I mention I started a new job in the middle of all this? Pray for me, y'all...

Bael, mE.T.h, Benjamin Benjamin Gallery, and other various busy-ness

2011-09-05T20:50:00.000-07:00

I've been mighty busy these last few months. First off, at the end of July I was able to go to New York for the second time this year/ever to see my collaboration with Aaron Keuter (Aaron's website) screen at the Animation Block Party Summerfest 2011!!! A lot of hot-linked text, I know, but check all of it out if you have a minute!

While I was in NYC I caught the excellent Lucian Freud memorial exhibit at the Met (I <3 the Met!) as well as Cory Arcangel's hilarious show at the Whitney and Ryan Trecartin's absolutely incredible show at MoMA PS1. A lot of hot-linked text, I know, but check all of it out if you have a minute!!

The past month of August was mainly spent working on a variety of things, first and foremost finishing, prepping, and shipping my work to the Benjamin Benjamin Gallery in Portland for their Wargames show. You can see my pieces from the show as well as purcha$e them on the gallery's online shop! I am very pleased to be a part of the show, especially since it's the premiere of my Memory Beach digital collages, which I worked on throughout the summer. They're looking mighty fine, I must say, and I hope the Portlanders are thoroughly enjoying them!

The next big task on my list was continuing work on my 2009 drawing "Bael":

2009 version

I decided to submit this piece in the drawing category for Utrecht's 3rd Annual Art Competition ("10048" and "CMY-Killa" were my submissions for painting and sculpture, respectively). I made several modifications and enhancements to the piece before submitting. I think the most noticable changes are the filling-in of the ground Bael stands on as well as the tinting of the cityscape behind Bael's crown. I was especially glad to force the edge on Bael's crown by tinting the city. I also removed his pupils because that's waaaaaay creepier.

Present condition (ongoing)
Ink wash and quill on unstretched canvas
69 x 55 inches

I also completed a commission I recieved via my etsy shop. A young lady in Florida contacted me about drawing up a custom meth-head E.T. shirt for her appearance at the 2011 Red Bull Flugtag. Her team is piloting a large grocery cart in this year's competition, so she wanted her meth-addicted E.T. riding a runaway grocery cart.

I was quite glad to oblige, but I learned one thing from the experience: grocery carts are hard as hell to draw.

Turned out pretty good, though!

I also put some items up for sale at the completely kick-ass Young Blood Gallery and Boutique! Several guns, knives, and some new and pretty nifty postcards! I also have some small realistic paintings up for sale at the Kibbee Gallery here in Atlanta; here's one of my favorites, a painting of a Polaroid landmaster:

Cheese!

At present, I'm working on a new shirt design for local Atlanta tshirt printers Fallen Arrows. It's a redux of a shirt I created for my now-defunct cafepress back in 2005. It involves ascetic gnomes, geisha, drawings from my childhood sketchbooks, and other things that make equal sense in the same drawing. After that, I'll be knocking out paintings and drawings for my submission to the Artadia competition! Then I'll be submitting work to the Japan Media Arts Festival the following week and taking artwork to my hometown for the 2nd annual Artists of Washington County Invitational Art Exhibit. And then I'll finally be back to my regular work routine. Oh wait, nevermind, I'll be stocking up for the holiday sales of guns and art. Hahaha yikes nevermind!

Busy busy busy, yeah? More soon!

Limited Edition Series of Pigment Transfer Prints up on Etsy tonight!

2011-07-03T18:26:00.000-07:00

This series of pigment transfers is based on a digital collage I created for a painting in 2010. The collage was made by appropriating images from old videogames and rearranging the individual pixellated elements on the computer. A print was made of the resulting collage and this print was then transferred by hand to an archival panel using acrylic gel.

This is a limited edition series. Only 15 have been made, only 10 are available for sale, and they're the only 10 that will be sold (the other 5 are artist proofs for me to keep and exhibit). Get 'em while they're hot!

Little Tybee!!! I got asked to make a poster for Little Tybee!!!

2011-06-26T13:54:00.000-07:00

2011
Digital collage of salvaged game imagery
11 x 17 inches

I was recently asked to create a poster for Atlanta's Little Tybee. After sifting through my collection of almost 7,000 pixellated images, a lot of layering and a lot of recoloring, I am quite proud to present the present image.

First off & most importantly: before you read any further, you need to check out Little Tybee:

Little Tybee on Paper Garden Records

(Facebook/Muxtape/Myspace)

If you check out their playlist on Myspace, I would like to suggest in particular the songs "Orchard", "Fallen Bird", and "Nero". Also, if I may recommend the first song of their I ever heard, the aforementioned video "History".

Aren't they good? This is exactly why, when Brock Scott asked me to do a design for them, I was all kinds of "YES"!

☺☻☺☻☺☻☺☻

About the poster:

When Brock Scott asked me to make a poster for Little Tybee, I immediately set about hunting down as many bee-related videogame images as I could. I was actually surprised at how few bee-centric older videogames exist, so I resorted to a more oblique search regarding terms like "honey", "flowers", and "bugs". I got a little more that way, but the biggest help was Capcom's Darkstalkers 3, specifically the character Queen Bee:

I browsed quickly through my collection of game imagery and quickly hashed out some of the larger elements, the "skeleton" of the design, if you will:

As I worked on the design, the idea of overlapping totally different spaces began to color my decisions. A large, possibly busted-open beehive at the top, dissolving into mountains, which seem themselves solid enough until you realize they are emanating from thin air in a sunset at the extreme bottom.

I really liked this play on pictorial space and it also helped guide my organization of the foreground objects as well. At the more insectoid, mathematical top of the design, everything is very organized and symmetrical. At the bottom, things are totally asymmetrical and surreal. However, there's still a little bit of symmetry in the waspnest flower at the bottom to keep from cutting the design in half (between totally symmetrical and totally asymmetrical; Montagues and Capulets!) and pull your eye down to see all the fun stuff going on in the corners.

When I was building the bottom left corner, I took a cue from the album cover of Nick Drake's "Pink Moon". The weird assortment of everyday things is based completely on the Magritte-ish feel of Pink Moon's front and back cover. In fact, for the longest time I thought Nick Drake had simply used a Magritte painting for the album; is anyone else with me on that?

My last major addition to the design was the floating castle and the pink ship. I needed something in either the left or right of the middle to pull your eye up out of the bottom to keep things moving, so after combing through my huge tracts of pixels I found a screenshot with the floating castle under glass and immediately remembered the ship from another screen shot and voila! I did have to fix all the achromatic blacks in the floating castle, though. It made the castle waaaay too heavy.

The dissolving effect with the sky and the smaller honeycomb pattern was done using the Lighter Color layer effect on the blue sky layer. Easy as pie!

2011-02-28T16:13:00.000-08:00

Idea: Seeing as my current Threadless design revolves around the acronym N.P.R., I'm gonna have an acronym contest. Leave a comment on the submission page with however many ridiculous acronyms you can come up with for N.P.R.

Best acronym wins something, regardless of whether I get printed or not. Make sure you leave it on the submission page!

Possible prizes:

*A hand-drawn shirt

*A Signed Print:

A set of original postcards:

Gracias! ( ´ ▽ ` )

2011-02-26T13:35:00.000-08:00

I have a design up on Threadless: "I Want My NPR"

Nevermind the Bollocks... TALK OF THE NATION IS NEXT

I'd had the idea for this design for several years, and I finally sat down and made it a reality and put it in the running on Threadless. The driving interest for me with this design was taking the wild pop aesthetic of the MTV branding of my childhood and combining it with the notoriously hum-drum, wooden voice of National Public Radio.

What I didn't plan on was the coincidence of my design with the NPR funding kerfuffle. Despite this accidental timing, I certainly won't protest any sort of association with this funding issue. Frankly, I'd be jazzed to see my little ol' gag shirt design become some kind of rallying image, but I doubt very much that might happen, hahaha

ANYHOW, please take a minute and contribute to my cause, which is getting this shirt voted up and printed so I can get paaaaaaiiiiiid

Holy crap so much has been going on where do I even begin!!!

2011-01-17T17:06:00.000-08:00

Okay, let's see... let's see...

Part I:SHOWS

I had stuff in three shows back at the end of November/beginning of December:

-MINT Gallery's 5th annual postcard pinup show: I made 3 new postcards, all of which are presently also available in my etsy store. Here's the one I'm most proud of:

Retablos para Nuestra Senora de San Juan de los Lagos

And here's the one that got the most attention from teh internets (Specifically, Tiny Cartridge... thanks y'all!!!):

Moonwalker

-I had two pieces in a small works show at Kibbee Gallery: my pixellated cake slice from "Mickey Mousacapade" and my realistic painting "Cup of Tea". "Cup" sold! I was so excited, but also sad to see it go, because I was really proud of that painting, but they're made to sell, so there you go, right?

-Finally, I made a quasi-experimental piece for Young Blood Gallery and Boutique's "Home" show:

How to Make an Omelette

I had originally planned to make crossstitches of my parents' houses for the show, so I took digital photos of each house and pixellated both by hand in photoshop:

Mom's

Dad's

When I realized that a) I was running short on time and b) I was too short on money to afford all the colors of thread I would need, I decided instead to try my hand at gel medium transfers for the first time. I followed the instructions provided by the incredibly talented, productive, and generous Hollis Brown Thornton. For a first try I gotta say they turned out great! Once I had the transfers mounted and framed, I put them on an endtable from my grandmother's house. The show stipulated we had to include actual objects from home, however, so I decided to make an omelette using tomatoes from mom's garden and rosemary from dad's. The omelette was placed between the framed images of home and encircled by a tin-can style eggshell string phone. Visitors were invited (and some horrified) to cut off a piece of the omelette and eat. It was a lot of fun to explore this alternate kind of artmaking and I hope to further explore it in the future.

Part II:Xxzxcuzx Me

Right at the beginning of December, my friend Aaron Keuter made this animation collaboration we did public:

The internet loved it, apparently. It got featured on Beautiful Decay and Booooooom and got TONS of views. I'm presently working on getting it submitted to a few shows in Europe, so hopefully it'll get some skymiles under its belt, huh? :)

Also, if you are not a Vimeo'er, it's also available on Youtube!

Part III:Scoutmob!!! And Burnaway!!!

I got interviewed for Scoutmob Atlanta's Creative Eye!!! There were many mentions of beards, pixel guns, and of course the Xxzxcuzx Me video :) I got a lot of exposure to the thousands and thousands of subscribers and even got some business in the the ol' etsy too, which is always good.

I also got invited by the folks at Atlanta artblog Burnaway to write about my favorite show of 2010. I picked The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center's show of the work of Shana Robbins and Amy Myers. The show was really something to behold. So much work and all of it fan. tastic. I really cannot say how great it all was and I went back time after time to see it all. It really was great. And it was a great privilege to be invited by Burnaway to write and also to publicly celebrate Robbins and Myers' work. Again I say brava to them!

Part IV:Christmas, oh my gosh Christmas

I was so freaking busy during Christmas. Between working fulltime, finding/buying gifts for the family, and you know breathing&eating&sleeping because I have to, I was selling guns and knives out of my etsy the most I have all year. I was forced to learn about calculating shipping, finding affordable shipping supplies, and keeping a stock of prepared items in order to meet the demands of the holiday season. It was good, I'm glad I got to help make some folks' holidays better, but I am also glad the holidays are over because...

Part V:I can finally work on my own stuff again

Finally I can breathe and take a minute and get back on the stuff I was working on before the holidays stepped on me(in a good way! in a good way!). So here's what I'm up to:

A new threadless design: Since Atlanta got its ass kicked with the iceboots last week, I was cooped up in my apartment and decided to finally start working on this suh-weet design for Threadless. Here;s an ultra-cropped preview:
that's all you get until it's done! NADA MAS!
Painting! Ive been painting! Check it:
Micro-landscapes!!! Check out my sweet plastic sheet/aka the WALL CONDOM
Submitted some work to a few things and things. I submitted some new, as yet unpublished works to New American Paintings! And then I submitted some work to the Artists Wanted 2010 Competition; You can vote for my work here!!!

So I've been busy. I tried to keep this entry as short as possible to compensate for the sheer amount of stuff I've been getting into since I last posted. My apologies for this inconsistency on my part. I'm trying to be more professional about keeping this thing going! More soon!

New things!

2010-11-07T15:57:00.000-08:00

I've been super busy these last 2 weeks. Lots of new, smaller drawings to get my output up and get more engaged with developing my ideas regarding the pixellated stuff. On the 29th I posted a picture of some of the new drawings to my facebook group :

Clockwise from top left: Digital Camera, Personal Photos, Couple, Aunt Jemima, Sigourney Weaver, MS Landscape, and Ghost (Marky)

I've also made a few new realistic paintings for Donna Van Gogh's, an artist market in nearby Candler Park. I'm pretty pleased with the newest paintings:

Polaroid
Acrylic on canvas
8x8 inches

Phone
Acrylic on canvas
8x8 inches

I've been limiting my palette quite a bit with the last two still lifes I've done for Donna's, usually limiting myself to black, white, gray, a pair of complimentary colors, and a single accent color. The results are much more solid in terms of color unity and it's nice to see how you really don't need every color to be involved in a painting in order for it to be successful. However, I want to keep pushing and see if there isn't come middle ground where I can get just a little more color going on amongst disparate objects.

I also sent some prints to an art sale at the University of Alabama to help out my friend Brandi. Brandi writes so incredibly well that I am going to make this entire sentence a link to her blog to convince you to go discover her quality writing as well; I'm also going to use a semi-colon and bold the whole thing just so I have as much semantic mass as possible.

A month ago I finally sat down and completed a new tshirt design for the folks at 2k Tshirts. I call it "Killa Ghostface":

If you can tell me what objects the ears are mainly made of, I will give you a prize.

Even better news, I got an email from them this past weekend confirming they want to print and sell this design on their shirts! Yes!!! To be honest, that won't likely be for a few months, but in the meantime you are welcome to check out what I've already published through them on my 2K artist profile.

This week, I'm working on more drawings, paintings, and GUNS for the upcoming holiday season! And if you're in the Atlanta area on Friday evening, some see some of my work in a show at the Archive Gallery's new space. I'll be there too if that makes it a little more enticing for you ;)

Finally, I'm working on making some of my pieces available as prints and skins for iPhones n' such in my Society 6 Store. It's pretty lean in there right, now, but I'll be sure to bring updates to your attention; never fear!

Thanks for reading! More soon!

How long is forever, this time?

2010-10-18T23:08:00.000-07:00

In my practice, it seems the main thing I'm trying to get a handle on is what kinds of art objects to produce. Maybe more specifically, the adjustment is occurring re: my idea of the time invested per object as well as the quantity of objects themselves, be they drawings on paper, paintings, or 3d objects, etc. When I was in school it took me months to make what were to me large paintings, like POW:

POW

Acrylic on panel

4x4 feet

This was the biggest thing I'd ever worked on in college, in my life, up to that point. It took so long to make! And while it was a fantastic experience to make this painting, working on images for so long seems to have made an incredible impression on me. As a creature of habit and tradition, I am led to believe that even a painting as small as a foot square should take as long to produce. And certainly it can, given the proper content demanding due diligence, but what about this painting?

Cake

Acrylic on canvas

12 x 12 inches

This painting is all about color. No narrative really, certainly an idea regarding my fondness for pixellation and its relationship with the language of painting, but should something this small take 4 or 5 months? Why? I feel like I've pretty well nailed this one down. Certainly I love the icon it's based on (powerup in Mickey Mousecapade for the NES, y'all), so a serial treatment would be plenty of fun, but should a painting this small take months? I'm not really sure frankly.

I guess it's less a matter of amounts of time and more a matter of making the color work over repeated approaches and interactions...which can sometimes go as fast or as slow as you allow it to (talking to myself here)

And drawings! My gosh! I need to make more drawings! Not sketches, but finished drawings! Jeez! I need to win some kind of lottery or something so I can make more art. Do they still give out grants for people who just paint or just draw?

I seriously need to make more stuff, though. I don't make enough finished drawings of these pixellated subjects. For example:

Ghost (Marky)

Graphite on paper

11 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches

It seems like such a fun thing to do, drawing these cakes and guns and such with ink wash or graphite or charcoal, but I just never seem to work in that capacity, instead focusing on painting painting painting. I know I love to see the artists I admire examining their (and my) favorite subjects with different media and/or a less complicated approach. Plus drawings can make more inroads for people to understand where you're coming from when you make a painting or a sculpture. It's more flavor in the conversation I'm having with you, the viewer.

And as a side note, I need to completely cease any and all commissions. That money is nice sometimes, but I'm just as selfish as I can be when it comes to making stuff. I just wanna make my ideas real, you know? It's my space and time, that kind of thing.

"10048"

2010-09-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

2010

Acrylic on paper

38 1/2 x 38 1/2 inches

SOLD

As is sometimes the case with my pieces, the idea for this painting existed for a while before its creation and its creation was spurred by necessity in the form of an impending and topically perfect show. Specifically, the show was an America-themed show curated by my friend and fellow Atlanta artist Ben Goldman.

I feel really proud of this painting. It seems like a big step forward in various ways. I took time time to lay out the composition on a square in Photoshop, going so far as to use a Fibonacci spiral to place all the elements and activate as much space as possible without crowding the image. I laid out the grid for the island by hand with a ruler and a pencil, a process that easily took 2 1/2 hours even with a larger grid already in place (I had originally gridded the paper for a drawing of Scott Fahlman). I printed out a large version of the digital collage with large squares of each color on the side and mixed the colors as exactly as possible. I then painted in the image, color by color, in multiple layers. With no tape. No tape. Because masking is a pain in my ass and I'd rather do it by hand. It fits my aesthetic of the electronic fusing with the organic anyway.

I was pleasantly surprised when someone at the America show asked me where I'd gotten such a large print made. I was also pleased with their reaction at finding it was painted by hand.

This painting also feels like more of a progression in terms of how I am hoping to communicate by taking imagery out of games and placing it in a fine art context without gross recourses to shallow nostalgia or kitsch, though this particular painting does have something to say about a more serious form of nostalgia and kitsch, i.e. of national trauma affecting perceptions of pre-trauma imagery, but also the way pre-trauma imagery functions now as a sort of dreamlike echo of a time we might all rather exist in.

I'm not interested in making art about the games I pull imagery from, it's not important.

I think I'm pretty old fashioned in many ways with my art practice and my intent as a visual communicator. I think pixelation is formally beautiful and has a lot to talk about with the history of painting, even the process of understanding any kind of painting whether representational or not. I also think game images have the ability to cover a wide range of art movements/schools/theories, often in a single image. They cover a lot of ground in a variety of topics, if presented properly.

Similarly I see early videogames as a vast untapped resource of pertinent images and symbols that can be altered or presented in such a way that they lose their original, frivolous associations and begin to speak quite earnestly or seriously about a variety of topics, such as 9-11-01. That is what I am trying to make happen in all of my work.

It also has been a basically instant success in terms of popular reception through my flickr as well as being published by the kind folks at The Gay Gamer, Tiny Cartridge, and Game Scenes. Not to mention how it took off like a freaking bullet on tumblr!

Read more about "10048" by checking out my 10048 page on flickr.

"Dark Cake" colored pencil on paper

2010-05-24T14:38:00.000-07:00

2010

Colored pencil on paper

9.5 x 8 inches

"Dark Cake" is the most recent image in a series of drawings and paintings I've been making that can best be described as still lifes. They are a weird kind of realism, since they are based on objects that exist in a given space, albeit a solely electronic space. These images deal almost exclusively with formal concerns, specifically color and compostion.

I drew "DC" earlier this year. I had laid out the foundation drawing on a grid about a year earlier and then, as is my want, got sidetracked and let the paper drift into my "later" box. I like to think of "DC" as a bit of "Kirby's Cupcake", an update of a painting I did back in my undergrad:

2004/2005

Acrylic on panel

2 feet square

Although I still had not really gotten a handle on/implemented the miracle of chromatic tones in my work, I still feel like the treatment of color and moreso light is a good bit more expressive or at least sophisticated in "DC" than "KC". I just now recognized the similar pink hues of the grounds in both images; subconscious?

COLOR The range of difference in the hues of the ground and background seem to have an effect on the perceived space in each image. The more analogous pink/yellow relationship in "KC" seems to create an idea of a closed, perhaps interior space. However, in "DC" the pink/blue relationship -which is much closer to being complimentary- has more push maybe, resulting in a feeling of exterior or open space.

Note too, this feeling of space is created despite the closer cropping to the paper's edge in "DC". I'm still trying to get better about giving my subjects more breathing/living space on the picture plain. Bear with me, one day I'll get it down!

LIGHT The light is much more expressive in "DC". That shadowy cake, contained by the brilliant yellow tint halo, has energy. It's not necessarily sinister, though; am I being too subjective? The cake doesn't seem evil, but it does seem to carry some considerable portent. "KC" just kinda sits there and baths in the warm yellow light, more like something lit in a store window than a cake that has come to turn the family reunion on its head, which is totally something "DC" would do. Am I being too subjective?

ORIGIN While it very nearly resembles "KC", "DC" is based on a totally different game item from a totally different game. "DC" is based on a point item from "Bubble Bobble" for the NES(1986). "KC" is based on a powerup from "Kirby's Superstar" for the SNES (1996). Yeah, that's right. there's a 10 year difference between the two sprites. There's also an 8-bit difference (for lack of a more accurate phrase) between the sprites, given the difference in peripherals. And yet there is a terribly strong resemblance in the way the objects have been "drawn". Are there only so many ways one can legibly draw a cupcake in a 16 x 16 grid? Very possibly, but I still find the resemblance intriguing.

I'm not sure how odd we can consider this resemblance in imagery between two far separate series, given the limitations of the software and hardware of the time. Maybe those limitations formed certain unofficial conventions to take hold in the construction of imagery? It's an interesting question.

Both works definitely owe a debt of gratitude to Wayne Thiebaud, whose art I had only recently discovered when I started painting "KC". In 2009, after getting a hold of Karen Tsujimoto's 1985 catalog of the San Francisco MOMA's show of Thiebaud's work and (GASP) reading the essay, I got my mind re-blown, and this time the impact was much deeper. I read about Thiebaud's study of halation and how it lead him to use pure hues on the edges of his still life subjects to prevent them from looking "pasted on". Tsujimoto's essay was quite enlightening and opened my eyes to new aspects of Thiebaud's process, thereby opening my eyes to new ways of making my own paintings and drawings.

"DC" pulls from a specific Thiebaud painting "Dark Cones" for its use of light. I didn't intend for the title of my drawing to mimic the title of Thiebaud's piece, as I had no idea what the drawing was called when I remembered it.

In making these images, I seek to hone my understanding of color, edges, value, and other components of traditional painting and drawing. I like to use game icons of food because their pixellation resonates with me in terms of their painterliness and their innate focus on color relationships. I also like them because they are simply different from and more interesting than real objects. They relate a little to the work of people like Josef Albers, Mark Rothko, or even Ad Reinhardt, but more exclusively I look to Wayne Thiebaud's paintings for lessons on how to make the color work.

Shirt Design : Cacao Atlanta Chocolatiers

2010-05-16T17:51:00.000-07:00

2010

Ink on paper with digital color

Approx 10 7/8 x 13 inches

This is the winning tshirt design I submitted for a shirt design contest/call put on by Cacao Atlanta, my friendly neighborhood chocolatier. If you are interested and duly inclined to buy a shirt, they have shirts for sale on their website's shop.

Oh, and I CRUSHED my competition apparently \m/（＾∀＾）\m/

For this design, I tried to combine the chocolate plant, the various herbs and spices Cacao uses in their truffles (rosemary, echinacea, cardamom, and honey to name only a fraction), and some of the actual shop interior design (the origami hearts and baroque elements). Successfully completing this design entailed seeking out a quality, cheaply-priced volume on French Baroque design from those lovely folks at Dover Publications, and find one I did!

I also tried to reference Marcel Duchamp's "The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even" by including the chocolate grinder at the bottom center...

（＾＿－）☆wink

I'm pretty dang pleased with it, but my only regret is not paying close enough attention to the rules, which specified only one color could be used (see the original, full-color version). Had I the wherewithal to fully pay attention to the rules, I would have incorporated more hatching to break up all the line work. Oh well. They loved it anyhow!

Maybe I can do some more hatching and re-submit if they ever print another run???

Bones and Ladders and Mantis Bears (OH MY)

2009-12-12T12:21:00.000-08:00

I have a new design up on Threadless! Please take a moment to vote for it!

I originally conceived this design for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs Tshirt Jamarama design contest back in the summer, but alas, it lost! So I tweaked it a little, neutered the prominent YYY references and tada!

So vote that shit into the winning, so I can finish off my student loan debts!!!

What Is It?

2009-03-13T19:13:00.000-07:00

Wha Tizzit
2008
Acrylic on gourd
4.25 x 4.25 x 3.125 "

I haven't written in nearly a month; my apologies. Excuses aren't worth much, so I'll just offer up apologies and admit my own fault.

"Wha Tizzit" is the product of studio boredom and a basic knowledge of surrealism. I had originally planned to paint this squat, ovoid gourd to resemble a blue slime from Dragon Quest but, having presently gotten sick of merely reproducing videogame imagery, I instead decided to do something non-videogame with the primed gourd. Eventually, probably while I held the object in my hands, I stumbled upon the idea of painting the gourd to resemble a disembodied female breast. The job of painting the object was simple enough: a basic series of glazes of fleshtones and browns to mimic the colors of skin and aerola. The piece was finished quite fast, which worried me a little, since I am used to paintings taking months, not hours. No two images are alike, I suppose.

After the paint dried, the object made its way to my bookshelf and its true power started to manifest. Upon glancing the disembodied, somewhat lifelike breast sitting quite peacefully amongst my books, my strongest reaction was revulsion. It reminded me of a scene from Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho in which the main character keeps several trophy vaginas in his gym locker, one of which is wrapped with a bow. Creepy.

Also, there's an uncanniness about this piece, now that I understand what being uncanny actually means... I'm reminded of Meret Oppenheim's Object:

Meret Oppenheim
Object
1936.
Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon,
Cup 4 3/8" in diameter; saucer 9 3/8" in diameter; spoon 8" long, overall height 2 7/8" (7.3 cm)
Collection of the MoMA, New York City.

It's so familiar, but so effing off in an essential manner. Furry tea cup, severed tit.

*shudder*

I'm sure Oppenheim's piece made an impact on me. I remember just staring at it when I studied Dada and Surrealism in my undergrad at Georgia Southern. It's just so freaking weird. I mean, imagine drinking out of that cup. All the secured hairs drifting with the flow of the coffee/tea/fanta. It would be like Burt Reynolds slowly dribbling water into your mouth. Not cool. Which is exactly the point. Good job, Meret!

Wha Tizzit has gotten strong reactions the few times its ventured out of the house. It's nice to make something that really bothers or amuses people, or both.

As for intended meaning, the best thing I can offer you is that I am a breast man and this piece is a reflection of my own regret of making the modern mistake of breaking women down into this or that physical aspect. I don't do it often but, being an essentially flawed being, I still do it at least some of the time. This piece is a reflection of that perversion; it's a perverse object, certainly not far out of reach of being fetishistic.

Let's address a potentially offensive image now

2009-02-18T19:18:00.000-08:00

Pulled Up
2007/2008
Acrylic on panel
4 7/8 x 4 7/8"

This image comes from the Japanese Game that provided the basis for the American version of Super Mario Brothers 2. For those of you familiar with the American version, this image above was replaced with a turtle shell that could be occasionally pulled from the ground like many of the other items available in the game. As with the turtle shell, this item (labeled a "shrunken head") would slide along the ground and take out all enemies in its path; this seems much stranger in the Super Mario context, since we're talking severed heads instead of turtle shells. On top of that, it's a mobile severed head. On top of that it's pretty obviously a pickaninny head.

So why make a painting of the thing? Honestly, because I'm a white artist and I'm aware of other race-concerned painters like Michael Ray Charles and Kerry James Marshall, who happen to be themselves black. I feel that creating similar imagery as a white artist runs the risk of being a little more controversial; whether that's the reality or just my Southern, race-sensitive upbringing coming out is subject to you readers and critics out there.

My motivations are not at all antagonistic or bent on perpetuation of the stereotypes being controverted in Charles' and Marshall's work. I simply have my own formal interests(pixellation) and my own conceptual interests(the particular symbols prevalent in games) and I love to make work that allows my own interests to resonate with other artists' work; it creates a small continuum, and reinforces what those artists have already done.

I don't want to ride coattails or become some cheap provocateur producing whatever is most offensive. This image is far more documentary than that. It's also very tiny and therefore more innocuous than it might be if it were large. I mean to simply present an existing symbol in the early history of popular videogames. I think its existence says something about the wider culture.

I am intrigued by the passage of racial stereotyping into the visual language of early videogames. Why did this imagery survive to a medium spawned almost two decades after the Civil Rights movement? On the one hand, I suspect the limitations placed on graphics by early software and hardware. The resolution on most individual nintendo graphics was some variation of 8x8 pixels, mainly within the range of 16X16 to 128x128 pixels. As such, one isn't exactly bound to produce an accurate image of anything, living or not.

At the same time, though: Huge eyes? Big, red lips? Nappies atop the head? There were certainly plenty of other objects the original designers could've placed in the game and accurately depicted within an 8x8 pixel framework, but they somehow settled on a cartoonish, severed head of a negro. That's indicative of something larger going on outside of videogames in the early 80's. I am fascinated by both its existence and the apparent lack of outrage at its existence.

Maybe people just didn't pay enough attention back then since Pac Man, PooYan, and Kangaroo never inspired any teenagers to shoot up their high schools in 1987.

Press Start to Begin Again

2009-02-17T23:03:00.000-08:00

As it is with drawings and paintings, so it seems to be with bloggings and musings: the first attempt almost never survives to the final form of the thing.

More and more I feel perhaps a tightness or pit in my stomach when I finish the first draft of a drawing or the first layer of a painting. As pleasurable as initiating an image can be, pleasure soon gives way to abject dread of what must eventually be done: revision. It's sometimes so hard to get up the following morning and look that first draft or layer in the face because I know what is coming, or at least what should be coming. I will have to reject the thing that gave me pleasure by covering it, erasing it, stripping parts of it away, and altering it. I imagine the feeling to be a fraction of what it must be like to sleep with a woman one night and then toss her out the following morning.

However, I don't deny the ramifications for all parties involved is far more serious in the latter case.

Revision is good, though. The more I finally make myself pick up an image after days, months, even years and make that first stroke or cut and BAM! I am in it. The ice is shattered and I am swimming.

OJ
2006-2008
Acrylic and colored pencil on panel
9.5 x 8"

This thing was such a failure starting out. I began this image back when I lived in Statesboro, but since I didn't get it exactly right on the first try (like that EVER happens, ARGH), I was lazy and let it just sit. That was 3 years ago!!!!

I let this thing torment me for over 2 years; I would see it peeking out from a shelf or a box and the shame and frustration I felt would instantly derail my brain. I was allowing an inanimate object to bother me, and terribly so. Cut to January 2008: I was recently unemployed and trying to revive my studio practice, which had suffered quite a bit during my time in Savannah and my subsequent long hours working for a frame shop in Atlanta. I saw this little bugger, no more than 2-3 layers tops, and by God I grabbed it and I went to town on it.

My chief frustrations with acrylic were its opacity and its need to be mixed prior to surface application(due to its quicker drying time compared to oils). I wanted to force the rigid pixellation into a cohabitation with more organic, sketchy, painterly markmaking. I discovered I could use clear gesso to build up layers of colored pencil over the bottom layers of acrylic, and it was a cinch! I had found one very vital way of uniting my love of the physicality of drawing with my desire for a painterly layering of pigments, within the framework of a digital image transferred to an actual object.

My advice to any readers I may have managed to acquire is simply this: you must get in there and make that first gesture. Once you have signaled the work, it will open up to you, begin speaking to you, in a sense.

Don't fear failure, because it is actually your best friend when you desire growth. You're a Bonsai tree, and you ain't gonna get prettier unless something lops off a limb here and there.

And don't ever be afraid of a panel with some pigmented plastic smeared on it.