Some Writing for BIRDBRAIN press

I have not really posted much lately because I have been mostly writing for some zines for BIRDBRAIN press. We hope to have a bunch of writing to publish by Alt Press Festival in July.

Here is a sample from the Diamond Ordinance:

Manteca, California—search in Stockton, CA directory. September 27, 1953.

Victor Malchus Xavier (X), recently promoted to Chairman of the Board roosts in his chair, overseeing the eight men who in 55:29 will determine the ruling of the Diamond Ordinance. Not at all to be confused with the diamond ordnance that will plague the city under the Diamond Ordinance, should it be passed.

Thomas Thomas (+), Richard B. Thomas (*), Joseph William Blackman (>), and Edward Smithson (^) all respectable men in their late 50s, with exactly the same tightly cropped haircut, sit to the right. Simon Krilgram (~), Bartholomew Pinkerton (=), Thomas Marvin Green (<), and Michael Conkling (#) are on the left, equally reputable and well-groomed men, ranging in age from 47-69.

            “Well, as I see it, what we should be most concerned with is the safety of the materials. We really must ensure that the material is unharmed,” says +.

            “Yes, I concur. However, I feel I must repeat that it is of the utmost importance that the product is just as protected. How can we force our minions to comply with the Diamond Ordinance if there are NO DIAMONDS?” > protests, slamming the perfectly round, adequately lacquered table.

            “But what about the artillery? Should we not be concerned with securing our diamond ordnances? Those weapons are worth millions.” With this utterance, < receives looks of despair from his left, and frustration from his right.

This has been the situation for over 3 days, 7 hours, and 31 minutes. X has become quite perturbed and is finding it difficult to refrain from making his opinion well known. Like any juried situation, X holds the ultimate power over the ruling, but an acting head should only veto or announce his thoughts in the direst of circumstances. This mere dullness of bickering back and forth does not constitute a situation of that necessity.

Alternative Press Festival

Thanks to Ryan Perkins, we are designing the posters for the Alternative Press Festival again this year. This makes the 3rd year of collaborative poster design with the talented Ryan Perkins, Max Kelly, Whitney Shaw, Claire Taylor, and Valerie Jar.

We each got a theme, ex Mystery, Classics, Fantasy. I got Romance. Here is my image, without the type.

The Alt Press Festival is on Saturday July 7th this year at the Downtown Main Library. Come see us, BIRDBRAIN press will have table!

More on Corndogs!

Final version of the first letter to Wienerschnitzel. Typewriter written on Mr. French Pop-Tone Pink Lemonade paper in a Construction Safety Orange envelope. We have gained another judge for our project. Now, just lacking the signatures!

 

And the score card, front and back:

We're going to Millie's tomorrow, which has been #1 by many people. Good luck to all.

Corndog Project

A friend and I are collaborating on a Corndog Project. We are going to every* restaurant in Salt Lake City that serves corndogs, hoping to find the PERFECT corndog. Here is documentation of our progress so far:

Here is a draft of a letter we are sending to Wienerschnitzel. The final will be on Mr. French paper and mailed to Wienerschnitzel headquarter in Newport Beach, CA. We will both be signing them of course.

Here is a draft of the "corndog score card" we will be using to score each corndog and it's restaurant. We will send in a copy of the score card with each letter.

*We are trying to hit every restaurant, so, if you know of any restaurants in Salt Lake City that serve corndogs, please let us know. Email me, post on here, call me, etc. Thanks!

B-Day Book for a Buddy

It was my friend's birthday recently and I made her a silly 8 page book. She has two cats, Swordfish and The Chap, who she adores probably as much as I adore my cat, Charles. Here are few pages from the book.

Hooray for Birthdays!

2012 Calendar

I made a limited edition of 2012 Calendars mainly for Christmas presents for my family and friends. They have been a bit hit and I've sold a few and given a few more out. There are still some left so contact me if you want one. Each month was illustrated with a holiday from that month, even August which has no government recognized holidays.

Here is a sampling of months:

Skiers

I found this while cleaning out my computer's Documents folder. This was a drawing I made for my parents last year for Christmas. It's pretty funny, so I thought I'd share.

Final Drawing (from left to right: dad, sister, me, mom)

Sketch

Hilarious original photo circa 1996 (we all had matching one-piece ski suits, and yes, that is a fanny pack)

"Seasons Eatings"

In December, I was once again invited to participate in the University's Art Department's annual mini-print exchange and sale. I letterpress printed this print from photopolymer plates and a linoleum block reduction cut. The original image can be seen in my 2012 calendar, soon to be on this blog!

Seasons Eatings: 8"x10"

Patron Saint of Book Arts

I made this piece for my boss and coworkers (Marnie Powers-Torrey, David Wolske, Emily Tipps, and Becky Thomas) for a panel discussion they were giving at the latest College Book Arts Association conference in the San Francisco Bay Area. The title of the discussion group was "Herding Cats: Instructional Strategies in Twenty-First Century Book Classrooms" and of course you need a Patron Saint to herd all those cats!

Her halo is made from overarching qualities all book artists need to possess. The cats' tags all have terminology that is also important in the world of book arts.

Celebrity Portraits

I finished Celebrity Portraits! and am now putting them online!

 Alec Baldwin

 Jeff Bridges

 Lady Gaga

 Lindsay Lohan

 Mulder and Scully

Sarah Michelle Gellar

The reflective quality of the transparencies depicting Danny and Shelley Duvall in the Jack Nicholson piece wouldn't allow for a good photo. But, it didn't change any from the "in progress" post before. You'll just have to trust that it's great!

works in progress

It has been incredibly hectic here for a while, but I'm finally back for a blog post. Max Kelly and I have a show coming up for June gallery stroll at Alchemy Coffee house. It is at 390 E 1700 S in Salt Lake. I am making portraits of my favorite celebrities. Here are some works in progress:

Alec Baldwin

Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny from the X-files

Jack Nicholson

Jeff Bridges

Lady Gaga

Lindsay Lohan

Sarah Michelle Gellar

The colors are all off because I just took them with a crappy light source. So, imagine way brighter colors. Come see them in person at the show. They go up on June 13th.

Lil' Lindsay Lohan

I was invited to participate in the annual mini-print for the University of Utah's printmaking department. It is a fundraiser to raise money to send the printmaking students to the Southern Graphics Council convention. Last years exchange was probably the best I've been in. Here is this years (last years is still up from December, 2009).

  

letterpress printed from linoleum blocks, photopolymer plates and wood type; glittered heart necklace

Here are 95 of them strung up on our "drying rack."

that's a lot o' Lohan

SCREENPRINTING SET-UP / Saltgrass Printmakers Fundraiser

We have finally set up our screenprinting studio!
Our excuse was for the Saltgrass Printmakers annual fundraiser. Max and I were asked to participate this year by printing on prayer flags. The open house is Dec. 4 and 5th at Saltgrass.
This has been in the works since before we moved into our current apartment. Our studio (which is also our living room) is only about 100 sq feet so we had to be creative. Our "drying rack" is a hot-pink clothesline zigzagging across our ceiling and my desk doubles as a screenprinting table. Unfortunately, we haven't built our dual exposure unit/coffee table, but we'll get there soon. For the time being we are just using work lamps and washing out screens at the car wash. Here are some pictures of the set-up and our prints.

Max printing his flags

Printing mine, they were on the same screen to save emulsion

 

Here is our set-up. Max's print is the bowling ladies

My print was of my cat Charles

We also printed on shirts. It was an experiment that worked well. We are planning on printing more shirts with many more designs. Stay tuned for those as they come.

BIRDBRAIN press interviewed!

BIRDBRAIN press has officially been interviewed! Thanks to Gavin Sheehan of Gavin's Underground and the Salt Lake City Weekly for writing us up. The article went up the other day and has been very well received.

Here is the link http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/blog-4602-birdbrain-press.html

Thanks to everyone who made this possible!

4 Months in 40 minutes!

Ok, it has apparently been since July that I have posted anything. This is ridiculous because I have been crazy busy. I have been in several shows and done several things.

First of all, Max got a blog! He is concept birdhouse, check it out!

In August there was Craft Lake City. This was the 2nd annual craft fair in Salt Lake City. Max and I, under the guises of BIRDBRAIN press, had a booth where we sold our wares. See the BIRDBRAIN press website for the things we had for sale. We did surprisingly well.

I also participated in the second Kayo Gallery fundraiser: Box Paper Scissors 2. It was the same format as last year; every artist gets a cigar box and makes it into an art piece. The only restriction is that it must still close because the night of the fundraiser, the boxes are closed and there is a silent auction. My box went for $40.00 which was pretty exciting! Here are some pictures of "Ecolocuties."

box cover

close up of explorer and bats

side view of interior where you can see the tunnel book aspect

inside of the cave where you can see a little glimpse of the glitter crystals in the very back

September came and went with a few shows. Members of the Saltgrass Printmakers group invited me and a few of my friends (including Claire Taylor) to participate in a traveling show they were doing with the Utah Arts Council Traveling Exhibition Program. Check out the website, the cover image is of one of Claire's prints! The show is traveling around Utah for two years. It is going to schools and Universities as an educational experience for the viewers. Each artist was asked to write a little blurb about their process. I entered these two prints:

this is "the dude wrestles a tiger" that I made last year for the "Impressed?!" show

"Monster Threshold" originally for the show "Liminal" at Kayo Gallery in March. Letterpress printed with watercolor, color pencil and glitter

I was also invited to participate in the "Mutation Exchange" at Copper Palate Press organized by Emilee Dziuk. The theme was mutation so I made a flex-a-gon about Lindsay Lohan. It documents the transformation of her from cute child starlet into crazy Lilo mess. It is called "Lilo" and is letterpress printed from linoleum reduction cuts with photopolymer plates.

 

side 1 and 2 unfolded

 

when folded it reveales side 1, flipped over is side 2

 

folded in half and flipped out is side 3, repeat for side 4

October is over (it has been for a while now). I was working on some more sketches for my celebrities with animals series, but have nothing substantial to show yet. Some images to come later. I'm very excited about the series. It is the same series I made Amy Sedaris with tiger and leopard for the Paper Show: Friends of Friends at Garfo in March. The only problem is that they are so big and we live in such a small apartment; there is no storage space. I'm hoping they will get picked up for a show so that I can make them life size. So far on my short list are: Alec Baldwin with unicorns, Janelle Monae with velociraptors, and Lady Gaga (I haven't thought of a good enough animal for her yet). I think I need to finish my sketches first and foremost though.

November, finally the update for the current month! My sisters birthday is today. She is a sports fanatic, especially baseball, most specifically the Boston Red Sox. I made her this picture. It is the team from 2008 which is when she went to school in Boston. She went to many of their games. It is made with pen & ink, watercolor and gouache.

sketch

final

I also made this picture for an interview Max and I have for BIRDBRAIN press. Gavin Sheehan from Gavin's Underground (a portion of the Salt Lake City Weekly online) contacted us and we just finished the interview. It comes out soon. The picture is of Max and me working in our studio space which is the other half of our living room (approx. 100 square feet total).

  "BIRDBRAIN studio" pen & ink, watercolor, gouache

Saltgrass Printmakers recently asked me to participate in their annual fundraiser. This year, they are embracing the prayer flags from Tibet. Each artist was asked to make an image that was inspired by the traditions of the flags. We were then given a bunch of flags, straight from Tibet, to print on. I am making a picture of my cat Charles. It is due soon, so I'll have photos up soon (hopefully).

I think that might be all for now. It has been a pretty intense few months. December is coming up with a print for the mini-print show at the Gittins Gallery at the U. It is the annual fundraiser for the University's printmaking department. That is also a print of Lindsay Lohan. I think she is my muse right now. Uh oh.