2019: The year of… I don’t know.
Following my wonderful show at Gallery 224 in Port Washington in the fall of 2018, the always amazing Creeping Museum asked me to participate in their amazing Shirley Jackson tribute to celebrate the Haunting of Hill House. Shortly thereafter, the the fantastic Golden Horse Ranch Band contacted me to design their annual Barn Dance Apocalypse show poster. I was honored to do both.
Then, on Christmas day, I had a mini-stroke.
Two weeks later, the loving cat I had for 18 years died.
One week after that my cousin died.
Then 2019 happened.
I had ideas…
They did not happen.
I made several things…
They are in a drawer.
Last month, Gallery 224 reached out again. My only finished piece of 2019 will be available at their fundraiser on Dec. 5th.
I will post it this weekend.
Thank you to many friends and especially Frank Juarez for a year of kind words.
Category Archives: roughs / doodles
These are the last four of the items I’m taking down to the Art Bar ‘tiny art’ show in Riverwest/Milwaukee for the opening next weekend.
Nine of the eleven pieces I made for the show all take place at night and have similar subject matter.
Also, all but two are double panes and the last one I made (bottom left above) has three panes of glass.
This is still kind of an experimental process for me, but I’m enjoying it, so it’s here to stay for a while.
*(top left was privately sold and will not be in the show)
Last week I had my latest design printed so I could cut it out.
As if often the case, the woman didn’t understand my printing preferences and decided that she’d give me a deal and print it on extra thick, high quality paper.
Unfortunately for me, the medium she choose made them very difficult and time consuming to cut out.
In addition, it made taking them to work, to work on (I have a day job) unreasonable.
So I had a lot of time to kill at work since I had planned to work on this new large papercut.
As a joke I made a sad armadillo with a big ‘A’ behind it.
I was amused enough to continue through the letter’L’ and started cutting them out that night.
Slightly less than a week later, I’m up to ‘F’.
Sadly, I’m more eager to get back to cutting out my designs than continue with the alphabet, but I did storyboard up to ‘Z’…
… maybe later this year.
I had some friends up from Chicago over the past few days. Last night we were listening to records and I found this on top of some Nancy Sinatra & Billy Strange records.
This is really old.
I have no clue how it ended up on those records since they have been moved 3 times since I made it, but this is the kind of thing I was doing back in 2005-2006 right after graduating from making snowflakes and accordion paper dolls. This was made using a box cutter, an old red packing slip and a black Sharpie in the basement of my old job at Gethsemane Garden Center in Chicago.
Around this time I had recently bought a bootleg of Johnny Cash, Osborne Brothers, Bob Dylan & Son House at the 63 or 64 Newport Folk Festival. I don’t know why but I was drawn to the stages and I made several drawings that look exactly like this except they featured who I wanted in them. I know I drew one of Stringbean Akeman, Hawkshaw Hawkins & for some reason Grimble Grumble, but as far as I remember, this is my only papercut stage.
Anyway, I just thought I’d show what I was doing 8 or 9 years ago with a box cutter, scrap paper and a Sharpie.
(I was not so hot at staying in the lines)
More silly knock off papercuts. I went to a wonderful harvest party on Saturday. We left so we could watch the Doctor Who premier.
This is an imagined attendant at the harvest party dancing with a Dalek scarecrow.
I feel like we should have stayed at the party because it featured a live band; and no matter what, live music is better than recorded television.
I’ve been busy lately on two different commissions and the headaches of framing up what I’ve already completed. I’ve got about 6 more designs that are almost finished and ready to start cutting on after a few more alterations. I was asked to make something Lovecraftian recently. I’ve been doodling around on how to combine H.P. Lovecraft with my generally Victorian/folklore/fable tone. I probably wont be able to get started on it for a while, but this is one of the rough things I’ve been messing around with.
Several people have asked where to get one of the Paradigm t-shirts I designed. They are now available here.