DESKTOP WALLPAPER

For all of the Bruce Lee fanatics out there, here's an image for you. I am currently using it as my own desktop wallpaper, and I am finding it quite easy on my eyes. The file is an in-progress photo of a commissioned, editorial illustration that I executed last summer. Feel free to download and reformat it, if you wish. Enjoy.

MIRACLE

Doing a little, computer-file/spring-cleaning today and found this little snapshot. About a year ago, Disney Motion Pictures hired me to do some film poster designs for the Spike Lee film, 'Miracle at St. Anna'. I worked out a lot of preliminary sketches, which I felt were bristling with potential. Unfortunately, most of sketches turned out to be way more interesting than any of the final products that got art directed to death...that's the way it goes sometimes. (Or so I have been told).

Disclaimer-I had absolutely nothing to do with the poster design that made it into production.

MORNING BREATH

...and the USPS deliveries just keep coming.

Morning Breath is a pair of designers/artists/illustrators based in Brooklyn. I don't know a whole hell of a lot about them, but they're work is always interesting and enjoyable. They formula they know and use so well is a combination of collaged screenprinting, typography and old fashioned, pen and ink illos. I recently purchased these tiny pieces of work from a recent Morning Breath show at Ad Hoc Art in NY. Good stuff.

CHARLIE MCALISTER

The US Postal Carriers have been full of surprises this week. Another package that I recently received was from an old friend of mine, Charlie McAlister.  

I've known Charlie McAlister since I was about 16. He was kind of like the first 'real' artist at my high school. He was making amazing drawings, sculptures, t-shirts, zines and other crazy stuff before anyone else (he even kinda taught fellow classmate Shepard Fairey the basics of screenprinting during art class). He was a year or two older than me and I remember what a big deal it was (to me) when he left our small town to attend the Art Institute of Chicago...I once described Charlie's work to someone; "it's like Howard Finster meets Raymond Pettibone," but I doubt he would agree.

Well, after 20 years, Charlie is still as eccentric as ever. He once made himself a homemade diving suit, using a garden hose to supply oxygen into the diving helmet (which was an old globe!). He's made lots of recordings and released a lot of records and apparently he's something of an underground, ragtime-folksy-bohemian legend in some cities. While he was 'stranded' in LA last year, we hung out a bit. I bought a bunch of his CD's/vinyl (the packaging of which are completely amazing) and zines (also inspiring and hilariously fun) and a few paintings. You can order some of his unique products directly from his site. 

My all-time, personal favorite recording of Charlie remains to be Mississippi Luau.

HOUSE TESTERS

My buddies at House Industries graciously sent me a tube of surplus testers and press sheets ejected from their recent flat file cleaning sessions. Naturally, I was more than happy to clog up my own flat files with their old stuff...some of which is so old, in fact,  that it promises to deliver House product via 44 MB Syquest. Really? 

But seriously, thanks Andy!

POMPIDON'T

The highest aspirations of architecture can't make up for the lack of internal, bureaucratic mismanagement at the Pompidou Center in Paris. On a recent Thursday night visit to the institution to see the Alexander Calder show, the split-level exhibition venues and unsynchronized gallery hours made it impossible to view the show in it's entirety. I know it's not  the first time that an institution's lack of organization had a negative impact upon the viewing public, but when such an institution can't effectively accomplish one of it's primary objectives (presenting cohesive, culturally-relevant programming, exhibitions, etc), it's quite discouraging. 

What I was able to see of the show, however, was absolutely beautiful. Calder's suspended, three-dimensional, wire portraits were elegant, original and completely hypnotic. And I spent quite a few of my weakly-converted Euros in the Pompidou's excellent bookstore.

CAGE / AMERICAN MASTERS

This is a great primer for anyone unfamiliar with John Cage, his works, his humor and his ideas. This documentary was produced in the mid eighties as part of the PBS/American Masters series. It features interviews with Calvin Tomkins (Rauschenberg and Duchamp biographer), Merce Cunningham, Yoko Ono, Bob Rauschenberg,  David Tudor, Leo Castelli, and many more.

Watch these, you won't be disappointed. Very beautiful and inspirational stuff.

WHAT THE FLOCK SUMMARY

Black Sheep skateboard shop in Charlotte, NC has just posted a summary of their 'What the Flock' art show. Owner/operator and old skate buddy, Josh Frazier, extended an invitation to me to participate in the event. I sent along some unique screenprints on wood as well as a stack of SK843 merch, all of which is available for purchase directly from Black Sheep. Thanks for the support.

(Also, kudos to the designer that generated the graphic above...I think Jeremy Dean would approve! hahhha)

 

IF I HAD A HAMMER

I am not a street artist; never have been, never will be. But if I was, I think my stuff might look something like this...made all the more beautiful amid the bustling, mid-afternoon French Metro masses.

HOUSE SALE

If you live near the Wilmington, Delaware area, you'd be well-served to go check out the 'clearance sale' over at House Industries this weekend. Only the Lord knows what kind of obscure typographical and cultural goodness is going to be available...

NEW SCREENPRINTS II

I am beginning a more, in-depth investigation of this imageless screenprint concept...of course, this concept isn't completely unfamiliar to me. I have previously deconstructed both form and content of other media (see Action Drawings, Drip Paintings, Nonrepresentational Photographs) using very similar conceptual rhetoric; Syntax as Subject. Example: ink forced through a tightly-stretched, synthetic mesh and deposited directly onto a substrate.  

And  this particular example, an opaque, black ink on inexpensive, and highly unarchival, newsprint. No defined, controlled or masked edges within each of the 19" x 25" sheets. And no print 'rejected' from the run, as each,  unique, 1/1 print is considered just as acceptable and valid as the next. 

When we start to see all of the things within our world as unique things (which, by definition, they ARE unique things; modern physics has proven that terrestrial matter cannot simultaneously occupy the same slices of time and space); we will begin to see that our world is a more beautiful and open place...

VOLUME TO 11

Skateboarding and The Sword. Enough said.

NEW SCREENPRINTS

Fresh from an inspiring trip to Europe, I am back in the studio and trying to challenge myself. Above are actual, unique screenprint works/series in progress. I am finding these very difficult to accept as finished works, but that is also what is so intriguing to me. Is a completely unique, non-repeatable, imageless, organic 'blob' of ink, forced through a finely-meshed, sans-emulsion screen with a squeegee, still a screenprint? Is it interesting? Is it art?

These are the kind of difficult positions I like to wander into...if I can push work into the realm of the completely absurd, seemingly meaningless and almost without function, the closer it is to the nature of life.