The RCC usually does a somewhat auto-bio jam comic during every show we attend. I felt weird about participating in our Portland Zine Symposium jam because, well it’s a lot about me and my new sketchbook zine, Whoa, Dang!. I realize I haven’t fully explained Whoa, Dang! to you quite yet, but I will by early next week, I just got a new computer so I’ve been busy switching files over and whatnot. Anyways, check out the sweet drawing of me in panel 4 and Baby Otto fan art in panel 5. I love it.

ARTISTS:
Matt Grigsby
Matthew Seely
Brybox
Kevin M. Arnold
Terry Blas

Also, the Sea Bastard is back! Leave it to Tender Loving Empire to actually take a decent photo of the Bastard. The “Pin-Ups” show will be over soon, but they are putting some of the unsold pins up in their Etsy store. If you like the Bastard, maybe you should buy the Bastard… The Sea Bastard for sale in TLE’s Etsy Shop

Hey everyone, now that Baby Otto 2 is finished, I can start posting a few things that got backlogged over the last few weeks. This awesome dude is the Sea Bastard, my piece for “Pin-Ups” a customized bowling pin show, which if you happen to be in Portland, is showing right now at Tender Loving Empire. The show includes about 16-20 bowling pins as well as some other mixed media art pieces. The opening was on Thursday but it’ll be up the rest of the month.

The head to toe.

As I mentioned in my previous post (about 3 weeks ago), I got to take part in a group show called “The Americans” at one of my favorite galleries in Portland, Grass Hut. The show opened on July 4th with hotdogs, beer, and fun. You can see my three pieces, “8 to 80,” at the end of the wall.

I completely forgot to take any good photos of these pieces while they were in my studio, so if they sell, these will be the best I ever get. If they don’t sell, I think I’m going to put some more work into them. I like them, but my recent trip to England drastically cut short my work time. I was also trying a new technique on them that I didn’t quite get where I wanted.

This’ll be my last post until I get back from England at the end of the month. I’m going to be in the group show at the Grass Hut Gallery in July. This is a preliminary gouache sketch for one of the three pieces I’m doing for the show, so I thought I’d show it. I’ll post the finished pieces in July.

See you in a few weeks!

June is going to be a big month for me it seems. First off, I’ll be having my first solo show since January 2007. I finished the centerpiece of the show a few days ago, but I’ll be showing other paintings and prints as well. It will be up all month at Skeleton Key Tattoo in Portland (1729 SE Hawthorne), but the opening reception is First Friday, June 6th at 7pm. There’ll be beer, wine, a DJ, and of course art, so come and check it out if you happen to be in the area.

Connected is my big show, of course, but I also happen to be in three other shows this month as well! My Beans print will be part of the “Beans & Screens” show, opening June 5th at Mugshots Coffeehouse in Philadelphia, PA. Also on June 5th, Portland’s First Thursday, I will have some work up at Tender Loving Empire (for the second month in a row) as part of their “Small Deal” show, featuring small and cheap art from many amazing artists. Check out the postcard below, it’s the first group show I’ve taken part in where my name got mentioned on the card, how exciting! Finally, Portland City Hall is having a postcard art show called “Towards Carfree Cities” on the 17th. I sent them some anonymous postcard art quite a while ago so I’m assuming they received it and I will be in the show.

And this is the new art studio I got to move into on Friday! It’s a very long story, but I have been without a specific studio to work in for almost six months right now. I’m sharing it with three other artists, Les McClaine, Jon Siruno, and Maya West. The desk and shelf in the back corner is my quarter of the space. Obviously I still need to set everything up and make it pretty before I can get any good work done, but let me tell you, it feels so good to be back to work in a space that is not my kitchen or bedroom.

This June, I’ll be having my first solo art show since Spoke Up!, back in January 2007. The show is called Connected, which also happens to be the collective name of this piece. I’ve still got a little ways to go, as you can see, but I wanted to show it as a work in progress as an explanation for my lack of posting or anything internet-related lately.

I don’t generally dig on the artsy concepts behind artwork, but to explain: I see this piece as a visual representation of how I believe my brain works, full of weird interconnected thoughts, repeating iconic images, and unconscious wordplay. It was also a good way to use up some of the boxes and boxes of scrap and found wood I had around the house, waiting to be used. Lastly, I’ve been pretty obsessed with hand-drawn typography lately; I’ve been reading old books on sign painting and lettering, and it’s pretty much all coming out of me through these tiny ink paintings.

The show is being held at Skeleton Key Tattoo in lovely SE Portland, Oregon (1729 SE Hawthorne, to be exact). The opening will be on First Friday, June 6th. This will be the centerpiece of the show but I’ll also be showing a few older paintings and some of my newer prints. I’m hoping to have two new screenprints done too, based on two pieces in Connected, but those will be last minute additions, depending on how quickly I can finish the last pieces of this.

If you’re interested in more closely following my process, I will be updating this Flickr set at least once a day until I’m done. Also in that set is this nifty animated gif if you’re interested in my exact progress through the piece.

Why the long face? This guy is acrylic paint and ink on a 4″ by 5″ piece of scrap wood. I have boxes full of small to medium sized pieces of scrap wood cluttering up my apartment, having collected it from various sources over the last few years. I’ve started sort of doodling on them with ink when I find the time and I’ve been really liking some of the results. This piece will actually be a part of something much larger I’m working on that I will explain once I am a bit further. Until then, also enjoy this other tiny piece, “Moon Shot;” acrylic, ink and Letraset on a roughly 4″ by 3″ piece of wood.

The final piece for my “New Markets” assignment is this painting of BeardBot #3 because taking part in gallery shows is definitely one of the “new markets” I’m interested in exploring. This painting is 10 by 12, gouache on a wooden panel. I took progress shots as I was painting, so check the animated GIF below.

Snazzy.

Ah, buttons, old reliable fallback, buttons. But what’s that? Keychains too?!

Censored in case you’re reading at work…contains vintage nudity. Click the above image for full painting.

This is my piece for the Launchpad Gallery’s Third Annual “Love” Show, which opens this Friday. If you’ve clicked on the image above, you’ll know I’ve chosen “self love” as my theme. It’s gouache and photocopy transfer on a wooden panel. I think working on this painting helped me turn a corner in my work. I’ve been fighting with myself creatively lately. I feel like I’m into so many different creative venues: illustration, comics, gallery shows, art school assignments, printmaking, etc, but that I sort of have a different style and approach for each one; it’s left me feeling very conflicted, which has led me to be far less productive than I’d like to be. Experimentation is great, but I feel I’m at a point where I really need my work to feel and appear more cohesive. This has been germinating for a while now, and I’ve made some advances towards my goal, but this painting has taken me a lot closer to where I feel I want to be than anything else I’ve done recently. I’m also starting to feel much more comfortable using gouache, which makes me very happy. End of thinking out loud…

If anyone reading this happens to live in the Portland area, come on out to the Launchpad on First Friday and see a salon-style show with work by me and over 100 other artists! Click the postcard below for more info.

Now that the holidays are over, I figure I can post this little gouache and ink painting I did for a Secret Santa gift.