Oh, wow, who’s excited for the Portland Zine Symposium this coming weekend?! I know I am! The RCC will have a table again, but as a change of pace, I will be having my own half table right next to them. I got the extra half table because I will be heading up two panel/workshops during the event: a panel discussion about starting and being in a self-publishing collective on Saturday afternoon, and a collaborative jam comics workshop on Sunday afternoon. If you’re going to come to the Zine Symposium, please come to my talks if you can, and introduce yourself if I don’t know who you are.

Here’s what I have left on my project table to prepare for before this weekend. I printed second runs of Mustaches: For Fun and Profit (no more felt moustaches, sorry) and Business Casual so I’ve still got a lot of folding to do, also need to press a few new buttons. Notice my super sweet fabric banner I’m making for my personal table! I’ll probably have to drop the exclamation point for now as it makes it longer than three feet (my allotted table length) otherwise. Not pictured: Whoa, Dang! and a t-shirt design geared towards self-publishers, both of which I will make posts about later this week.

I’m pumped, I absolutely adore everything about the Zine Symposium: from the other tablers, to the attendees, and of course the wonderful folks who put the whole thing together.

Last week was spring break week for my school, so I headed back to Minnesota to visit some friends and family. I hardly did any drawing or other work, but I had a good time snapping a few photos of some of my favorite folks and places around Minneapolis, including Grain Belt Premium, as seen above. Click on the picture above to check out my small but growing Flickr page, including a series of shots from a coffee cupping at my friend’s coffee roastery.

Now that I’ve got a new camera, I’m going to attempt to start upping my Flickr use, so check back.

I did find the time to do a little bit of business while back in Minneapolis though. For those of you in the area, I dropped off a few copies of Baby Otto: Volume 1 and Business Casual at Big Brain Comics, if you find yourself needing a copy.

Only four more pages until the thrilling conclusion of “Business Casual,” but until then, I’ve got a bunch of other crazy crap to show you today.

I started a new school semester a few weeks ago, so the first few starter projects are filtering back to me now. On the first day of my Intermediate Illustration class, we were given an hour to whip up some sort of self portrait. This is the first self portrait I’ve done since my new look has taken shape. As you can see, after nearly two years of growing, I chopped off my beautiful mane of hair. It was getting too hot and heavy and felt like it was dragging me down a bit, so off it went!

In my Painting for Illustrators (watercolor/gouache) class, the assignment was to illustrate a random haiku we were given. Mine turned into a butterfly eating a sandwich; probably the greatest thing I have ever created in watercolor (so far).

Last night, while procrastinating about finishing up some homework, I drew this robot on the peel off paper from another robot sticker.

Lastly, because it’s just too awesome, I decided to liven up a normally dreary Monday by creating the elusive “Double Handlebar”! No, thank YOU, mustache wax!

In much happier news than what lies below, The Life & Times of Baby Otto Zeplin: Volume One was reviewed by Sarah Morean over at The Daily Crosshatch. Thanks, Sarah!

I was feeling the urge do a little more Baby Otto research today. As I have mentioned previously, I was able to find the Zeplin’s 1900 census records (big link, 1.3 mb), so I know the address of the house where Otto was most likely born in. The problem is that Portland renumbered all of its streets in 1933, so the address I have no longer exists on any modern map. The address I have for the Zeplin house is 388 20th Street. In 1933, all numbered “streets” were changed to “avenues,” so I had a start, but no finish. I was looking at the census records again today and realized something, in all this time, I have never thought to use the other addresses on the same page as reference. The first street listed on the census page is Thurman St. then 20th St. where the Zeplin house was and then Upshur St. Thurman and Upshur are consecutive streets in NW Portland, so I could deduce that the Zeplin house was on what is now NW 20th Avenue, between Thurman and Upshur Streets. I took a look at a map before I left, so I knew what to expect, but I decided to bike over and take some pictures anyways.

This sidewalk is the closest thing to “20th Avenue” that exists between Thurman and Upshur. I am standing on 20th and Upshur, the street on the other side of the chain-link fence is Thurman.

This is taken from the sidewalk underneath the overpass, possibly where the Zeplin family once resided.

This area of Portland is, and has been for a while, very industrial, but I was able to find little pockets of what once was. About two blocks from the overpass photo is St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, built in 1889. The Zeplins were German, so there is little chance that they were Catholic, otherwise I might have stopped in for a visit to see if they had any dusty shelves full of church records I could pore through. And about four blocks in the opposite direction was a single block full of houses, all obviously built in the early-1900s, amidst nothing but warehouses as far as the eye could see. One was even for sale, and advertised as being built in 1903, so I snapped a few pictures for reference.

I took another look at Emma and the kids’ immigration records too and noticed that the address listed for Peter, already in Portland, was 635 Thurman St. If you have downloaded the above census record, you’ll notice that 635 Thurman is the first record, the Eggerts. So it’s possible that Peter had been living with or renting from the Eggerts during his solo time in the U.S. You may also notice that the Eggerts had a 21 year old son named Otto. It’s possible it was just a popular German name at the time, but I sort of like to think that Otto Eggert had such an effect on Peter and Emma that they chose to name their own son after him.

This last Saturday, I joined many other artists for Oregon Literacy’s
Chalk It Up For Literacy event. We all got together out on the bricks of Pioneer Square (aka Portland’s Livingroom), were given chalk and a 3′ by 2′ piece of matte board, and had six hours to create a piece of literacy-themed artwork. All pieces were donated to Oregon Literacy and sales of the originals and prints will go to them. So, given free reign over subject matter, I decided to do some robots, to help make up for the lack of them in my life lately; I’ll be honest, I felt a bit rusty in both chalk and robots. Here’s what I came up with…

I was sunburned and sore after six hours, but it was for a good cause. And I got a free massage afterward that was totally unlike -and so much better- than any massage I’ve ever received. My massager was a specialist in Tui na. (from Wikipedia: Tui na’s massage-like techniques range from light stroking to deep-tissue work which would be considered too vigorous or too painful for a recreational or relaxing massage.) This dude broke me in like a horse for about 10 minutes, and I swear he even re-aligned each of my ribs separately, if that’s even possible. I didn’t know I had so many joints that could pop.

My “Right Leg Roll” painting from January’s Spoke Up! show just got featured on Mixed Plate, a blog profiling some great finds in art, handmade goods, accessories, etc. As the blog says, “A little bit of everything.” Go take a look, please.

Lastly, just in case you missed it last week.

AKA: “Oh, so that’s what it looks like when a comb touches my hair.” My friend Laura (a professional stylist) was giving away free haircuts at school today. I promised her eight months ago that she would be the next person to touch my hair, and if I’m anything, I am a man of my word. I’ve got a small case of “bike helmet hair” in the second photo, hence the poofy side bits.

After school this afternoon, I biked to a local photo supply store to pick up a new bulb for exposing screens for screen printing. I locked my bike to the standard blue staple bike rack and what do I see but a “Have You Hugged A Robot Today?” sticker! This is of course…

A) awesome because it’s on a bike rack, and…
B) even more awesome because I didn’t put it there.

If my day wasn’t already made, this would’ve done it.

I’m back from a short vacation over the recent Thanksgiving holiday. Sorry for the awfulness of the picture. I was dealing with a camera phone and a dark overhang, but it’s one of the few photos I took while I was away. For those of you who wish to know, the Ax-Man is a surplus/junk store and yes, I did make a special trip there while I was back in MN. If you live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area and haven’t been to at least one Ax-Man yet, for shame.

Camera-phone pic of a spraypaint stencil robot on the streets of Portland, Oregon. Complete with old chewing gum.

This is the ROBOPOCALYPSE logo, sprayed onto a messenger bag my roommate created completely out of duct tape. Neato.