New Art: Sweet Beginnings and Bitter Ends
Sweet Beginnings and Bitter Ends
graphite, color pencil, ink and spray paint.
This is for Kelly McKernan’s Linearity exhibition in June. I will have another piece to work on in the meantime, but I think I will keep that one hidden until it gets closer to the show. Here are the remaining progress pics below.
April Update:
Things are coming together, slowly, but they’re making progress. I have one piece halfway completed and all the works I’ll need started for the other group show. Before summer beginnings I need to have three drawings/sketches ready for relief print triptych I’m making for a fall show. So much work!
Here’s a staged version on the halfway finished drawing:
March update
There’s not much to post, but I will show off two sketches that are a fraction of the images that I’m planning for Linearity. I’m creating two companion images that share a story of a relationship falling apart. There will be things falling apart, decaying or becoming gross in the rest of the image. Mostly, I’m just stoked to have dudes incorporated in my art again. They’re fun to draw. This week is spring break for me, I’m planning out thumbnails for other shows and then some. Also I would like to point out that I’ve been listing products of my older work on Society 6 along with my new drawings and mixed media. I have preview images of those below and later this week (or next month) I might have new products listed on Etsy.
February Update
It’s been awhile! As you can tell from the lack of updates, I’ve been busy. I have a bunch of new work I’ve been making for shows or show proposals and teaching takes up most of what is left. As a result, the blog is left somewhat neglected. It takes more time to format posts than adding a picture on the Facebook fan page (which you should join, hint hint). However, if you add your email to the subscription list on the side bar to this blog, you should get an email update whenever I post to the blog. Convenient, huh?
I have two new pieces of art, both of which have been worked on for a long time and are now off of my ever-increasing to-do list.
Captive Creature (Under My Spell)- hopefully a piece for an upcoming group exhibition in Minneapolis. Details are still being hashed out, but I’ll mention it when it’s all official. This started out as a print for different show, but I didn’t complete it in time. I’m glad that it has found a new purpose and has been successfully salvaged.
Caught Off Guard – I made this print for the Nude In Print printmaking exchange that Joshua Bindewald and Nathan Pietrykowski organized. They’re making proposals to have that exchange presented for exhibitions. I’ll be excited to see what prints I’ll be receiving from the other participants. Which reminds me that I finally received my relief portfolio from the Dirty Printmakers Exchange! I might make another post in the future about it if I get some downtime.
I also made a colored version, here’s the in progress and then the finished version, which I already put on the art page:
I also have sneak peaks of work that I’m starting.
This was the original idea for the Nude in Print exchange, but it started to deviate from the theme’s main focus and become its own thing that I put it aside until new ideas can further transform the image.
Some of these look vaguely familiar to my collages…
because they are. I never intended to have the previous collage work stand on their own, but I liked how many looked so well on their own that it became its own little study. However, I always intended on using them to create fuller compositions and now I’m attempting that with a few of the last pieces that I made. I’ll probably start a mini series with them and add some original drawings that are inspired by the images created.
Next month I will have other work started as I need to get sketches ready for Glass, Cinder and Thorns 2 exhibition as well as Linearity at Mint Gallery. They’re months along the way, but I want to challenge myself with more complex images. I already have in mind two of the fairy tales I want to use for GCT show. I’ve been reading Italian Folktales and fell in love with The Siren Wife and The Sleeping Queen. I can’t wait to start mapping out the two images.
Retaliation
Retaliation
Screen print, ink, color pencil and watercolor.
New art, sort of the companion piece to Volatile, but not a diptych (not the same size unfortunately). My break starts soon, so I can have loads of free time to get all my errands, personal tasks, work, and submission stuff taken care of these next few weeks. I have a screen that’s been ready to print for weeks now, maybe over a month. It’s hard letting something like that sit around and not complete.
Also, I just installed an Email subscription widget on the side bar for those who want to keep up with the blog, but don’t subscribe to google reader or rss feeds. I think I like this new concept and I post so infrequently these days that it wouldn’t be so spammy for anybody that’s wants to avoid those subscriptions. I want to start a monthly newsletter in the future, but this can work in the meantime. Subscribe away!
About the online stores
I just wanted to make a quick note about the online stores. I haven’t restocked Etsy yet due to all the previous sales/shows mentioned in the last post. I plan on restocking the store and maybe refreshing the inventory on Big Cartel with all the artwork I’m receiving back from the MCAD art sale this upcoming week. I will think up a nice winter holiday sale as well. Be on the look out for that in the near future.
Upcoming Shows and Sales
If you’re wanting to buy my work and live in Minneapolis, Miami, or St. Louis, this is the perfect time. Here are shows or sales that I’m currently involved in:
Currently going on TONIGHT and tomorrow. Be sure to check the second floor printmaking area, that’s where most of my art will be found. More info about the Sale here.
If all things go right with the delivery (nervous about where I shipped it), my art will be featured with other friends and artists at Art Basel in Miami. It should be amazing, please check out the website for more information.
And finally, in St. Louis, I will be participating in this event. I’m going to try and sell all my really affordable art (read: cheap, you should take advantage of this). Some of the prints will be old (my undergraduate prints are all robot relief prints. C’mon, ROBOTS), but I think that they’ll fit this event more than my newer work. You can read about the event on this website.
New Art: Volatile
Volatile
Screenprint, color pencil, ink and watercolor
Prints available through Society 6.
I managed to color one of the misprints into something, now I will work on the other print (along with drafting future projects that need to happen).
Studio Graveyard: artworks that lead to nowhere
The stop and go of the studio makes it difficult to commit to finishing works. I have a feeling there’s going to be plenty of graveyard work-in-progress images. Here are possible works that have no expectation of making it to the finish line.
I started these images, but lost an idea of where to take them. I would love to use them because they have a sense of drama, but at the moment they’re a little incomplete. They might need alterations to fit a future idea, but I’m not clinging to any hope.
My last print run didn’t work out so well. The screens were hazy and the images I had were ones that I’m ready to move away from altogether. I might play with collage or drawing on top of them, but it just feels like I’m done with this series of work. I’ve been overly bored by everything I do, which is not a great feeling to have when I’m trying to get back into working. I have ideas of what to do next, but I dislike how this work lingers, haunting me with its unfinished business.
Hive 5: A Somewhat Quarterly Comics Anthology
This post has been long in the making. I got my copy in the mail sometime around Labor Day, but I’m just now collecting myself to write a post about it.
Here are photos on the cover design that Mark Leicht created with my illustration for the cover as well as a spread from my art buddy Cole Closser whose comic I enjoyed in the anthology.
Mark used vellum as a dust cover to layer the bees. It’s pretty nifty in person.
Here’s what the cover looks like without the dust jacket (but more purple, my camera washed it out).
Detail of the inside dust jacket.
Cole Closser is another alumni of the Missouri State undergraduate program. He’ll be a big deal one day, just wait.
If you want to get a copy yourself, order online at the store (printed copy at $10) or download the pdf (at the low, low cost of $3)
