Apes, prints and tattoos.
Okay, so first up let me announce in a most self-promotional manner that I recently put a print of one of my pieces up for sale on Society 6. Never done it before, but it seemed pretty simple so I thought I’d give it a shot. I chose this attractive work featuring the twin joys of apes and gratuitous profanity – how can you go wrong with two things everyone loves!
Gorillas and obscenities - who could ask for more.
It sounds pretty fancy – gallery quality Giclée print on natural white, matte, ultra smooth, 100% cotton rag, acid and lignin free archival paper using Epson K3 archival inks, custom trimmed with 2″ border – but I haven’t actually seen a finished product, so if anyone out there actually gets one I’d love to hear what the quality is like. And, needless to say, if it’s rubbish I’ll deny all responsibility.
Enough with the hard sell, let’s move on to more entertaining matters. Over the past few weeks I’ve been contacted by a couple of people who have got themselves tattoos based on my work. I have to admit that this pretty much blows my mind, especially since one of them takes up virtually an entire limb. I have had one previous skin-based tribute, which by remarkable coincidence was an ape, tattooed on a bloke in Brazil. That particular tattoo can even be viewed during its painful creation on YouTube – you can almost smell the burning flesh. Anyhow, here they are in all their strange glory – together with the original work that inspired them. Ouch.
Tattooed appendages from around the globe, L to R: Brazil, Sweden, Texas.
Busy.
Firstly let me apologize for the complete lack of recent updates. This is not, as you may suspect, because there’s been nothing happening, but because I’ve been too damn busy. And I am also apparently incapable of doing more than one thing at a time. Multi-tasking? Not for me, my friends.
First up – just did a big illustration job for Razorfish here in San Francisco. FEED is Razorfish’s annual study charting how technology is changing the way consumers engage with brands and I was the lucky bugger who was chosen to provide pictures (with words on them, of course) to illustrate the report’s findings and provide a bit of humor. You can learn more about the report itself right here.
And here are a couple of the illustrations from the report.
Right before the Razorfish job I was working on another illustration assignment, this time for ad agency Publicis Indianapolis and their client Learn More Indiana. This involved designing, illustrating and hand lettering a campaign of posters aimed at High School students who are about to graduate in an attempt to persuade them to continue their education. Publicis supplied me with the copy and I put the whole thing together working with one of the agency’s Art Directors. Here are a pair of examples of what the end result looked like:
Lotsl more examples of the work I did for both of these projects can be seen right here.
Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston.
Throngs of visitors entranced by my exhibit in Houston's Contemporary Arts Museum.
As threatened, the Sisyphus Office exhibit has moved to the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston where it will run until the end of September. The museum has tried to remain true to the original concept of having the work live in an office environment rather than just hung in a gallery, which explains why it’s hidden away in various obscure locations (that’s their story anyway).
There’s a Sisyphus Office table that greets visitors when they come in. It provides visitors with a Sisyphus Office file, complete with an explanation of the whole idea and a map that guides them around the Museum to wherever the pieces have been integrated (often in places visitors normally never tread). Visitors then stamp their file in a beautiful bureaucratic way and head off in search of the works.
Sadly there is absolutely no mention of the whole thing on the CAMH website, so I only have the organizer’s word and the above crappy photo to prove this isn’t just a figment of my imagination. If anyone reading this does visit the show and manages to snap any pics, I’d love to have them.
Book of the Week on Blurb.
Hours of high-quality entertainment at a very affordable price.
Those lovely people over at Blurb have bestowed this illustrious honor upon the book I hastily slapped together, I mean painstakingly designed, last year. This couldn’t really come at a better time since while I was watching the telly last night about 50% of the electrics in our house suddenly imploded and left us sitting, entertainment-less, in darkness. Hopefully the resulting enormous spike in sales of this “poignantly hilarious” volume will help me pay for an electrician, and I cease my pathetic attempts to entertain the kiddies with puppet shows by candlelight.
If you’d care to buy one and help my children avoid the disturbing spectacle of me talking in a high-pitched voice and wielding glove puppets you can click right here. Or if you prefer to click on something more visually stimulating there’s a natty little link off to the right hand side and down a ways.
By the way, if you take my advice you’ll buy the Hardback version. The paperback’s cover has a disappointing habit of curling up like a week-old cheese sandwich after just one read. (Please note: this has absolutely nothing to do with me getting more money for the hardback – obviously.)
Blogapolooza!
That's one hell of a lot of blogs.
I’ve been having a blogtastic time lately. Over the last few weeks the Bloggerati have been blogging my work and even blogging each others blogs about my work. It’s all been bloggeriffic. I just want to express my humble appreciation for all this undeserved attention and the kind words and comments that have been posted in all quarters of the World Wide Internets. It’s tremendously encouraging and I really appreciate it, so thank you all.
In other news… the Sisyphus Office installation keeps on rolling! Yes the show might be down, but it’s not over yet. Amazingly the Contemporary Art Museum in Houston seems to have decided to reconstruct some version of my haphazard exhibit within their hallowed halls. Details are a little unclear right now, but stay tuned for more.
Sisyphus Office Tour.
Sisyphus Office curator, top artist and all-round good egg, Jonn Herschend leads a bus-load of bemused art lovers around my installation “What I do at work when I’m supposed to be working”, which is scattered around the offices of Radio Station 90.1 KPFT in Houston, Texas.
Sisyphus Office – a group show in Houston, TX.
Sisyphus Office is an exhibition organized by San Francisco based artist, curator, and co-founder of The Thing Quarterly, Jonn Herschend and based out of Skydive, a Houston, Texas gallery.
The artists involved in the project are collaborating with businesses and offices in and around Houston in order to highlight art as an integral and necessary distraction in our day to day life. The artists and offices involved in Sisyphus Office are working physically and conceptually with the notions of existentialism, capitalism, artistic romanticism and deadpan slapstickism as a means to examine the artifice that keeps us clinging to reality and distracted from the void. Sisyphus Office is about punching the clock, and then punching it again…but harder the second time. It’s about transcending the mundane through the beauty and absurdity of distraction. It’s about recognizing the comedy in the tragedy of the day to day… and then waking up again to do the same thing all over again the next morning.
My somewhat hastily assembled contribution to this group show is a so-called “installation” in the offices of Houston radio station 90.1 KPFT. It’s entitled What I do at work when I’m supposed to be working. and it consists of a bunch of small, abject text-based artworks made entirely from office supplies. These are pinned up randomly around the shabby looking office, hopefully to be stumbled upon in amongst all the existing notices, flyers and memos that were plastered all over the walls and noticeboards. More details here: http://www.theskydive.org/
A couple of the artworks from my installation.
Boooooooom!
Nice little mention on a great art and design blog, complete with a bunch of artwork. Thanks booooom guys.
Boooom! Profile! Cool!
Solo show photos.
Here’s a link to a little feature that appeared on the Doodlers Anonymous site with some nice shots of the opening night of my recent solo show. They were taken by Rachel, the sister of the mysteriously named Okat – the man behind DA. She came a long way to take the photos and check out the exhibition. Thanks Rachel.
Opening night at Hang Art. Click to see more.
Affordable Art – New York.
I’ve got a couple of recent paintings up at the Affordable Art Fair which is on from May 7th – 10th, 2009 at 7 West 34th Street (b/w 5th & 6th Avenues) New York, NY 10001.
Here’s one of them.
And yes, I’m aware that “affordable” is a relative concept!
Fighting the Ratings War, mixed media on canvas, 2009.
