Les Rois Oranges!

I know my posts have been few and far between lately, but I've actually really missed doing posts about what I'm working on and about other miscellaneous adventures that don't necessarily involve my light table or getting ink on my jeans.
To the left is the last poster I printed in 2012.  It's a tour poster for The Devil Makes Three, and they will be available from the band on their upcoming tour.  I'll also have some copies for sale on my website in the not-too-distant future.
2012 has been an eventful year.  I printed a whole mess of art prints and rock posters, cramped my hand up doing some of my personal favorite drawings and paintings to date, went skateboarding a lot, joined a band, recorded an album, and tracked countless miles on my bike all over the city of Chicago.  Work took me to Spain, Germany, North Dakota, and Seattle.  I explored Istanbul on an overnight layover.  I skated a massive storm ditch in Albuquerque before a soundcheck while out on a brief tour with the band.  I feasted on vegan donuts a couple days later in Las Vegas.  My girlfriend and I drove our Fiat 500 rental car along I-5 in Washington with the sunroof open and bellies full of Mediterranean food.  I attended my first ever Hanukkah party, only to attend another the following night (Hanukkah parties are awesome, by the way).  I spent perhaps too many hours in a van, laughing with guys who are quickly becoming close friends of mine.  Besides posters, I had the exciting pleasure of being commissioned to do artwork for a beer label, a book cover, a print for a popular TV show, and a few albums.  I am still touched and flattered when people approach me with opportunities like these.  It's been a weird sort of journey to navigate and learn this trade publicly the way so many artists and designers tend to do.  But it's been rewarding.
It's an uncertain, bizarre, and sometimes incomprehensibly cruel world, but I'm immensely grateful for what I have.  Happy new year to anybody reading this.  Let's take care of each other out there.

2013 Print Subscription

DETAILS:
Subscribers will get one of everything I print for the entire 2013 calendar year (with matching edition numbers).  Between art prints and gig posters, I produce 45-50 prints a year.  Subscribers also get some bonuses, like test prints, an original sketch or two, and an exclusive subscribers-only print.  I send subscription tubes out twice a year, once in June or July for the first half of the year and the second installation is shipped shortly after the end of the subscription year.  Additionally, each subscription package is shipped in sturdy 6-inch diameter shipping tubes.
PRICING:
For US and Canada, the cost is $475 for the year
International subscriptions: $550 (price difference is to cover the postage expense)
Regarding payment, I am totally fine with setting up payment plans.  A lot of subscribers will pay in full at once, but just as many will pay in two, three or four payments.  Just ask!

Please contact me if you're interested in subscribing or if you have any other questions.

I make a less-than-ideal penguin

This photo was taken this morning from the parking lot of my hotel in Minot, ND.  Minot is a very small city located about 50 miles south of the Canadian border.  I flew in last night for Minot State University's NOTSTOCK.  I am here (as is fellow Chicago poster artist, Jay Ryan) to speak with students and faculty, do screen printing demonstrations, and generally have an awesome time.
Today I gave a presentation about my work to a group of students, finished an exclusive Notstock print (with help from some kind MSU students), ate bagels, laughed quite a bit, and went swimming in the hotel's excellent pool.  Tomorrow, I have decided to print a poster for my own band's show (which is October 13th at Township, Chicagoans!).  Jay's doing an awesome print of some beavers.
I am overwhelmed by the reception here.  Everyone has been incredibly hospitable, friendly, accommodating, and enthusiastic about what we're doing.  Things have been pretty non-stop since I got off the plane Wednesday night, so it feels nice to decompress in my room a little bit.  There's also a rodeo in town or something, so this hotel is populated largely by cowboys.  Weird.

"Wayfarer 515" original drawing available

I am auctioning off the original drawing for the recent "Wayfarer 515" print.  It is currently on ebay and can be seen/bid on right here.  Check it out.
All proceeds from the auction will be donated to the Israel/Palestine chapter of Physicians For Human Rights.  It is a non profit, non government organization that works to promote health care, solidarity, and non-violence for people in both Israel and occupied Palestine.  More info.

End the occupation.

Flatstock Europe 8 ended with impossibly beautiful weather.  I spent the following day hanging out with other poster artists (including some very awesome newcomers from Mexico City), eating pizza, drinking wine, and seeing Boy Division deafen a tiny club on the Reeperbahn.
I was touched by the generally warm reception I felt in Hamburg.  I spoke with people who had attended or purchased work from our show at Feinkunst Kruger last year or who had bought prints from me at Flatstock in previous years.  I stayed with friends who I realized I don't get to see nearly often enough.
I'm in Istanbul, wrapping up a second long layover here.  I watched Al Jazeera all morning and had some food from a pretty fancy continental breakfast.  
Time to head home!

Bagels, pakoras, architects, tea, and chilly evenings

It's a pretty cold morning in Hamburg, and the last day of Flatstock is upon us.  It's a bit rainy, and I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping that it clears up soon.  It's harder to sell paper to other people when it's raining.
I've been staying with my friend Ralf, sleeping on the couches in the office of his gallery.  As usual, I have been finding lots of great food in this city.  There's a Loving Hut right across the street from the gallery, which for those who are unfamiliar, is an excellent place to get an entirely plant based meal.  I had some excellent spring rolls and a red curry yesterday.
I fly back to Istanbul for another extended layover on Monday, then back to Chicago.  I'll be home for about a week and then I am off to Minot, North Dakota for MSU's NOTSTOCK.  I'm really looking forward to this event, as it sounds like a lot of fun.
For those who have recently ordered prints, I ran into a bit of a schedule overload and was working tirelessly to finish some posters before getting on a plane across the Atlantic.  So, this means I will be shipping all orders out as soon as I get back to Chicago this coming week.  Also, I am going to be posting a bunch of new items in the store on my site this week, as well.

Havuç Suyu!

Greetings from Istanbul!  It's been a while since I've done a post, but I am going to make it a point to start posting more regularly.  I'm wrapping up a long layover in Turkey and am about to head to the airport to get to Hamburg for Flatstock Europe 8.  I'm also drinking some excellent tea right now.  I'll post more tonight!

Maxiumum Hooliganism

"We were looking for authentic genuineness and simplicity and we found them in our punk performances. Passion, openness and naivety are superior to hypocrisy, cunning and a contrived decency that conceals crimes. The state’s leaders stand with saintly expressions in church, but their sins are far greater than ours. We’ve put on our political punk concerts because the Russian state system is dominated by rigidity, closedness and caste. Аnd the policies pursued serve only narrow corporate interests to the extent that even the air of Russia makes us ill."

-Nadezdha Tolokonnikova, excerpt from her closing statement at the Pussy Riot trial in Moscow

Tolokonnikova is part of the Russian feminist punk band/collective, Pussy Riot. They are facing jail time for a protest performance at a cathedral in Moscow. You can read more about the case here. Read some very thoughtful, spot on, and courageous closing statements in full (and translated into English) here and here.
The world they describe (and are actively fighting against) is not exclusive to just Russia. I think the above quote can describe many facets of Western societies' selective application of morality as well.

 

Golden Hill

Hello!  I spent this past week completing a new art print (pictured to the left), and I decided to document (most of) the whole venture in a new process thread in the gigposters.com forums.  This print, along with some other new stuff, will be available this week on my website.

Aside from working on new prints, a couple of illustrations, and planning some travels for later this year; my band is finishing up recording a full length album, and I'm packing a bunch of subscription tubes today.

If anyone who has seen the print I did for Breaking Bad's "Breaking Gifs" project, I will have copies of the print for sale later this year.  For now, what I have been telling people is to just contact me and request to be added to my mailing list.  That's the best way to be in the loop when I set an official release time for the print.

Coconut water fixes all.

I was asked to participate in a print event called "Picasso Versus Matisse", which was curated by fellow artist Alan Campbell.  Each of us was asked to reference the work of Picasso or Matisse in some way.  This was something I'd never personally done before, so I would have been unsure where to start, had Alan not suggested Matisse's 1912 painting "The Danse With Nasturtiums".  My idea was to focus on the room, removing the dancing figures.  This was fun to work on, and I'm glad Mr. Campbell asked me to be a part of this.  This print is available through my site right now, and it's a really small edition.

Also, my multi-talented friend Gina Kelly has recently helped produce a collaborative musical animated film entitled Quick and Dirty: A Total Exquisite Corpse Animation.  This film features a variety of excellent artists, including (but not limited to) Dan Grzeca, Guy Burwell, Kathleen Judge, and many more.  The filmmakers are trying to get this movie out there to be seen by the mases, into art museums, and submitted to film festivals.   Naturally, all of this costs money, so check out the trailer and read more about the project here.  You can back this project at many levels via Kickstarter, some for even less than what you'd pay for a copy of a movie (and you'll get a copy!).  Check it out.

Lastly, I'm heading out of town this morning for a few days with my band.  I'm waiting for our guitar player Jason to pick me up with the van and we're off to Columbus, OH this evening for a show.  Then we're heading to North Carolina to play Death To False Hope Fest in Durham, which will be followed by a marathon drive back home (unless we can find a last minute opening on a show somewhere in between the South and Chicago!).  I've got to get started on some prints (got some crazy art prints in the works) and various illustration stuff, finishing as much as I can before Flatstock 35 in Chicago in less than three weeks.  Boy, it sure gets here fast!  Nevertheless, expect a bunch of new prints to be available on my site early next week.

Back scratches, air conditioning, and "Unsolved Mysteries"

To the left is the completed ink drawing for a poster and art print that I'm printing this week.  In a series of emails with fellow ink artist Erica Williams, we were discussing the use of texture and density as a means of conveying value and depth in ink work.  This is something my sometimes flat architecture-based compositions seem to lack.  I think this is most effectively done when drawing more organic forms in ink (like skulls, plant life, animals with fur or scales, etc.) and is more difficult to apply to geometric forms.  I've been trying to explore ways in which I can add more texture (and thus depth) to architectural structures, both in the original line drawings and on the films for other colors in the final screen printed version.  It wasn't very difficult to get some bit of depth with the rubble on either side of the structure, as the rubble is basically a big organic form comprised of smaller geometric forms.  I'm banking on color and texture use on the other screens to give life to the more flat areas in the structure.  I've got a few tricks up my sleeve for this one, and I'm hoping they pan out.
Check out Erica's stuff.  She's rad.

Speaking of things you should check out, my friends at Sonnenzimmer are in the process of raising money via Kickstarter to make what I'm sure will be an outstanding book entitled Warp and Weft.  Check it.

Bad poetry, packed bags, and Mexican produce trucks

Oof, so it's been sort of a while since I've done a post on here.  I've been doing quite a bit of drawing, some printing, and even some painting.  I'm working on a couple of album covers at the moment and getting ready to leave for Spain on Sunday.  I'll be participating in Flatstock Europe 7 in Barcelona next week.
To the left is a little snapshot I took while out in the suburbs on Mother's Day.  Before arriving at my parents' house, I stopped briefly in Worth, IL (a city that borders my hometown) to skate this old curb.  I used to skate this curb thirteen years ago when I was a freshman in high school.  After a few years of skating at all the familiar spots in my town, I wanted to explore new terrain and see what else there was to discover.  I used to skate to the far end of town and walk along a stretch of a main street over the canal and into Worth.  As soon as the sidewalk resumed, I skated to the next major street and began looking for new spots.  This curb is at a bank drive-up and along with many other ledges and small curbs in the parking lot, was waxed and thoroughly skated before I'd ever found it.  I used to love coming here.  I'd make a whole afternoon of it, sometimes recruiting friends to join me, sometimes going it alone.  I would come home tired and satisfied from the hours of skating I'd put in coupled with the roughly 7 mile round trip.
It's been well over a decade since I've hit this spot with any degree of regularity.  At one point, all the wax was sandblasted off this curb, but some locals came and re-waxed it, making it skateable again.  I was happy to see that someone in the area is still skating this little spot, though it's definitely not what it was a decade and a half ago.  Who knows how long it was around before I'd even picked up a board.  There's got to be a pretty long history of Sunday sessions (or Saturday afternoon, after the drive-up closes for the day) at this long, yellow, unassuming slab of concrete.
I suppose if you don't ride a skateboard, there's a good chance that you won't entirely understand this.  I remember skating here in the spring of 1999 and walking or skating from spot to spot, intermittently daydreaming about starting a band and more importantly what things would be like when I got older.  Occasionally coming back to these old haunts and remembering my adolescent uncertainty, wishful thinking, and hope for the future is a small, sort of full-circle affirmation that I've kept a large part of myself in tact while growing up, that I've held onto to who I was, and that who I was then shaped and helped determine how the next fifteen years of how my life would transpire.  Still, it's just a fucking curb.

New print for MEMES show at Gallery1988

"Mentos, Diet Soda, and Saturday Afternoons"

3 screens on Cougar natural cover, 18x24"

Signed/numbered edition of 80.

MEMES opens on May 4th at Gallery 1988.  I was pretty stoked that I was able to do an art print with only three screens.  However, the hours I put in doing that hatching for that layer of foliage destroyed any efficiency I may have achieved with the simplified color palate.  I'm looking forward to seeing what other internet related buffoonery will be referenced in the show.

Yom HaShoah

Today is Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. Above is a photo I took of one of the memorials at the Dachau concentration camp while traveling in Germany last fall. As someone who was born much too late and too far away to have ever endured the shadow cast by Nazism, and as someone who has merely visited one of many sites of such unspeakable atrocities, I find my own words lacking. So I'll just suggest that maybe take a moment today to reflect on the horrors that humans are capable of inflicting on one another and role that unchecked political power, fear-mongering, racism, and nationalism all play in some of the worst crisis (past and present) in documented history.

Couches, french bulldogs, and lawchairs in garages

Greetings from Saint Louis! Here's a blurry phone photo of my friend Jason packing the van right before we rolled out of Chicago last evening. We drove to Saint Louis last night to stay with friends, and now we're about to head to Oklahoma City for the first show of the tour. Time to get food and then sit and draw in the van for eight hours.

Avocados, receipts, bananas, and freestyle rap battles

This picture was taken the other night at I Am Logan Square Gallery here in Chicago. "Print Me a Square", an exhibition featuring work from Fugscreens Studios, Screwball Press, Kill Hatsumomo Prints, Ryan Duggan, Billy Craven, and myself. The reception was great, and our man Billy was kept busy all evening handling sales.
My friend Zissou, who runs Fugscreens Studios (which is where I print), curated this show. Zissou, Billy, and our friend Allie are in the process of opening a brand new gallery and storefront in Logan Square. Their plan is to focus on and specialize in poster art/artists, as well as street art. They've got a Kickstarter going to get this project off the ground, so I wanted to drop them a little plug. Check out their Kickstarter campaign.

I worked until 4 am last night between printing the third poster I've printed this week and getting all of last year's receipts entered into spreadsheets so I can file my taxes today. The poster I finished last night was a tour poster for The Sky We Scrape, which is the band I recently have begun playing with. We leave for a short (9 day) tour tomorrow, so if you live in any of these cities and happen to be reading this, come say hi!
4/10 Oklahoma City, OK
4/11 Dallas, TX
4/12 Austin, TX
4/13 Albuquerque, NM
4/14 Tucson, AZ
4/15 Las Vegas, NV
4/16 Salt Lake City, UT
4/17 Denver, CO
4/18 Iowa City, IA
(Show details are on the band's facebook page)

Self indulgence (I'm better than George Zimmerman, and so are you)

Greetings from my dimly lit apartment on this brisk Chicago morning! I'm currently cooking hashbrowns and waiting for my friend Matt to come over so we can go skateboarding. I finished a new art print yesterday, for which the key line film is visible to the left. The print will be a part of "In the Garage," a group exhibition at Blank Space Gallery in Milford, CT.
During the summer of 2004, my friend Nate's parents went out of town while he was home from college for the summer. He and I (along with our beloved friend Derek) moved all of our music equipment into the basement and used bookshelves and old mattresses to create a sound dampening room within the basement. I really wish I had more pictures of the actual structure, as it was quite impressive. The original drawing for this print is based in part on a photo I took of one of Nate's guitars--a 1978 Gibson Marauder he had proudly just purchased--at rest in our ephemeral suburban punk rock laboratory. That summer we devised a plan to record and self release an EP and embark on a month long tour of the US and Canada.
The following summer, we had made it through the Canadian leg of our tour (not quite half of the way through) when perennial van troubles, Hurricane Dennis, and a sick loved one back home would have us decide it would be best to cut our losses and head in early. The band pretty quickly dissolved after that and we're all still friends of course, but I recall being pretty devastated about how things ended.
I remember how exciting it was to be playing music with each other on a regular basis for the first time since high school. I remember not being able to wait to get off work so I could drive over to Nate's parents' place and work on songs in the basement. I remember summer nights sitting on the screened in back porch of his parents' house listening to records and talking enthusiastically about music and our plans for the band. None of the plans ultimately panned out how we'd hoped, Nate later sold his Gibson Marauder, and that house (basement, porch, and all) has since been bulldozed. Still I think that those two summers, along with the months in between, helped shape the trajectory I was on at the time. I was trying really hard not to grow up, to hang onto youth for a bit longer, to procrastinate an inevitability. I was quite pessimistic about life after graduating college, and I think it took the colossal failure of this music endeavor and my lackluster completion of a degree that I didn't truly want in order to realize what I'm personally capable of and what I can do in my brief time on this planet.

While everyone was in Austin

It's unseasonably warm here in Chicago. To the right is a cellphone picture I took upon leaving the studio the other night. There are no windows in the rooms of our studio, so sometimes I don't know what to expect when I walk outside at the end of the day. It was nice to see that it was still light out and very temperate as I rode my bike to Native Foods for an outstanding sandwich and some pie. The following day (yesterday), I took my first full day off in a quite a while. Granted, the previous week I did take spend a couple of days in a recording studio laying down drum tracks, but I'm not so sure that counts.
Anyway, aside from all the printing, drawing, and extracurricular music making, my girlfriend and I hosted our friends Luke Drozd and his girlfriend Eva for a night while they were visiting Chicago. Luke, like almost every other poster artist, was on his way to Austin for Flatstock 33 at South By Southwest in Austin, TX. For the third year in a row, I waited too long to decide whether or not I'd go to Austin for Flatstock, so I'm sticking around in Chicago to tackle a whole bunch of posters and art prints I've got planned. I do want to finally get down there for SXSW, so hopefully I'll do it next year.
I'm lazing on the couch with the cat right now, but I'm about to head to the studio to print a color on a large run of prints. Seriously, my whole upper body is aching from doing this run by hand.

Crimpshrine is a good band.

Hey! Sorry for the lack of updates here. I've been working on a few too many things at once, including a really large run of prints that I can't wait to finish. I've also been helping out my friends in the band The Sky We Scrape on drums, recording an album with them and prepping for a small tour next month. Lots of cool stuff is in the works, so I'll try to keep the updates coming.
Anyway! The reason I'm posting is because my very good friend Logan is about to finish graduate school at IIT's architecture program and he and his classmates are tackling a pretty intense final project. Check out the video and Kickstarter below.



Kickstarter

Oh shit! New art print!

"Spring is Here"
9 screens on Cougar natural cover
18x24", edition of 75, signed

This new print will be available tomorrow (February 24th) at 1 PM CST though Nevermind Gallery. I don't know about you, but I'm patiently awaiting warmer weather (though this mild Chicago winter has allowed me to skate more than usual for this time of year). Good fun.

Bikes, drums, calendars, pens, coconut milk, and shaving

I spent a large part of yesterday adding detail to films with a very small opaque pen. My keyline films are made from ink drawings that I print onto film with a blueprint printer. The drawings are usually enlarged and printed close to 150%, so sometimes things like distant trees could stand some added fine lines and detail. I've always liked touching up and manipulating films with an X-acto and film pens, but lately I have been reworking some areas entirely. In the picture, you can see the difference between tree branches at the left and the branches directly below the pen. I'm pretty stoked with the level of depth that this kind of reworking has given the whole composition. I've got a long way to go with the print, but I'm excited to keep moving forward with it.
Coming up this spring: Group poster exhibitions in London and Liverpool (which I unfortunately will probably not be attending in person, due to scheduling) and a European Flatstock in Barcelona at the end of May (which I will be attending in person). I've never been to Spain before, but I know it's pretty close to the Balearic Sea. I intend to swim there regardless of water temperature. It couldn't possibly be any colder than the Atlantic Ocean in New Brunswick in the spring (which was freezing).
A new art print will be available very soon through Nevermind Gallery. Stay tuned.

Truffels, cat beds, leftovers, and Mexican printmakers

Above is a snapshot of the keyline film for an art print I am working on right now. I just printed the eighth color late this afternoon, the keyline is up next (first thing tomorrow morning). I'm pretty excited to get this next color printed, but I have a feeling that I'll probably be going in and doing a tenth screen for some darker accents. More to come.

Hoist That Rag

I was commissioned to do a small run of posters for a local (and online) 80's movie night. I had fun doing this illustration and working on something kind of different. I'm back in the saddle today printing a new art print. More to come, but in the meantime, check out this trailer for an upcoming documentary on poster art(ists) called Just Like Being There.

Shredding ten vegetables

Hello! I've been working on some new drawings for an illustration and a poster, as well as films for new art prints. To the left is some pencil work (in progress at time of photo) that I used as a guide for an ink/acrylic-on-paper version of the drawing. The finished piece will be used for Community Records' Block Party 2012. I will also being doing posters for the event based on this image as well.

I recently answered a few questions for TEN x TEN, a print artist and musician collaboration that will be released later this year. Prints from this show will be on display at Expo 72 in Chicago (reception on March 2nd, 2012). The interview about my print for TEN x TEN is posted here.

And since I'm a skateboarder who doesn't eat meat or animal products, I've been featured on the very excellent Vegan Skate Blog. Check it out.

I just finished inking a new drawing for a poster that I'll be printing this coming week, so I'm going to get some food and head back to my apartment. Woo!

Newt Gingrich? More like Shit Romney!

Greetings! Sorry for the lack of updates here. 2012 has been off to a really busy start. My girlfriend and I (and our cat) also moved to a new apartment, which we somehow managed to do in record time. Other than that, I've been hard at work on new posters and art prints, eating avocado rolls, and not shaving.
I was recently asked to do a second edition of the sold out "Wait For Me, Abby Bernstein" print for Gallery 1988 and this year's SF Sketchfest. I don't make it a habit of doing second editions, but I thought it would be cool to try this one in another colorway. It was kind of cool to dig out the old films and whip through these in blue ink. They're now available on my site.
I spent a good chunk of today packing up and shipping the last half of 2011's prints to send to subscribers. It went quite a bit faster than I thought it would, and they're now in the mail and on the way to their respective destinations. I was left with enough to time to finish a drawing for a new art print (and future beer label).
It's about 8 PM, and I've been working for a bit too long today. I'm stuck debating whether I should go home and eat dinner or go skate for a bit on this unseasonably mild January evening. I probably need to get some groceries, too.
Stay tuned, and I promise to be better about updating. 2012 should be a year full of printing, drawing, and new travels.

New posters available

I recently did a series of posters for Chicago's Tomorrow Never Knows festival, and those posters are now available on my site. Each poster is 18x24", from an edition of 100, and (as always) entirely handmade. Complete sets of the TNK posters are also available in a limited quantity.
Okay, it's well after 5 AM, and my living room is pretty cold. I'm going back to sleep for a bit.

Remember

“Never, never be afraid to do what's right, especially if the well-being of a person or animal is at stake. Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds we inflict on our soul when we look the other way.”

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Government Cartoons

I was hoping to have been a little more on top of blog posts for the end of 2011/beginning of 2012, but I ended up spending most of those days finishing off a huge print marathon, which included a set of four posters for Tomorrow Never Knows 2012, not taking a day off in over two weeks, and preparing to move to a new apartment. I have also done a second edition of an art print from last year (stay tuned to find out which one!) in a new colorway.
2012 is off to a busy start. I recently turned 28, and I'm doing my best keep the momentum generated last year in full swing. Today is full of lots of sketching, listening to Propagandhi, blowing my runny nose, playing with the cat, and probably eating vegetable sandwiches on bagels while I think about skateboarding.
Anyway, to the left is one of the Tomorrow Never Knows 2012 posters. I chose to do a sort of architectural portrait of each of the four Chicago venues at which TNK shows are being held. This one is of The Hideout. I rode my bike to each of the four venues (Metro, Schubas, Lincoln Hall, and the Hideout) and took several pictures of each. Then I sat down and did my best architect impression (meaning I used a ruler for a change) and drew each building. I had fun trying to keep all four of these posters only three colors, and I'm happy to say I actually had the foresight to mix enough of all the colors have chromatic uniformity. Anyway, they're available at the aforementioned venues for TNK, and they'll be posted for sale on my site, along with a (sort of) new art print early next week.