we recently went to our local printer, Park’s Printing in Modesto to get two off-set lithograph posters made of souther’s paintings, The Lion is Awake & The Disappearing Treehouse.

for the press check, we went behind the scenes in their print shop to check colors and see their process. everything is computerized nowadays, so it’s very easy to adjust color levels and also to set the levels so if we needed to reprint the posters years from now, they would still look identical.

the paper passes through each of these CMYK presses that holds a different color ink. the last station is for special inks (metallics, etc). 

the final product; ready to go through the paper trimmer.

look for the posters in the Etsy shop!

I’ve been out of the loop, and only just recently heard of Dylan Williams’ passing last month. We were not close friends, but he was someone I admired very much. He was generous towards me, and encouraged me greatly when I was just starting out. Though he was an older and more established artist, he made me feel included right away.

His love for art, music, comics, books and films was infectious and I learned about a ton of cool things from him. When I was just a teenager, he helped distribute my terrible minicomics, and he continued to invite me to be part of some of his great projects over the years. When I heard the news, I went online and found a lot of people who knew him much better saying the same things– how much he encouraged and inspired everyone around him. There are just not enough people like that in the world, and it really breaks my heart to know he’s gone.

I’m excited to announce that I’ve contributed a small print to a wonderful project for Cloudy Collection & Koyama Press. The set of prints is called Monster Parade, and is a tribute to my hero, Mr. Ed Emberley.

It features 15 original prints, as well as two new prints by Ed himself! You can order the prints and see more about the project here.

Most people who know me, know how deep my love for the work of Ed Emberley goes. His books were my absolute favorite to draw from when I was little. He focused on breaking drawing down into a very simple vocabulary so that you could play with endless variations on his examples, and create intricate worlds of your own. This was so much more powerful to me than what I found in other drawing books (like the Lee J. Ames series, for example, where the focus was always on copying specific realistic drawings). He gave me the ingredients to draw whatever I could imagine.

I carried his drawing books with me my whole life, and they survived every move. In my art school days, I would bring them to class to share with my friends and teachers.  More than the instruction they offered, I loved the personality of his drawing books.

When I look at them now, I realize they have the same ingredients that later drew me into the zine world – a humble, personal format with cool hand lettering, personal stories and thoughtful tips.

I remember the tip he offered to turn your drawing pad to an angle that’s comfortable and use the side as a straight edge. The story about how potatoes helped his family survive a famine. And above all, the wonderful characters and bizarre worlds.

When artist/writer/curator/awesome guy Caleb Neelon told me that he was putting together an Ed Emberley tribute show (last summer in LA, at the Scion art space), I was crazy excited at the chance to finally meet him in person.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to participate in that project, but Caleb set up some time for me to come in and meet Ed and his lovely wife/collaborator Barbara during the show’s set up.

Ed was sharp as a tack, and we talked about art, life, and the future of books. Ed told me how much he loved the idea of the internet removing the middleman, and creators being able to reach their audience directly.

I brought an old woodblock print of Ed’s with me, that I had found about 8 or 9 years ago. It was my first ever “big” art purchase.

Ed was excited to see the print again, and he remembered cutting the wood and Barbara pulling the print over 40 years ago. The print is simply numbered “1″, and Ed told me it was the only one ever pulled from that block.

Ed was kind enough to personalize some of my beat-up copies of his books.

Ed drew a dragon beneath my own giant name. You can tell how much I valued this book, I wrote my name in it 5 different times, along with my phone number (twice) and my address.

Some of my drawings as a kid are on the inside back cover, using characters from a variety of Emberley books.

I was happy that I happened to have this book for Barbara to sign too! Ed remembered that for this book, he used balsa wood, which was easy to cut and left an interesting grain behind in the shapes.

I always keep an eye out for Ed’s illustration work. Here’s a little uncredited lettering on the back of an Arthur Lyman record.

The original mock-up for his classic “Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book of Animals”

After the visit, Caleb asked me if I could drive Ed and Barbara back to their hotel. The entire time I was driving I kept thinking “…Ed Emberley’s in my car! Ed Emberley’s in my car!”

A little while later, Caleb sent me this nice surprise gift! An Original Emberley chalk drawing.

Ed’s new print for Monster Parade

(before we left)

(AFTER!)

The cats were very happy to have us back and we’ve been watching them enjoy the new greenery; seeing the tips of their tails and ears barely above the high grass while they navigate the backyard.

Overall, even with the late nights and little sleep, we had an awesome trip and experience setting up the show.

The staff at the LeVine Gallery were very easy to work with and we had a lot of help. When we got to the gallery, the work was unpacked and waiting for us.

(detail of sculptures)

We set to work building the large installation piece. Souther painted a portal on the back wall of the gallery (giant thumbprints!) while I figured out how our snail friend would fit in the space.

We’d mocked him up in our small living room, so seeing him come together in the spaciousness of the gallery – especially next to all the artwork hanging on the walls – was a nice treat. He felt like he belonged there.

(detail of installation)

We finished the installation at 6am the day of the opening. Dragging ourselves back to the hotel, we slept in and then had a leisurely day before heading back for the opening party. One of our stops was Tinsel Trading which specializes in antique trims and notions. Once we walked in the door, my jaw dropped. The walls are lined with tons of trim, ribbons, lace; with those old library rolling ladders to get to the highest shelves. The basement downstairs houses the studio of Wendy Addison.

Wendy was Souther’s neighbor when he was growing up and gave him his first drawing lessons. She makes beautiful, whimsical things. Here she is with a giant collection of vintage marbleized wooden beads she found recently.

The rest of the basement is stacked floor to ceiling with cardboard boxes spilling over with spools of antique metal thread and trim. Some of the materials date back to the 1800s and some boxes have never even been opened yet!

Souther chose a few bits of thread to add to his art materials collection and we were off to get ready for the opening.

Unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating. But despite heavy rain and bitter cold, there was a great turnout and many of our good friends came out. You can see photos of the artwork and opening party here. Even Souther’s mom and brother flew out from California for the opening!

The rest of our trip was filled with explorations of NY with Souther’s family. We filled our time with good food, friends, and took in the Museum of Natural History and the Guggenheim… we even went on a Harlem adventure.

Dinner with the Num Num girls, Caroline & Lisa.

Helping Caroline frost her Salty & Sweet cake. Chocolate Ganache!!

Souther’s mom having her first slice of NY pizza

In the ‘African Peoples’ section of the museum, they had a display of traditional dance costumes. This one was our favorite, named the “Distinguished Devil”… according to the placard, he does “distinguished dances”.

We also loved the pottery on display from Colima, Mexico. The faces and shapes were so cartoonish and seemed contemporary, it was hard to believe how old they were.

A collector of Souther’s, Ron Dominguez, invited us to his home for breakfast and to see his art collection. He lives in a lovely apartment in central Harlem that is absolutely covered in art. Seeing and hearing him talk about his collection, I could really tell how passionate and proud he is about the pieces he has.

(Adam Wallacavage)

After breakfast, Ron took us on a tour of his neighborhood. There are major renovations happening to restore all the beautiful old buildings and brownstones. Here we are on Astor row.

Since moving to the neighborhood, Ron’s been learning all the history of the different buildings and streets in Harlem. He was a very informative tour guide.

One last goodbye…

I’ve tried to describe the worlds in my paintings as places where many stories can exist…where memories, imagination, and subconscious can all come together. This painting is a good example of how that works for me.

On the most basic level, this is about our  trip to Lucerne, Switzerland last year, where I had an exhibit in the Fumetto festival. The large twisting lake through the center of the town, full of swans, and the old bridge and tower that cut across it. The cranes and construction projects. The storybook buildings with decorative spires and flags.

Our first few days we stayed in an apartment with a little table and a row of tulips outside.  Later we migrated to a room on the 6th floor of the adjacent hotel, where I could look out the window at the snow-capped alps and the grand castle-like hotel on a hill.

We enjoyed being tourists, feeding the ducks, snapping pictures of the swan’s nest and shopping at the farmer’s market, taking a boat ride along the lake.  We took a little trip to Bern and watched an old bear climbing around on a dead tree.

There is a famous monument of a dying lion in Lucerne. You may have seen it as it often appears, in the form of a bookend. My mom has one on her bookshelf. The real one is carved into the side of a sandstone quarry. It was created to commemorate the swiss guards massacred during the French Revolution. We never got a chance to see the sculpture. There was a lot of work to do with setting up the exhibition…

…(some pieces of the installation are seen in the window on the left side of the painting), and after a few days of sunshine, rain clouds rolled in and we had to stay in town and indoors. But it was mentioned so many times, that the lion feels like it was there, like it was part of our trip.

While working on this piece, I found a little handmade pottery sculpture of a lion in a thrift store. I loved the way his mane was made out of pressed clay shingles, and his serene expression carved deeply in. It was on my desk while drawing this, and ended up replacing the hill that the castle sat on. In the painting, he woke up, and can see me looking out at the world.

Because I was thinking of lions, my mind drifted to the character Sam the Lion, played by Ben Johnson in the film “The Last Picture Show.” I always loved Sam’s monologue about time passing, and things changing. It takes me to the same nostalgic place that making a painting does, because I am sitting there processing all these memories. So I found a place for him to sit in this painting too.

On Sam’s head is a ladybug. For some reason there were a lot of ladybug-themed gifts and ladybug shaped chocolates in the windows of the shops in Lucerne.  And while painting this, there was also a major ladybug invasion in my studio. Ladybugs were often crawling across the paintings and climbing over the sculptures. It seemed like they wanted to be in the pieces, so I painted and sculpted a few of them in.

Also, being in Switzerland reminded me of when I was 11, and I went to Europe with my family for the first time. My mom was the same age as I am now, driving us 4 kids around in a Volkswagen Vanagon. I include a little version of this memory in the bottom left, with us kids being crazy, and driving my mom crazy. (Somehow the van turned into a sort of bus/limo in the process).

And in the very bottom left, another portal.  A way out of, or back into this world.

My nephew always wants me to play this game with him, where he asks me to draw a picture and then hide keys in it for him to find. I’m not sure where he got that idea from, but he loves finding those hidden keys. Meanwhile, late last summer, this very magical looking key appeared on our deck. Here is Popcorn inspecting it.

I think one of the raccoons must’ve brought it, since they love shiny things. When my nephew saw the key, he got really excited. (Apparently, his new robot toy was stealing trees from around our house and shrinking them down to nothing, and this magic key was the only thing that could reverse the damage.)  Here are a few keys I’ve hidden in the pieces for this show.

One of the themes that rose to the surface while working on this show was nesting, or “Nidifying,” a word my brother recently informed me of, which means: “to build a nest.” It was not a conscious decision at all, which is surprising after I realized how many things I drew, painted or constructed for this show that were nest-related.

I’ve built a couple of nest sculptures in the past, but it’s been a while. There are some very obvious reasons why nests are suddenly on my mind again. 1. Monica discovered a small collection of nests at the flea market (for 2 bucks!) right before we moved up here, and I’ve had them displayed around my studio.

2. We’ve observed some beautiful ones in the past year, from the Swan’s nest in Switzerland to the Red-tailed hawks’ in our backyard.

Even Satchel has her own little nest:

3. Lastly, I guess you could say we’ve been doing some nesting of our own.

(click image to see extra large)

Here is the first painting I finished for the show; also titled, “You Come Too.” The main image was something I had in mind for a while – one character reaching out his arm to invite the other to come along. I guess you could say it’s us, although I don’t own a hat like that. Or a dinosaur.

Where does the dinosaur fit in? I’m really not sure.  Maybe it’s because we like to use our imaginations. Maybe it’s because we both thought of a little shabby hill as “Dinosaur Mountain” (the place I asked Monica to marry me).  Maybe it’s because we like going to natural history museums together. Maybe it’s all of those things. The characters don’t have very much packed, just some arrows for survival and one bag each.

In the distance is a busy city skyline. We left Los Angeles behind last year, driving through the open land between Southern California and the Central Valley, low sloping hills, windmills, telephone poles, a stray horse, water towers, the kind of things you always seem to see when you drive some distance from one place to the next.

We now live in a little house on the Tuolomne river. We know all the cats and raccoons and study the different animals and trees and insects that populate the river area during different times of the year. We keep an eye out for nests, foxes, river otters–the rarer things to spot.

We look out our window and watch Popcorn (the little white cat) explore and wrestle with Satchel (a young feral black cat). Satchel’s dad, “Paco,” an older tomcat abandoned by previous owners, is often seen wandering around as well. Popcorn seems to get into a lot of mischief. He returns home at the end of the day covered in mud and spiderwebs, his collar missing.

The riders are heading towards some sort of portal.  I had this urge last summer to try to understand string theory and quantum physics, but the more I read, the more my mind wandered off into all of the 11 dimensions.  I wanted to draw portals into these dimensions. I think about the changes in my own life, going through big transitions where  the future is unknown, and all I can see is the portal.  To see the other side, I have to step through it.

5 months since the last post. Still, we’re not ready to give up on this blog quite yet. Winter has come and gone.  We harvested persimmons and watched the rain flood the river and turn the gully behind our house into a lagoon.  Many of the missing insects are beginning to return, and the red-tailed hawks are hovering around their giant nest in one of the cottonwood trees outside our window. The lagoon is filled with ducks and geese. We took in a stray kitten named Popcorn, who is now a teenager.

We have been holed up, working this whole time.  Yesterday we shipped out the bulk of the artwork for my third solo show with the Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York. 2 crates and 2 large boxes, as well as a package of drawings that already went out earlier.  It’s been a lot of long days and nights in isolation, but the feelings of accomplishment make it all worth it.

Monica has helped me every step of the way, from planning and problem solving, to being a patient and meticulous second pair of hands to help handle all the sewing, glueing, cutting, framing, varnishing, and hundreds of other tasks that go into putting a show like this together. Not to mention being a source of creative ideas, feedback, strength and support, and all the while feeding us both with some amazing meals along the way. With her help, I think this feels like the best show I’ve done so far. At the same time, we talk about our wedding plans, and my vision of our future together is swelling with hope and promise.

Her dad and godfather both jumped in to offer their expert carpentry skills to help with the framing and crate building.  My mom has also been an enormous amount of support, financially and creatively, helping us survive during the tough time of putting thousands of hours towards something that does not pay for itself until much later, and then, only if we’re lucky. She also was inspiring by letting me sift through her collections of tiny treasures for pieces to use in my sculptures, and she lent her expert soldering skills and creative ideas towards helping me make some more interesting new air balloons.

We still have a lot left to finish. I am still working on many of the tiny and fragile sculptures that I will carry with me on the plane, and we have a lot of details to resolve with the large installation piece…and then there is the matter of compiling and editing through all of the photos (we worked with a wonderful local photographer, Jill Braaten), deciding on titles, getting all the information to the gallery, etc, etc.

So taking some time to write on this blog feels like a luxury.  Usually, just before one of my shows opens, I am feeling so crazy and scattered I can hardly remember to send out an email or tell my friends about the show, even though it has been all I’ve thought about for months and months.But spending this much time in my head, building up these worlds in paintings, drawings and sculptures…feeling the love and support from my friends and loved ones…I feel like there has been a lot swimming around up there, and that maybe it would be good to write some of it out and share it.

Since the show opens in 10 days, I thought I’d start posting some of the images early, and sharing some of the stories that relate to the pieces. Usually when people ask me about the stories in my pieces, it’s really difficult for me to talk about.  I don’t always have a clear idea of what the story is; it’s really more of a matter of creating a place for many stories to exist.  Those stories could be from real memories, or my imagination, or something from my subconscious and I have no clue what it’s about. But I usually have a very specific feeling of a place I want to create; one where all those things can exist together.

Painting, drawing (and to some extent, sculpture) are ideal mediums for this kind of open-ended storytelling. They’re static, but can still be narrative.  There is no inherent timeline, or beginning or end. There isn’t a system of words or pages or beats or frames to tell you where to go next. A painting can be the briefest snapshot or an epic saga. It can contain worlds within worlds that we can zoom in and explore endlessly. It can be all of those things at the same time. Each time you look at it, it can tell a different story.  That’s what I love.  Not so much creating a story, but a place where stories can exist.

Having said all that, with this show, I wanted to focus more on creating work that had a sense of inclusion. I have found myself in a place where I am prepared to spend the rest of my life with someone, so on a personal level, much of the work in this show is about opening up and inviting someone else in. But I also wanted to share the joy I feel, and the excitement of this adventure and all adventures, through the act of storytelling. So the show is titled “You Come Too”, which is taken from the poem “The Pasture,” by Robert Frost, which is pretty short, so I’ll post it here:

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the clear water, I may):
I shan’t be gone long – You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s too young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan’t be gone long – You come too.

agghhhhhh, we have been wanting to update this thing for a long time!!! the summer exploded with adventures and we kept talking about sharing some of the photos and stories of them and our new place, but then it was always too nice outside and neither of us wanted to sit down at the computron when we could be out chasing katydids or rafting down the river.

we’ll do sort of a big messy catch-up post soon, but for now here are 3 time-sensitive announcements that are burning a hole in our pocket (actually one of them is kinda too late already).

1. MONSTER SHOW FIVE at Domy Books in Austin and Houston

this is the one that’s kinda too late already. i’m ashamed that I didn’t post this on time because russell, the guy behind domy is a cool guy and an old penpal of mine going way back to when i was 15 in the old fashioned days of zine catalogs and snailmail swaps. and he used my art for the postcard. i didn’t have a chance to make a costume this year, but if I did, it would probably have been a cross between that praying mantis at the top and the ghoulie in the bottom right.

drawing #2: clifford and the wild behemoth of applesauce junction

show details and availability info: http://www.domystore.com/

2. LIFE IS A SCREAM: monica and i have been listening to spooky music all month and we decided to put together a little mix. here is a link to the mix on rapidshare: http://rapidshare.com/files/428067129/life_is_a_scream.zip

…i’m not sure if we did this right, but as far as i can tell sometimes it takes a few attempts to make the free download activate. if there’s a better way to do this, please let us know so we can do it right next time. halloween is already 1/2 way over so download this asap! it will increase your haunting powers by 12%. when you are done listening to it, bury your headphones in the shadow of the willow tree with 3 lizards tails and wait for the next full moon. you will then have the power of turning persimmons into bicycles. they will be tiny bicycles. you can do this for up to 3 bicycles. then you should probably give them to those lizards that you stole the tails from.

3. last but not leeeeeast, PATTERN RECOGNITION opens up at Subliminal Projects in los angeles next weekend, nov 6th from 8-11pm. it’s a 5 person show featuring me, seonna hong, dalek, nikki mcclure, and rich coleman. if you can’t make it opening night, the show runs from nov 6th – dec 4th.

i’m very excited about this show, and in fact i am finishing little detailed things for it right now in my head as i type this. it’s been roughly a million years since i showed some new work in LA.

i will be there all week setting up, and am going to be recreating the alejandro installation that i showed in switzerland with monica’s help. and new paintings and drawings of course. if you are in the neighborhood, please come by and say hi. it’s funny but i never realized how many people i sort of ran into here and there while living in LA.  i hope some of those random collision acquaintances show up too, because i miss that.