Joe Alterio’s blog on illustration, comix, design, animation, and other bouts of total awesomeness.
This Time From The Right Side
…and we’re back.
Lots of changes to jabber on about, the primary one of which that we’ve relocated to the New York area for Molly to attend law school. So, besides playing the good husband, I now get to reorient myself to entirely new climate, work network, subway system and quality of sandwich meats available in the supermarket. (on this last point: I’ve been away for so long.)
It’s great to be here, and strange, too: I have spent the last 13 years on the West Coast, after growing up in the Boston area, and the shift is one both subtle and profound. I obviously visited quite a bit while away, but one always keeps an area at arm’s length when one is visiting. Too many obligations and distractions to let a city settle into your bones. The first thing that strikes me is just the truly different feeling the streets present to you, a combination of weather, architecture, and presence, if you will; the East coast is more immediate. It demands you pay tribute to it’s grubby walls and soaring pretense. The West Coast keeps everything at an arms length– one can take your SUV from your planned suburb out to the coast, and pretend no one is around. There is no fooling oneself about your fellow travelers here, and, at this point in my life at least, I think that’s probably a good thing.
I shan’t bore anyone with my personal rankings of cities, locales, places, foods: each place is exactly right for what it is. But I feel very, very good to be here right now. It is an awe-inspiring and knee-bending thing to be in the orbit of Manhattan. It is a cliched piece of garbage, but my god, it is true. Take a stroll and peer up above you at the windows that blanket the faces of the neoclassical buildings like a mosquito net to keep out the riffraff; behind each one is a potential lifetime. There is no weed strewn lot someone doesn’t have plans for, no tiny dive bar that isn’t someone’s favorite. But unlike other places, in which those of the hipper persuasion try to find the place unfound, there is a certain welcoming charm to this place like no other, an assurance that everything is already found. Everyone is a New Yorker, immediately. I’m sure this is the good old days for this city, and I would get a different answer if this were the 1970s. But for now, it is the prom queen who everyone wants to be seen with, and my, is she lovely.
Relevant stuff:
+ The new Robots and Monsters site is at near-launch. It’s been a slog, mostly because I’ve asked Glaser, my partner at Squonk, to do it when he doesn’t have time for anything else, and fortunately, that’s not too often. But it will be launched within a month or so, and included there will be the new ordering system, making the ordering process MUCH easier, on both ends. The above graphic is the smaller size of what will be the background. Check out the *HUGE* version to see the details, and that you can use as a background, too.
+ For the past two months, I’ve been working on fun tools for the new Photoshop.com site. Adobe asked me to concept and execute a bunch of fun add-ons to personal photos to jazz them up, and it’s been a blast. Check out the first wave here.
+ I’m one of the featured illustrators on Workbook.com this week, showcasing my new portfolio I’ve got up there: Check it out.
+ This guy is too fucking awesome. Someone needs to kill him. Ben Newman: thy work pierces my heart with the bitter-tipped arrow of jealousy. Nice work.
+ Got invited to a few sweet salons in Manhattan that I’ll be blogging about later. The upshot it that I’ll definitely be back showing some work in a gallery before too long, which makes me exceedingly happy.
+ I can’t believe that actually sell prosciutto and capicola at the deli here, to be sliced. In-bleeping-credible. I’ll trade the avocados for that.
That’s all for now. Mo’ later.
Hooray for you guys, Joe! Welcome back to the East Coast.