Page 3. Click for larger size.

I’m very excited to extend the invite to anyone in the area to the opening night of the group show I’m a part of, Landscapes of Quarantine. From the press release:

NEW YORK CITY – February 17, 2010 – On Tuesday, March 9, 2010, Landscapes of Quarantine, a group exhibition exploring the spatial implications of quarantine, will open at New York’s landmark Storefront for Art and Architecture. The exhibition consists of new works by a multi-disciplinary group of eighteen artists, designers, and architects, each of whom was inspired by one or more of the physical, biological, ethical, architectural, social, political, temporal, and even astronomical dimensions of quarantine. Curated by Nicola Twilley and Geoff Manaugh of Future Plural, the exhibition will be on view at Storefront until April 17, 2010. Entrance to the exhibition is free; the launch event on March 9 is open to the public and will showcase a one-night-only, inflatable quarantine prosthesis attached to Storefront’s façade, designed by architects Jeffrey Inaba and Joseph Grima, as well as a range of beers generously donated by Brooklyn Brewery.

This was a bit of an adventure for me, and, I suspect, several other participants, since we had 10 solid weeks of inspection of the subject matter, group idea sharing, peer crit, and a final group review with a stellar cast of all-star critics. As an illustrator by trade, and often a web-enabled artist by choice, I don’t usually have the luxury of ruminating on a project an entire season before putting it together. Often times when, late at night, I’m reading the working practices of famous artists I admire (as I’m wont to do, whiskey in hand), I’m envious of a time when artists were able to chin-scratch for years on one project, painting, or attempt. Maybe I’m romanticizing it, but from a pure economics point of view, unless you’re a really famous artist, what someone might get from selling a piece of work hasn’t kept up with cost of living increases, to say the least, so more work is demanded in a shorter amount of time. But maybe it’s also personal. I’m a type-A guy who’s also impatient. Regardless of the reason, the length of time was a breath of fresh air. To be able to share that with a select group of amazing artists who gave some un-sugar-coated honest critique almost felt like I was being greedy.

Detail from Page 1

My particular piece, titled Pages 179-187 is a result I came to after studying both the roots of quarantine in the modern age, as well as the plague epidemics of early times. As we were introduced to the historical material, I became fascinated with the power imbued in the  Powers That Be to make very real decisions of life and death, sometimes with very little real information at hand. The idea of The Word From On High, for the good of all, became, in my mind, inextricably linked with the power structure behind a quarantine, and the nearly-imperialist power that implies, on top of how that word was distributed to the masses. I quickly found a relation between what the elder times placed their faith in (God), and what our more modern forebearers trusted (technology), and came up with a kind of ‘lost fable’, told in a form that was a consciously reminiscent of both 19th century etchings and cartoons, and both Italian and Byzantine illuminated manuscripts. My hope is that the result is 8 pages that are nearly ahistorical, so universal are both the themes and the images.

My initial plan was to get these pages binded in a leather tome, but after some teeth gnashing and rending of clothes, I ended up abandoning the plan, due to both a logistical flaw: how do I get every page to be shown without asking the audience to touch the pages?), and a thematic one (isn’t that a little Epcot-y?). My final framing choice I think you’ll find both subtle and really cool and appropriate.

I’ll be posting all the pages, eventually, but if you’re in the area, please do come down and pull me aside to say hello at the opening on March 9th,  at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. It should be a blast, and not only can you see my pieces in person, you can see all the other fantastic stuff on display. See you there!

Download the original press release here.

I’m very excited to announce that I’ve been invited to participate in the “Landscapes of Quarantine” salon, cohosted by BLDGBLOG and Edible Geography. From the description:

“…an eight-week, intensive, independent design studio to be hosted this autumn in New York City; its brief is to create original and thought-provoking design projects that explore the spatial implications of quarantine. The results of the studio will then be the subject of an exhibition at Storefront for Art and Architecture in spring 2010.”

Of the many things I love about Geoff Manaugh’s BLDGBLOG, his healthy respect for intellectualized science-fiction is at the top of the list. Too often disregarded as nerd-stuff by the low culture and child’s play by the high-brows, (though it’s neither,) science fiction is exactly what we will be examining in this workshop – what the future will bring to us from prevalent current trends, and how we will adapt. I can’t think of anything less akin to child’s play. But okay, maybe it’s a little nerdy.

The list of participants is both amazing and a little intimidating: I hope I can keep up! I look forward to seeing what we all come up with, and thanks tons to Geoff for the invite.

…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.

The Thames 1,2,3 Comic, on the inside cover of the new BLDGBLOG book.

The new BLDGBLOG book, with comics by yours truly, is to be released soon. Sweet!

And I’m obviously not alone in my feelings, since Chronicle Books feels the same way. I got a sneak peek the other day, and it’s a completely radtacular, even with present company’s contributions excluded (don’t get me wrong: the radtacular factor is increased to a 9.8 on the Radtacular scale, WITH the comics).

The stories are both Geoff’s, and involve some fanciful musings on architecture one futurist narrative, the other a simpler visual essay on what you could do with a whole lot of money, instead doing boring stuff like buying boats or giving it to Bernie Madoff. They were both a lot of fun to do, and like all my favorite clients, Geoff was very hands-off, and he let me tell it in my own way. Here’s hoping to more collaborations.

You can see both on my Flickr stream here and here.

Enjoy, and buy the book, while you’re at it, ya cheapskates. Whatsamattah, you think the internet owes you free entertainment? Oh, yeah.

Future Systems on London has just won the contract for building the new national library for the Czech Republic, on the strength of their kinda outside-the-box design, picture above. Now, I ain’t no prude, but frankly, I’d love to see a return to a little classicism one of these days when it comes to destination building design. What’s the matter with dentals and dorics? Having recently lived in a city with a very weird and newsmaking library, I know I’m bucking the trend, but screw it: stuff like this just seems dated immediately out of the gate. Czechs 20 years from now are going to walk past this thing and roll their eyes and say “Ugh, that’s SO early 2000s.”

Let me just say this: the buildings pictured below also were viewed as “groundbreaking” by some circles at some point in time, too:

Nuff said.

One of the nice things about The Global Worldwide Internet Web of Interests is that you check out art in cities where you maybe can’t afford the rent. In that vein, I invite you into the digital gallery of Clip/Stamp/Fold, a new show at the Storefront for Art gallery in NYC. It’s a show of architectual proto-zines from the sixties and seventies, and while the content is interesting I’m sure, taken all together, it’s a also just a great survey of design trends from the era. Now, I don’t know much about architetcure, but Holy Smokes: if this is the design architects come up with, what did the designer’s ‘zines look like?

(The site is a little hinckey, but looks great: bear with it.)