Just a quick note to inform that the piece I made (above) for David Huyck’s fantastic project, Cloudy Collection, will be debuting at a Cloudy Co. show at the Pink Hobo Gallery in Minneapolis. The reception is at the gallery (507 E. Hennepin, for those in the area) on November 4th starting at 7pm. The event also kicks off MIX (http://mplsindiexpo.com/ ).

Go stand near my piece and talk about what a genius I am. Go!

There's No One There (2011)

A few years ago, I started having a vivid dream, one of very intense colors and very specific imagery. It’s floated around behind my eyes, but in front of my brain, for a few years, and I’ve been trying to capture it for a while with limited success.

Back in March, my good friend Scott Geiger approached me and asked me to be a part of a literary journal issue he was guest editing, and over a lunch of Korean BBQ sandwiches in Soho, he asked if I would be a part of his issue. I was really thrilled; Scott was one of my fellows in the Quarantine show back in March 2010, hosted by BLDG BLOG and Edible Geography, which was such a great success, and while all parts were great, Scott’s was one of my favorites, both in style and substance. Maybe a little selfishly, as Scott was describing the issue, I realized this was a great venue to try my hand at my next attempt at capturing what was in my brain in that recurring dream.

Some early studies

When I first tried to capture the feelings dominant in the dream, I thought they were paranoia, and so my code-name for the project for a long time was thusly. It felt suffocating, as if the bright colors, cartoonish malevolence, and barren landscapes were designed to get me, as I was chased by the infinite black of those dark windows. But as I ruminated more, I came to realize it wasn’t really paranoia at all; I wasn’t being chased by a thing, per se – I was being chased by a fear. And that fear was of desperate, unending loneliness.  A loneliness that can only be brought on by exploring every inch of your surroundings and finding yourself completely trapped by it, and by the expected nature of it.

As a 33 year old now, a great deal my youth was spent indoors, camped behind a computer screen, playing the early versions of first-person-shooters and walk-through RPGs in the Sierra line. My parents were barely on speaking terms, I was getting shit in school, and the glow of childhood was fading rapidly; I found solace in these games because provided not only a distraction, but a sense of real accomplishment – getting to the next stage, unlocking the door, gaining access to the spacecraft – these felt like real wins. It’s through this lens that a difficult level to beat was an acceptable challenge, but one in which there seemed to be no real solution brought bubbling forth some existential fears that stick with me to this day. To use a clunky metaphor, a man with a gun blocking my exit from a dark alley is a scary but solvable puzzle. However, if the man is absent, but the alley has no exit, and I’m forced to explore endlessly for a way out, one that doesn’t exist  – I find this terrifying beyond belief.

An early, failed attempt

Rather than fading into the bloom of adulthood, I find these fears are now magnified for all of us, on a grand scale. The role of loneliness in a public space grows in proportion to the intended scope of the space to serve the public, namely, a separation created by the manifestation of the rubric of “public space” – large cold monuments, open forums with nowhere to hide, grandiose pretensions that minimize the individual. Public spaces beget private yearnings.

We are also made more alone by our shared digital space. The conundrum of free public wi-fi, for example, serves to create digital walls which we can’t breach with normal every day interactions. Everyone is now in their own digital space of their own making. Our space perception is more and more confused with our digital perception of space; is the train station a level to beat? Is that bus to catch a challenge that will reward a player with points? Don’t I recognize this building from that video game?

You Can't Go Any Further (2011)

Suffice to say, I’m totally thrilled that Scott gave me the opportunity to make this work, and that it will be appearing in the Fall/Winter version of the Ninth Letter. I’ll post more when I know they are on newsstands, but for now, it feels good to get some of this work off my chest. I’m sure if it’s done yet, but at least I can put it aside for now and work on other stuff, guilt free.

The poster series can be seen in full on my Flickr stream here.

You can buy hand silkscreened prints of the posters here.

Thanks for lookin’.

I got an email this morning informing me that I’ve been nominated as teeshirt designer of the year by Tee Junkie. I’m really thrilled, considering the other folks nominated, so it really is an honor just to be a part of it. Then again, you are on my site, so do me a solid and go vote for me in the post of the contest. I’m about halfway down. Winners will be announced in April. Woot!

Above is a poster I did for 97bottles.com, a social beer site, which seems like a great idea. Inspired by some great WPA stuff.  See the full size here.

I’d thought I’d also show how I got there, just because when I do this type of stuff, I get that questions occasionally.

This is the scan of my hand drawing, after I’ve gone over it with ink. I take it into Photoshop, convert it to a duotone via the Threshhold tool, and then select the black out, and place another layer. Then I delete the background layer, so I just have the line work on Layer 1.

I lay down a new background layer of that light, elementary-school-bathroom green, and apply a reverse gradient, with the Dissolve brush selected of a nice dark green, also on a separate layer. Pretty much everything I do from here on out I do on a separate layer: it creates a lot of organizational hassle, but to me, it’s worth it, to have the total control of having everything of a separate layer provides.

I create the big blocks of color with the straight-lasso tool, which mocks the big blocks of color laid down in silkscreening. Obviously, the blue here is the lowest layer, and so on. I choose a distressed brush, again select the ‘dissolve’ brush type’, and shade upwards in sweep motions, making sure it’s not *too* even, with my stylus.

I apply the small blocks and shading and color in similar ways to the previous step, using the gradient tool to mock the airbrush effect on the WPA posters. Again, the “dissolve” option is my best friend here.

I add a second reverse circular gradient around the top most layer of the image, to give it a nice vigniette. I also cut out the line work from the line layer, that contains the bottles, place them on their own layer, and use the “Color overlay” layer option to apply the light green.

Finally, I lay th type on top, and in a stroke of inspiration, I turned off the line layer for the objects, which alluvasudden made the whole thing sing. I love when stuff like that happens.

And there it is. Hit me with questions.

I’m pleased to announce I’ve done the new silkscreened poster for Microfiche’s next show at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco. Microfiche’s bassist is Tim Lillis, contributing illustrator to MAKE and CRAFT Magazines, and also a wicked good friend of mine.

You can see the originally-conceived 4 color poster here, and then with the colors available to us from the silkscreener. It’s interesting how a little palette change can completely alter the tone of a piece. I like ‘em both, though.

An edition of 50 hand numbered posters will be available at the event, which is Friday, June 6th at 8:30 p.m.