The series is titled “Corrosion Maintained” and is a analysis of graffiti artwork. The series incorporates recognizable visuals from pop culture, original art, the build up of images by multiple artists to create a single composition, different styles and media of graffiti, and more.

Status Update Webcomic. You in? email me.

I have been toying with the idea of starting a webcomic and need your status updates. Email me if interested!

The  Idea

Sites that allow status updates are all the rage anymore – most notably Twitter; but Facebook, MySpace, and many others have it as well. People just love to tell the world what is on their mind in a short little blurb. Heck, I use the twitters. My friends on Facebook and Twitter (the only such sites I frequent anymore) post a mix of interesting links and mundane “I’m going to lunch” type posts. However, more often than not, the context for the posts is lost and I find hilarity in the updates themselves. Sometimes, my mind wanders and some sort of Family Guyesque cut away sketch plays out in my brain.

So this gave me the idea to do a web comic illustrating these goofy scenarios. I have wanted to do a web comic for a long time, but  never had an idea that fit the short attention span best suited for web comics. However, I think this status update comic idea suits that perfectly… and YOU CAN HELP!

How You Can Help

So here is what I would need to start… I need permission from you to make use of your status updates for captions of the comics. Basically, I will pick out some that inspire some sort of comical scenario and illustrate a one panel comic. I’m tentatively thinking of publishing this three times per week. I promise I won’t poke fun at you personally and will link back to your profile should you wish.

I’m also thinking of perhaps having an exhibition of the comics in the future. It will encourage me to put a little bit extra effort into the artistic side. You’ll be invited

Imagine, that goofy status update you posted about that thing over there eventually turning into a comic for people to enjoy and perhaps part of an exhibition?!?!? Why would you not want to do it!

If you are interested in helping me get started, shoot me an email with the url to your status updates and I’ll check them out. I’ll get back to you shortly with any ideas I have. I’m hoping to launch within the next few months, but will start working on an initial collection of comics starting next week, so please email soon. Thanks!

I noticed a reoccurring theme with how I handle events like this. Similar to the way, super busy people get sick after a long stretch of business since they finally have “time” to get sick, I seem to have a sort of purging nature after an exhibition too. This is especially true after the last few months since we basically had some sort of art event each month since February.

Take the below with a grain of salt. As Arika would say “You just have a poopy diaper” haha.

Epic.

Anywho, here is usually how my routine works:

• Come home from the show and flop on the couch for a few minutes without unpacking any artwork from my truck.
• Take a massive dump to get rid of a weeks worth of badness I consumed leading up to and during the event. Last week I took in a lot of frozen burritos and coffee and booze.
• Take a shower.
• Check my email and delete pages of spam I have been neglecting over the previous few weeks.
• Reply to all the emails and phone calls from friends, loved ones – and in the case of the last few weeks respond to voice mails of people looking to rent my extra room.
• Sit on the porch and chain smoke while I think about all the non-art related crap I have to do
• Watch stupid videos on the internet to forget all the stuff I just thought about

In the next week or so I will:

• Think of lots of new series ideas based on what I learned at the event, which will not, however, ever come to fruition.
• Think of lots of ideas for software and website ideas that I will never have time or resources to do
• Get bummed out about never working on my comic
• Get bummed out about how I am going to be 2x in y months and have not accomplished a lot of the ideas above
• Come to the revelation that I need to worry about my health more and start working out hardcore for about a week at which point I will start spending my time working on the above ideas only to get sucked into some other project/series/idea.
• While working on the above ideas, relapse into eating poorly and smoking a lot
• Return to the state of being to busy to immediately respond to friends’ voicemails and emails and ultimately never reply because I forget about them.
• Start getting bummed that I don’t maintain my friendships enough or go to enough concerts/galleries, etc.
• Try to rekindle a friendship I have neglected with a night at the bar – drink too much, make an ass of myself, and feel like shit the next day.
• Get bummed that I am not exercising more.
• Start working on the next show since you realize that it is only a month away.
• Random events (birthdays, parties, roadtrips), get in the way of making artwork in spite of supporting  the social desire described above.
• Show up to the show with only a few new works since somehow I just didn’t have enough time to do a lot of new work.
• Realize the artwork you did make was mediocre and be sort of embarrassed when your friends  show up to your opening and realize they have seen everything before (even if it was in your basement mid-progress).
• Get bummed out since you realize you have not made anything “good” for quite some time.
• Take down the show in a cloud of personal defeat.
• Start over.

So yes, for my faithful readers, expect in the coming weeks to hear me talk about how i need to start exercising more and quit smoking and change things in my life. Bare with me, it will pass shortly thereafter. haha.

In other news, THIS is pretty awesome!

RDJ of Paparazzie Series

After a long day of tearing down and hanging up artwork, the Paparazzi series is getting its 2nd showing at the North Loop Dunn Brothers coffee shop! Go Check it out! Pictures can be found here.

After navigating the clusterfuck that is downtown Minneapolis, we managed to take down the series at the Downtown Library Dunn Brother’s and started to make our way over to the new spot. We didn’t want to load up Lil’ Jon and Audry, so Joe and Arika walked them the 5 blocks. Boy were their arms sore after that. We got in to the new Dunn Brothers and the previous artist’s artwork was still up. I asked the barista what to do and clarified that we were supposed to hang today. “Yup, it is the first” she said. So we took down her pieces and after about an hour or two had ours up.

In the mean time, a pretty cool guy by the name of “Roger” expressed his love for our Christopher Walken painting and bought it on the spot. Sweet. We talked for a bit, and he was apparently an engineer that traded it all in to be a street musician. He sorta rekindled my interest to be a street artist like the guys I saw in NYC a few years back. Hmm.

Once we were finally about to leave and just admiring the hanging, the owner approached Joe, and (in so many words) said “Who the fuck are you guys? and why is your artwork up?”  Long story short, Joe got the address wrong. To give him the benefit of the doubt, there are 7 Dunn Brother’s downtown and the addresses were nearly the same, except one was North and one was South. Derf. I don’t blame him tooo much after the cluster fuck I experienced this past weekend with Wisconin country road number schemes… I’ll talk about this later.

Anywho, we managed to quickly tear down for the second time today and headed to the correct Dunn Brothers location in the North Loop district of downtown. The stress of the situation seemed to fade away as I sipped on a IceCrema drink, which I have not had since I lived over near the St. Anthony Main Dunn Bro’s years ago. Yummy. We got the series up pretty quickly and were able to finish up around 3:30.. only 5 hours after we started heading to the library to tear down. Yay.

All in all, it was worth it now that it is over. We sold another of the small celebs (Walken) which seem to be going like hot cakes. Also, The “wrong” Dunn Brother’s owner loved how our artwork looked on the wall and wants us to come back. Aside from that, aparently people were stopping to talk to Joe and Arika as they walked Lil’ Jon and Audry down the street to tell them how much they loved them. Pretty cool!

So yes, please go check out the series up at The North Loop Dunn Brother’s and also stop by and say hi at our booth at this weekend’s Red Hot Art Fest in Steven’s Square Park!

Sherblam.

Related Links:

• Official Post at DIM Media
• Celeb Series Gallery

For being a techie guy, it sure took me long enough to get my Allusions to Interaction series online, but it is done now. I finished the series in April of 08 and it hung at 2nd Moon for all of May and June. Since then, I showed a couple pieces at the Java J’s Show in February, but otherwise, it has been sitting in my basement.

View the entire series here. Prints will be available shortly! For anyone interesting in what is behind the series, keep reading.

The Paintings

• Kindred Gathering – The interactions of siblings. Love, servitude, gratitude, respect, all stemming from common bloodlines.
• Dyadic Strangers – The interaction of people who choose to associate, but only at a superficial level (possibly even unbeknownst to those involved).
• Non-Formalized Encounter - The interaction of people who initially enter into the relationship without expectation of continuing relations – sincere or otherwise.
• Global Perspective – The interactions with ones self that lead to delusions of grandeur.
• Communication Channels – The interactions between people who can not communicate at certain fundamental levels.
• Erotomanical – The interactions of people of differing social statures (especially celebrities vs. non-celebrities) and the erosion of quality of interaction the party of higher stature can experience.
• Metacognative – The interaction with ones self, especially in the case of those who suffer from “restless mind syndrome”.
• Alone in a Crowd (Mob Mentality) – The interactions of large numbers strangers present for different reasons in the same place.
• Jingoistic – The negative interaction of people caused by the illusion of differences (here specifically, conflicting national allegiance).

The Imagery Explained

Prior to even envisioning the series, I decided I wanted to do a limited and bold color pallet. While working on the first painting in the series, I started playing with the sort of cartoony lines against the painterly textures. When looking at the red field with yellow stars, someone asked “Is that a communist thing”. I in no way shapre or form intended it to be and found that take on the visuals very interesting. I decided to make the series “about” what the viewer thought the meaning of the paintings were. Continuing with this idea, I started adding repeating images (stars, trees, grey figure) and odd imagery (rabbits, optical illusions, etc). This all lead to interesting responses to the question, “So what do you think this series is about?”

The Interactions “Thing” Explained

From the start, I knew I wanted to paint people, but I was trying to really shy away from any sort of meaning in the series. However, as I worked more with reference photos from the models, I noticed distinct personas deriving from  the poses and facial expressions. Even while doing the initial planning of each painting, I knew the poses were striking to me, but didn’t specifically see them as “human interactions”. I think the “Allusions to Interactions” concept simply grew organically as I worked on the pieces more and more. After the majority of them were completed, I decided to try to extract a type of human interaction out of each, which is why, perhaps, the ones i picked are not neccessarily accuratly  visualized.  The idea of “human interactions” has been an interesting topic for me as I have been trying to better understand my own interactions with others especially in differnet circumstances where I need to wear different “hats”. Between actively dating, running a non-profit, working in a technical field, slowly loosing connection with friends from college, and the general compexities of the world the last two years, I had a lot of shit stewing, especially since it seems genuine “honest to goodness” relationships with others are fading. I’m not sure if that is just me as I get older or if it is our culture in general. *Ponder Ponder*

I am sure I will do a complement to this series – be it in theme or visually. If you dig this one, comment, and I’ll be sure to keep you posted on the next series as well.

So, I called up my BFF Nicole and discussed logistics of using her super hip-crazy-cool printer. I scanned in a few of my more classic drawings and ran over to her house yesterday. After she demonstrated her excellent cooking skills making me breakfast, we printed off a couple proofs. I have to say WOW. The quality was amazing. Since I use india ink for my wash drawings, I always worry that duplicated versions wouldn’t have the crisp pen lines or the nice gradients of the washes. However, it was honestly hard to tell the difference between the originals and the proofs. On the contrary, the prints may look better because they are on better paper and are not as warped from the washes. Anywho, I am stoked.

I set up an Etsy store, and after a few more logistical bits, I hope to be selling prints in a week or two.
Interested in buying one?

A few bits of media have sent me into near anxiety attacks without really having me make the connection. The basement scene in the end of the original “Amityville Horror” is one. Another was discovered tonight. I watched, for the first time, “There Will Be Blood”. The scenes of workers emerging from pools of black ooze got my heart racing and made me nearly have a panic attack. I always used to think the substance of my nightmares was ink, lacquer, or even liquid obsidian.. but now I think it is actually oil.

I am a firm believer that something from our ancestors is passed down which may help explain our dreams. I have often tried to explain the connection between dreams of teeth and worries over money is that our ancestors used teeth as currency. I am now starting to think that perhaps being drowned in tar pits was a major concern of my distant ancestors. Curiouser and curiouser.