Standard American Encyclopedia (Vol. 2)

I've done another set of ACEOs from my Standard American Encyclopedia source material. This set I'm calling “Men of Historical Significance.”

Collect them all at my flickr page.

This new set has also been assembled into a full collage that will be exhibited as part of the “Small” show at the High Falls Gallery, opening May 24th.

Artists Trading Cards (ATCs)

So, for a change of pace I've decided to try making a few Artist Trading Cards.

I made two series, the Standard American Encyclopedia (circa 1937) series, (“Goat”, at left is a part of this series) and Strange and Stranger. See them all at my flickr page.

UPDATE: I'm working on assembling these into a collage for the “Small” show at the High Falls Gallery in Rochester. Anybody local to Rochester should check out the gallery and the show, it's an open call with only a $15 entry fee.

Bookmooch

Bookmooch.com is my new favorite website. BookMooch is a community for exchanging used books. It lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want at no cost (other than postage to mail your books)! Check it out.

The International Moleskine Exchange

So, I've gotten involved in another mail art project, called the International Moleskine Exchange (or Moly_X, for short). This is my entry in Shante's Moleskine for Moly-X-portraitparty2, inspired by yet another collaborative art project, Rama Hughes' The Portrait Party.

Moly_X is a pretty amazing project. Definately check out the Flickr group to see what we've got going on. I've started a new group recently, moly_x_64 (The Sequential One) that's just getting off the ground, so check out our group's progress there as well.

I've been doing a lot of figure drawing in the last couple of months. mainly at Steve Carpenter's Gallery on Monday nights. It's a great group with many accomplished artists and a cool setup.

They have one model do short poses from 6-8 PM and then a second model will do one long pose from 8-10 PM. The second model will repeat his/her pose for 4 consecutive weeks, allowing artists to paint from life as well as doing short sketches. It's been a lot of fun and I've been posting the highlights to my flickr account.

This last one is my first finished painting in ages! Executed in watercolors on Arches Cold-pressed paper measuring 9" x 12.25", it was included in the Memorial Art Gallery's student show in the Creative Workshop which just came down. So, not only my first painting in maybe a decade but also my first exhibited work since 2000. Pretty big step for me...

I'd appreciate any feedback on these or any of my other work.

Vote Hope

Here's my response to Shepard Fairey's HOPE campaign. You can still get HOPE stickers at Sticker Robot.

Happy ?@!$'n Birthday

So, I'm 31 today...don't know quite what to say that. It's not that I feel old, far from it. It's just that I thought I'd have accomplished so much more by now.

Been having a pretty rough go of it since April. I'd rather not get into the details but let's just say, “Mistakes were made.” I guess I can take comfort in Kevin Spacey’s line from American Beauty,

“It's never too late to get it back.”

So, that's what I'm going to try to do. Be brutally honest with myself and commit to living a better life. Go after what I really want and stop feeling so guilty about not being a “success” – whatever the hell that is.