/Newness abounds

Sooooooooo it’s been a few months of radio silence (oh, hello again) but I’ve got as good an excuse as one could hope: My wife and I had ourselves another baby back in February.

His name is Ollie and he’s a big smiley giant of a boy and we love him to death, but his arrival did kind-of-sort-of-absolutely force me to take a break from the studio and this website and blog and pretty much all things art-related.

Right before Ollie’s birth I had been working feverishly in the studio, with a daily routine of cutting and pasting and sorting scraps and generally just making all sort so new collage work. Some of it turned out to be quite good (imho) and since the ol’ website hadn’t had been updated in forever, it was time for a refresh.

So, if you’re eyeballs are craving something new to gaze upon, I humbly offer you this gallery of new collage work.

New work

+ In other news, I’m super stoked to have been commissioned to do an illustration for the Carnegie Museum of Art’s online quarterly journal Storyboard. The piece is an expanded version of one of my few digital pieces, “Overslaugh,” which I originally made in 2011 as part of a series of collages (Connotations) inspired by dictionary.com’s Word of the Day.

As an added bonus, the CMOA’s asked me to turn the illustration into a print that you could buy in the museum’s shop. I did and you can.

“Overslaugh Redux” | Digital Collage | 2019

+ Since I was making prints of “Overslaugh,” I took the opportunity to make prints of three new pieces, as well. All three are printed of archival quality, printed on Epson Hot Press Bright 330gsm paper, and are limited editions of 30. And all three prints are available in the shop.

>> SHOP AVAILABLE PRINTS <<

A big THANK YOU to Matthew Newton, managing editor at Storyboard (and an amazing writer and author of Shopping Mall) and to the ever amazing artist Andy Kehoe for help with the prints.

/Part 2: Rejection & Inspiration

A couple months back I mentioned I had an editorial illustration project in the works, and since then I spent much of June and most of July working on mockups to present the editor of the publication with the hope of landing the job (a serialized novel published in weekly segments in print and online). 

Well, I didn't land the gig, but I don't feel bad about having my work rejected. 

I don't feel rejected because I know I did my best and I believe the publisher when they say they liked the work but it was too much of a departure from their normal aesthetic and that they felt more comfortable going with an artist they'd worked with before. 

And even if that wasn't the whole truth, I'm grateful for the opportunity. I learned a lot and the process forced me out of my comfort zone, leading me to incorporate some digital tools into my work). What's more, the project was an excuse to do some research and discover some really awesome artists working in the field of editorial (and/or book cover) illustration who utilize collage techniques.

Here are a few favorites from my inspiration board (with each piece linking the corresponding artist's larger body of work). Enjoy. 

Ligon + Knezovich collaboration no.2/

I'm about to embark on a year-long editorial illustration project with the always awesome fiction writer Samuel Ligon.

As a reminder, Sam and I collaborated a few years ago on a collection of 13 short stories entitled Wonderland (pictured above).

Wonderland was billed as:

"... a picture book for adults featuring tales as dark and absurd as they are poignant, playful, and true. ... containing thirteen subversive short stories full of love and ugliness, loss and beauty, donkeys and goats, baked goods and booze, country starlets and bearded ladies, domestic battles and corporate passions, sex and violence and sweet songs of sadness and heartache." 

I could not be more proud to have been a part of the project—the stories are funny and totally fucked up—and I'm excited to be working with Sam again. This time around, we will be tackling a much more ambitious collaborative project: a serialized novel!

The novel will be published in 50+ weekly installments in print edition of The Inlander, as well as on it's own website. Plus, Sam will be reading each installment on the radio, which will be turned into a downloadable podcast (I believe). I love the idea of combining an antiquated approach to publishing and storytelling (a la serialization and radio play) with the modern, digital elements of a website and podcast. 

The novel is not yet written (only the first few chapters are complete), so part of the challenge will be staying on track and keeping up with the publishing schedule without allowing the quality of the writing (or art) to suffer. 

I don't want to divulge too much about the book, but it's about American history and the American West, violence and travel, family and love and life and death and everything in between.

I'm still working out my approach to the illustrations, but I think I'm going to experiment with some different processes and forms. And I, too, may combine analog with digital. We'll see. 

Without question, though, I'll share more as the project evolves. For now, here are all 13 of the collages created for Wonderland.