After a recent fiasco with someone selling products featuring my Keyboard Cat illustration (they’ve since taken down the products and offered monetary compensation) and numerous requests on my Youtube page for a T-Shirt, I’ve set up a shop at MySoti where you can purchase a shirt of my design.
This piece was selected for the upcoming Lincoln 200 festival in Philadelphia (July 2nd–5th), which celebrates the 200th birthday of our 16th president. I will also be one of the five featured artists.
July 4th takes a new twist as Philadelphia celebrates Abraham Lincoln’s 200th birthday at the very spot where America was born. Join in to celebrate America’s 16th president with Lincoln200™: The Bicentennial Festival. The Festival theme, “Lincoln Then and Now,” shines the spotlight on period and contemporary takes on artistic, cultural, and culinary works, innovations in technology, and healthcare, and connects the lasting legacy of Lincoln to today’s world.
For more info, go here.
Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat! is a website that catalogs many of the “Keyboard Cat” videos that can be found on the internet. If you’re unfamiliar, these videos typically follow a ridiculously embarrassing, depressing, or otherwise awkward video with a cat “playing it off” on the piano. I suggest you watch this one first and then check out some of the others on the site. I recently teamed up with chip musician Doctor Octoroc to create an 8-bit version of the popular internet meme. Let me know what you think, and if you have any ideas for a future video.
EDIT: The video has since been featured on numerous blogs and podcasts, including G4 TV’s Attack of the Show. Thanks to everyone who made the video so popular!
The logo I designed for chip-musician Doctor Octoroc will be featured in PRINT’s Regional Design Annual. This was a really fun project to work on. Doc and I spent many hours playing old NES games for typographic inspiration, but the real challenge was coming up with a clever way to take advantage of the shared letters between the two words in his stage name. In the end the best solution was simply to allow them to share the letters and use color to make the abbreviated “Dr.” pop out so the eye reads “Dr./Doctor” then bounces back to the “O” and reads Octoroc.
The Autumn Society is hosting their third official gallery show and it looks to be the most TOTALLY RADICAL SHOW EVER! The 80s Pop Show! will be an exhibition of artwork inspired by movies, cartoons, toys, and video games from the 1980s. The thing that I remember the most about the eighties, being the age I was, is the toys. So I started by compiling a list of people’s favorite toys from the 80s (great conversation starter by the way, if you’re the kind of person that likes meeting new people everywhere you go!). In doing some research I discovered that many of the more feminine and cutesy characters were originally created by greeting card companies and only later became toys and/or cartoons. For example, Rainbow Brite was created by Hallmark and Strawberry Shortcake was created by American Greetings. I found this amusing that they were essentially greeting card corporate adversaries, so it was only natural to pit them against one another for my piece, “Rainbow Bloodbath”:
I also did a second piece, “Care Bear Carnage”, pitting one of the Care Bears (also created by American Greetings) against the popular 80s talking bear toy Teddy Ruxpin.
Both are giclee prints on archival canvas, signed and numbered editions of 25, and will soon be available from my online shop. Print number one of each piece will be available at the show, framed in hand painted purple frames. It doesn’t get more eighties than that. Read the rest of this entry »
The following pieces were chosen for American Illustration 28:
“The Next 150″, Client: Minnesota Monthly (Art Director: Brian Johnson)
Opener for a two-spread feature on what Minnesota would look like 150 years in the future. To see the full spreads check out my website.
“T.P.S. Reports”, Client: Gallery 1988
For their annual “Crazy 4 Cult” exhibition
“Stapler”, Client: Gallery 1988
For their annual “Crazy 4 Cult” exhibition
The Minnesota Monthly piece was also selected to appear in 3×3’s Pro Show 2009 annual.
Head on over to comrademag.com to read an interview the delightfully devious Love Ablan conducted with me after our show in Berlin.
I recently worked with Art Director Jamie Leary on an illustration for the cover of GRID Magazine, a local publication that focuses on living more sustainably in Philadelphia. Each issue focuses on a particular issue, and this one is the FOOD issue. They wanted a cover that communicated the idea of local farmers banding together via a co-op to take on big agribusiness. Read the rest of this entry »
Last night was the opening of Gallery 1988’s tv-guilty-pleasures-themed show Idiot Box. I wasn’t able to attend, but Matthew Roussotte (AKA Insert Coin to Continue) went and was able to coax Dennis Haskins (Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell) to pose in front of my piece and snap the above picture, which just might be the greatest thing I have ever seen. Thanks!!!
EDIT: Oh man, I found another one online!
As well as a picture of someone listening to the AWESOME 8-bit version of the SBTB theme song that Doctor Octoroc composed for me. Thanks Doc!
I recently spent nine amazing days in Berlin with curators Love Ablan and Jon M. Gibson (founder of the I Am 8-Bit art show) setting up an installation at Neurotitan, attending the Pictoplasma conference, and absorbing as much of this crazy city as I could in such a short period of time.
