A title that means something

So I do abstract art, right? And it's hard to title abstract stuff, right? Well for the first time, the title of one of my paintings told me what my painting was about...

"Beneath the Surface"

I painted this almost two years ago, but for some reason last night I fully processed it's meaning... A journalist from BurnAfterReadingMag asked me about the piece and what it meant to me, all my abstract-ness aligned into words and I could suddenly describe the piece, to my own surprise! I have made conscious efforts to title my pieces with meaning, but I had no idea I had been successful.

To me the piece describes the heavy armor that an individual uses to shield themselves, a steel suit of coldness and exaggerated self. People don't want others to see their true self, their complexity, their vulnerability... It's easier for one to stay inside and let their hard shell take the abuse. In the painting, the shell is lifting up and away from the organic beauty that lies beneath, like a butterfly liberating itself from a cocoon. Bam!

Score!

Remember when I mentioned I was working on a concept for a public art piece in Denver? Well I just heard back from my partner Brian (@Monolith Fabrication Studio) that our concept won! I'm not quite sure when we will begin fabrication, but I would hope to start in the next few months...

The piece will be installed in front of a parking lot where headlight glare is a concern. The client wanted to solve the issue from an artistic approach; functional, pleasing to look at, recognizable. Our concept is a 60ft long wall that produces a low-fi animation (similar concept as a zeotrope) when driving by, and a static image when one stands still. Here's a few photos of the 1:5.6 scale concept:

^^^Detail of the business branding portion of the wall. Vector files were made to scale of the wall for pricing out our materials and also to laser-cut a bunch matboard to make a physical mockup... Lasers are fun btw!

^^^This is scaled down dramatically from what the real wall will be, but it's still 11ft long and tricky to move around. Shown here with red matboard to simulate rusted steel.

^^^Video cameras on skateboards... If I ever get it edited, I'll post it.

I wanted to thank all of my friends that encouraged me during this last month of agony figuring out the inner workings and research for this project... There's a lot more to this idea than I had originally imagined, but now it's one step closer to reality! Good job Brian!

My art at I♥DENVER store

Please support me and all of the local artists by shopping at the I♥DENVER Store. I have original pieces and prints for sale there now! The store is on 500 16th Street, second level of the Denver Pavilions, right behind H&M.

Wow... 2012

I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted anything! Having a full-time job can make blogging difficult... I've been tweeting and all that other stuff, but taking the time to sit down and purge hasn't happened until now! So just to clarify, I don't have a job at the moment...

I spent the first half of December working with my girlfriend Jen on her holiday event at Kaze Gallery, home to painter/tattoo artist Sandi Calistro.

13 artists showed work: Alan Bader, Chris Huth, Delton Demarest, Karma Leigh, Lui Ferreyra, Magnet Mafia, Matthew Clark, Rafa Jenn, Sandi Calisro, Sandra Fettingis, Scot Lefavor, Zachary Kuhlman, and Myself. The show was extremely successful, $990 was raised for the local non-profit, Slow Food Denver.

I sold an individual piece and also a handful of Magnet Mafia magnets with Matt Feeney.

I spent a week or so working on magnets and producing the arist plaques for the show, which came out awesome! The plaques were made of old fence planks and smoke acrylic pieces, cut on a flatbed cnc router... Thanks again to Alexi High and my son.

We had some fancy grocery bags printed up for the show too, Delton Demarest did an awesome caricature of my girlfriend standing in front of the 16th Street bridge.

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I have also been working with my fabrication partner, Brian Greer on developing concepts for a public art project, we recieved good feedback on our idea and we'll be presenting physical mockups this month... Fingers crossed, I'm ready to share my work on a large scale! For now the concept is a secret, if it gets a green light I'll post plenty of pics, I'll post pics even if it doesn't get approved.

The site is in the River North neighborhood, a little industrial, a little urban, a lot cool...

Check out more work that Brian and I have done: Monolith Fabrication Studio

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I painted a mural for Root Yoga Center two summers ago, but they have expanded since then so I had the opportunity to paint an interior piece on their new studio door... It was pretty fun to remember how I painted the first mural, which is visible from the north side of the 16th Street bridge. I have also done all of the signage for both of their studios.

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I feel like I'm forgetting something... Oh well, Happy New Year everyone! I hope it's a great year for all of us-

Found Paper on Skate Deck

It's been about 5 years since the last time I participated in a Shoe Shine event... I was indecisive on the visual content I wanted to create, I started with paint and texture, but I ended up with a paper collage. All of the paper I used consists of ad posters and security envelopes.
I reclaimed all of the ad posters from walls around town... The ad posters get tagged with graffiti, the city paints over the tags with a soothing shade of beige, and I take it off the wall. I try to let some colors of posters' past show through during my removal, which is also what I try to do with my re-creation, I give them new life. New life and no advertising value, I read a quote somewhere that I can't recall now, but it compliments the idea of creation without an audience.

I have made a handful of "found paper" collages that I really haven't spotlighted too much. I'm still working on making them more impactful in person, I think I need more topography, more paper...

Happy Halloween

Have a good evening

October Catch Up

Having a full-time job again has been good... I can pay bills, buy food and gas, etc. without so much worry.  I haven't been blogging lately, but I've been actively Tweeting when I have a quick thought.

At the beginning of the month, I had the opportunity to submit artwork designs to Tyler Coomes aka Tycoon, he is a music producer on Dr. Dre's Aftermath label... Tycoon released "The Dark Side of Tycoon" (my last blog post), an album based on audio samples from Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon." I drew up a few concepts for the cover art, all playing off of Pink Floyd's original artwork.

^^^This concept has the prism being wrapped with audio cables of various sizes (all black of course) and audio cables matching the colors of the rainbow exiting out.

^^^This one has replaced the prism with an MPC machine, which many beat producers have used over the years (a staple instrument in the hip hop biz), rainbow light or audio cables shooting out as before.

My concepts didn't make the cut...  Either one of these would have been fresh to create for the album, I still plan on making the first concept into a piece in the future, just for me~

The Bogeyman artshow (10-6-2011) at the MAC SPA was fun, it was my first time to show with Eric Matelski, an artist and friend that has been promoting 100+ artshows each year for the last 5 years...

The space looked great and Eric was grilling up fajitas for the patrons.
I didn't get a chance to meet Stan Yan, but I was still highly entertained by his illustrations, my favorite indeed!

Good times~

My studio-mate Delton invited me to help him bomb/tag a lobby for a wine tasting and release party. Infinite Monkey Theorem is a Denver-based winery, they just released their line of keg-wine called "Monkey Shine," a witty spin-off of the alcohol, moon shine...

We painted for 8 hours in the fumed out room, tags over tags over tags, multiple colors and styles gave the room an urban feel. Delton spent most of his time painting IMT's Monkey logo as the centerpiece to the madness...

The party was the following night of the Bogeyman show, on the rooftop of the historic "Ghost Building" on 18th and Stout in Denver, the cops stopped by a couple times so IMT was doing something right!

People were drinking wine out of mason jars in the spirit of the Prohibition days~
Last but not least for October, Delton and I came together on our first real collaborative art piece in two years! We rocked a Nintendo Entertainment System and converted it into a custom wall-mount arcade.

The finished piece consists of a CNC-routed acrylic cabinet, aluminum, MDF, flatscreen tv, and of course and original NES unit. Painted by Delton, and assembled by me. The unit was part of an 8-bit inspired artshow at Family Affair on Larimer Street in Denver. Please visit my Flickr page to see the piece built from start to finish. Thanks to Alexi for assisting us in the CNC-router department!

Delton and I have been discussing the rebranding of Broken Bread Arts, which we are going to be turning into Studio 72, this arcade unit is just the beginning of our collaborative efforts...  Stay tuned, and happy Halloween!