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Here's a small section of my piece for the Breaking Bad Art Project group show opening next week at G1988!

Respect the Heisenberg.

RIP VENICE ART WALLS

August is officially the last month of the Venice Art Walls so I felt I should probably head over there and do a little something.  Busted out a super quick piece this morning, not my best work but all in good fun.  Wonder if it even lasted through the day?

It's really a shame that a city like Los Angeles, whose very soul and identity are so saturated with graffiti can't find enough money in their budget to keep their only public legal walls alive.  Once these walls are gone, there will be nowhere in LA for artists to paint graffiti legally.  

Without the painting program in place, the walls and surrounding area will inevitably get covered in tags and become an eyesore to the public-- I wouldn't be surprised at all if this leads to their eventual demolition.   A place that was once such an important part of LA's graffiti, music, and skateboard scenes will be reduced to memory... Bummer.

THE BREAKING BAD ART PROJECT

This is probably the most exciting thing ever.  Still not quite sure how I managed to weasel my way into this show, but Breaking Bad is my absolute favorite series and I couldn't be more stoked on this.

  The culmination of G1988's BreakingGifs campaign, The Breaking Bad Art Project group show will showcase all of the original posters from the viral campaign as well as a handful of new artwork from new artists including yours truly.  

If you've followed the campaign at all you've seen some of the amazing things that have been created in the name of Breaking Bad.  This is going to be absolutely epic. Can't wait to show you what I painted for this one.

CRAZY 4 CULT

CRAZY 4 CULT opens tomorrow night!  Very proud to be a part of this awesome show.  In keeping with their plan of global art domination, this year Gallery 1988 has moved one of their biggest annual exhibitions to NYC.  The gallery space is an impressive two floors and the show boasts some of the best work from over 200 artists.  

Previews of people's work have been popping up all over the place and everything looks incredible so far.  **Check out a sweet write up on the show and some images from Thrillist, including a sneaky appearance from my Eraserhead piece (image #10).  

If you are a New York friend (you know who you are!) please go check out the show and support G1988!  Address and details below:

My painting for the show is admittedly weird, but perhaps not even quite as strange as the movie that inspired it.  After watching David Lynch's 'Eraserhead', I was disturbed and intrigued and knew I wanted to create a piece around it.  The movie has a lot of spermatozoa floating around in it, so I focused on the sperm image as a symbol for life and death and got real weird with it.  Hope you like the painting!

"The Endosperm"

Watercolor on Lanaquarelle paper, 16 x 20"

"The Endosperm" (close-up)

Education of Style Invite

This is somewhat exciting, as I rarely get to share things I make at my job right after they are created (our ski designs are made 2 years in advance, and everything else is generally done 1 year in advance).
However, next week is the world premiere of 'The Education of Style', the new ski film starring Tanner Hall, Henrik Harlaut and Phil Casabon, and I got to make a cool invitation for the event:

The title of the movie is done up like a graffiti handstyle and I thought it would be fun to play off of that for the poster.  Since the movie is called The Education of Style, I wanted to "educate" folks on some different styles of tagging.  I always enjoy drawing out type by hand so this was very cool to work on.

I also got to make the invitation for the after party, which is a celebration of Henrik Harlaut's 21'st birthday.  Henrik (or E-Dollo as he is called by his fans) is one of my favorite dudes and I wanted to do something really awesome for his party.  And what's more awesome than Mike Tyson's Punch Out?

If you happen to be in Southern California next Tuesday, definitely swing by Lido Theater in Newport for the premiere and check out the after party at Bikini Bar!

*Update:  The afterparty will take place at our office/warehouse at 1987 Placentia St in Costa Mesa.  Come grab a beer and skate the miniramp with us after the movie.

AMERICAN HERO

"The American Hero" is a group show that opens next Saturday, July 7th at Gallery 27 in Chicago.  The show pays tribute to Americana in film and pop culture.  Artist Adam Devarney tipped me off about this new gallery, having recently moved to Chicago.  I believe this is only the second show they've done, (The first was a Wes Anderson tribute show) but I saw the title and was really inspired to do something for it.  If you are a Chicago friend or happen to be in the windy city next weekend, definitely go check this show out, it looks like its going to be really awesome.  Adam will be in it, and a bunch of other cool people too. Check out the show flyer for Gallery 27's address.

This piece took me a little over a full day to paint in total, but the fact that I left it alone after that is somewhat of a personal accomplishment as I have a tendency to want to overwork everything.  I didn't focus on a specific movie or piece of pop culture for this one either, which was nice.  Instead I thought on the much broader theme of violence, and came up with something I think is pretty cool.  Hope you like it.

"Untitled (usa)"

watercolor on lanaquarelle paper, 11 x 14"

You can't see very well in the picture but the frame has some nice red white and blue splatter on it.

Busy..

..with a couple new projects.  More on that soon, but until then:

FOGELL

Well hello there.  I have been very busy the past few days making and screenprinting some posters for an upcoming show at Kato Gallery in San Diego.  The show is taking place July 14th and 15th at the Firehouse Gallery in San Diego, so if you happen to be in the area for Comic Con, you should definitely go check it out, its only a couple blocks away.  The show is called 'The Apatow Effect' and focuses on the films and television shows produced by Judd Apatow, the man responsible for such classics as '40 Year Old Virgin', 'Pineapple Express', 'Step Brothers', etc, etc.

My piece is based on the best character from 'Superbad', a movie that resonated with me on a very deep level when I saw it back in the day.  It is entitled, "Fogell", and is available in an edition of 20 prints.

This was actually the fastest I've ever turned out a poster as I left myself very little time to do a piece for this show.  I started sketching out the first layer Friday evening, and had the last poster printed by Tuesday night.  With such a tight deadline I tried to keep things very simple and stick to a tight schedule (Saturday: finish pencil drawing and ink first layer, Sunday: draw/ink 2nd and third layers, scan layers and print transparencies, Monday: Gather supplies, coat/expose 3 screens, Tuesday: Cut paper and print posters.) 

For the most part I was able to keep to this, although I inevitably ran into problems with my emulsion and wasted almost a full day trying over and over to get decent exposures on my only 3 screens.  Anyone that has dealt with silkscreening knows how annoying this is.  All these technical issues have made me really appreciate and yearn for the days of my art schooling where I had access to equipment that makes all of these stupid tasks very easy and fast.  Instead I have had to work with the very limited resources I do have to replicate these processes.  The two machines I miss the most are replaced by embarrassingly lower quality solutions:

So all you art school folks out there, just cherish it okay?  CHERISH IT!

Ok I'm done with that.  And the posters came out alright too, I guess:

"FOGELL"

Thanks for reading.

killaz

Freestyle spraypaint collab with Lila Ash.

Feelin' good

"Sad Dumpster"

spraypaint on dumpster

Wut up.