A few new paintings have been added to the works page and at the flickr link to the right. They were pretty fun to make so go check em out.

for the past few weeks Lizann and I have been filling ourselves with good food, great family and friends, an annoying amount of driving, and more really good food. Work on new work has continued throughout. New images to come in the new year. ‘Til then, here are a few shots of some recent holiday festivities.

folks getting busy on some gingerbread houses

caroling to myself

an assortment of revelers…

just means I am not posting anything. work is still being created and there are certainly plenty of things to do right now.

I have been working at the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Drop in Studio for the past few Sundays, meeting some rad people and rad families and rad kids who are genuinely excited to be making art. did I say this is rad?

I have recently started volunteering at the Excel Academy here in sunny Milwaukee, teaching art to a group of highschoolers once a week. This is also super-rad and a really different experience from anything I have ever done as an Art Teacher. Volunteering is fun and the kids here seem to really enjoy it as many of them have never had ANY art classes whatsover in their education to this point. lots to learn here!

being surrounded by creativity, especially in the classes I work in really keep this vortex of art I seem to be in, churning. its not a bad thing.

My own art making is still on the move. things are definitely progressing/evolving/growing and its great. excitement abounds. The processes are on hold in the public realm as I can’t manage it with the weather these days. we’ll see if I can’t get at least one more experimental piece out there before the first snow. photos of new studio stuff by weeks end for sure.

last week was my birthday. 25. scary.

this is the most recent street-side piece I installed this past week here in Milwaukee. Titled, life is grand, because well, it is! It can be a celebration everyday if you want it to be, and that is freaking awesome! I used adhesive vinyl, some transparent, some not, and acrylic paint.

The design is similar to a piece I did in the early part of last month except I didn’t have a finished plan going into this one as I did perviously.  This piece is right next to a local mom&pop/corner-store shop and the shop-owner and her son and I chatted a bunch about art and art making. her son hung with me for the entirety of the application and he was super into the idea of art-making in the street. That and his new halloween costume, but really, who isn’t?

The afternoon was quite busy and I had alot of people asking me what I was up to. I told them about the concept and what I was using to execute it. When the inquirers found out that this is non-destructive, they were all smiles. enjoy.

the tenth calender month ends today with both the thermometer and leaves in free-fall. the wet, cold and all around crummy weather has kept the street side pieces on the down-low which is a little disheartening knowing that it only gets colder and darker each day from here on out. with that in mind, studio work is on the upswing and so are the spirits. the emotioal ones, not liquid.

I was able to get a final piece for this month put up in the nieghborhood a day or so ago. it turned out great and I met some super-nice people while doing it. A real post with all those fun photos will be up here by monday afternoon.

thoughts on how to create this sort of work under two feet of snow are brewing. it can be done, I think. the kids keeping knocking on our door but we have nothing to give. happy halloween.

just busy. created a few new studio pieces, sat around, worked a bunch, lived some life. intricacies aside,  here are some sneak-peek shots of the work still kinda, sorta in-progress.

mmm, sepia…

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colour.

some actual hi-res photos should be up by the end of the week as well as some other fun stuff. rad.

SO, I put up a new piece this week which you can view should you be walking down along the river-trail here in brisk Milwaukee. here it is.

ABOUT THIS PIECE…

The media is acrylic on a clear adhesive vinyl. Dimensions are 22(ish)feet by 6 inches.  color concept comes from a quilt of mine with alternating base squares of red, cream, white, and blue and a repeating woven pattern of one of the same colors on each. Stencils helped with keeping the pattern synced and clean(sorta) and were made easy enough, one with vertical lines, another with perpendicular. Primed with 1 of 4 base colors, painted with one of 4 base color on top, and cut, I was left with 44 6×6inch squares with an equal amount of color and pattern represented between the whole piece.

I wanted to create a composition that was constructed without using myself in some part of it. The plan for application called for one long row pieced together in a random order. To randomize the application process I used my old, very very old SIMON game which creates a new start point(color) each time it is turned on an off which took me out of the the situation like I had wanted. Applying one of the simon colors to one of the base-color squares meant that the square with that color was then added to the composition.                                                                                       Red=red, blue=blue, yellow=white, green=cream.

It was then up to me to decide if the selected square should be arranged horizontal or vertical, left to right or right to left(corners).

Left to right I started, turing the game off, then on and sticking the pieces together. About halfway through I realized that I had made an error in the overall size of the piece and that I was going to overrun the side of the building with over 25% of my piece unfinished. between the cold weather and the likelyhood of the pieces not surviving a reapplication I decided on running right up to the edge and then starting one brick below my original start point and going until I had finished. such is life and life is good.

Again, this is up now and ready to be seen in the flesh or for a patchworked better quality view, you can check out the flicker stream on the right or here. enjoy.

picasso painting on glass.

Last week I was able to put my largest piece to date on a factory/plant in riverwest, MKE. I felt strongly about the rhythm the buildings dozen or so windows set along the sidewalk and that I could add something to counter its repetition. With this rhythm in mind I created a piece that moved like an ECG or notes on a staff down the side of the building.

I used a clear vinyl adhesive on which I painted stripes in a warm pink color in varied line widths. The overall dimensions were 1 foot tall by about 60 or so feet long. The material let the familiar anti-graffiti green paint show through nicely between the stripes. The brisk breezy autumn weather made the application difficult at times but I managed to get 99.9% of the piece stuck without losing any pieces. for the scale, I think that is a win.

This piece has since been taken down but it was a blast to have been able to exhibit. I only wish that is wasn’t so overcast as the documented photos show a more muted pink than what it really was.

lesson learned; watch the skies, ignore the weatherman. enjoy.

here are a couple images of things I have out now and that have been up in the past weeks or so which are also the first pieces I’ve put up. they may or may not still be up, I don’t know.

fun is all.