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…

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.

So the work has been focusing alot more on public pieces as of late. Its exciting. while its really great to see the work that you’ve spent so much time on finally put out in the place it was designed for, I still get a little bummed knowing that it will eventually have to come down. That is what the hard-copies are for I guess.

here are some sneak-peak(s) at what is currently in the works.