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Showing posts from October, 2007

there's still time to play

there's still time to play ; mixed media on canvas, 24 x 20 inches. Also: check out the wee story on Litbits today; it's rather good.

Montreal

Me and C went to Montreal last weekend, so I could visit Stella and Rachel while C stayed with her friend Kara. Rachel showed us her studio where she creates furniture (like these two chairs, below), tooks us to the new Drawn and Quarterly store, and made a pasta with beef and a cream sauce. And while I was supposed to babysit, Rachel ended up not going out because she was still a bit wrecked from the night before ... which was just as well, because the heavy guns were necessary when a certain somebody didn't want to go to bed. And, just because, here's a wee video about grapefruit.

for illo friday ... {trick or treat}

Unsurprisingly, the theme on IF this week is 'trick or treat'. Maybe for the third week in December we'll do 'Santa'.

open house

Last night was our open house at Sydenham Street Studios. It was a great success: I'd say we received between 200 and 250 people, with a couple sales and a great many positive reviews. Really it was designed just to make ourselves known, with a side opportunity to meet some very interesting people (funny how creative types come out for their own). And hey, we were kid-friendly (in fact that's my friend Martin, enjoying an offering from my bookshelf). And here are some wee movies from the individual studios (interestingly, I forgot to do my own).

let's say, 'untitled'

But it is for a story, nonetheless. C will like the kitty in the background.

more Alice

This Alice is on IFN this week, suffering from momentum ...

for illo friday ... {grow}

A more fashionable Alice has a drink, gets too big, gets all pouty about it.

more paint, more twine

one time too many , mixed media on canvas, 16x16 inches, the string series continues steer by bright stars , mixed media on canvas, 16x16 inches, the string series continues These two were a struggle, especially the top one, which started out as some kind of feline, and then moved into this circus aspect, without any prejudice or premeditation whatsoever. At bottom I'm finished, about to walk out the door. That studio certainly has enough red about it.

monday, monday

x} Although, for Queen's at least, this last weekend is most widely known as Homecoming Weekend, I find it difficult to think of it as anything but the Festival of New Morons. And the New Morons were all over the downtown this weekend, pouring about in their little tribes, so flagrant about the cracks in their little wooden heads. How difficult to be so young and stupid, and then try to stay away from a sanctioned free-for-all. x} On Cross Country Checkup this Sunday they were talking about Robert Bateman. Bateman paints hyperrealistic polar bears, owls, sheep, shit like that. People love it. I used to go to school with a guy who bought his limited edition prints all the time, bragging about how they would increase in value. Yeah okay. Really he was just trying to bug me, because he saw (and was utterly baffled by) me drawing things that didn't look like things. x} I have a story in the new issue of the Windsor Review (above), called Polly Jean .

for illo friday ... {extremes}

Where the Big Guy in the Sky makes us do some very strange things.

post-turkey miscellania

Here's an illo for the first chapter of the (long) short story I took to (writing) group last night. It went over okay (much better than last week's anyway). There are thirteen chapters all in all, although I may read some smaller ones in bunches. This is the invitation we had printed for our open house, some 450 copies. I'll be happy if we get fifty people. (To those of you reading this in Kingston, I'm getting one to you personally.) ---------------------------------------- x} Thanksgiving was fine, thanks. C got to shop (while I had a surreal experience in the Apple store ... as in look at all the rich people ) and on the way home we took the Gardiner Expressway, which was actually quite pretty, flanked by hillsides full of trees turning their fall colours. x} When we got back on the 401, we noticed it had been renamed the Highway of Heroes . What bullshit. A fly-past of my reasons for saying so: it's tacky verging on kitsch (at least past memorials have had som

open house {and other lost causes}

tell me what you know ; mixed media on canvas, 16 x 16 inches in my dreams, I'm a king ; mixed media on canvas, 16 x 16 inches new fox, new world ; mixed media on canvas, 16 x 16 inches Three paintings I've recently completed for my upcoming open house (October 25th, Sydenham Street Studios, 178 Sydenham). The string series continues. (I had an earlier post for Illustration Friday – the commodore, below – but Penelope's site wouldn't accept an icon, and without an icon no one will ever see it (click on it), because that's just the way people operate, I'm afraid.) Some other things ... x} It's Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend. I'm going to Toronto to meet C's Uncle David, read books about Disney princesses to people named Mei Mei, eat turkey, get into fights over Scrabble. x} In the old days they'd let us go early (from work) on the Friday afternoon of a long weekend, but here I sit. x} The latest Economist has an editorial about why American t

for illo friday ... {open}

This is Commodore Perry, an old-school guy who opened up Japan to American trade (at gunpoint). Righteous!

tiger power

For a very short story of the same name. In other news: I feel like warmed-over Kraft dinner today, so my own tiger power is definitely lacking.