Frustration & Creation

For some reason, this morning I was thinking about frustration and creation. When I was living in Hoboken, I had a tendency to become frustrated with my roommate. In truth, he was and is a great guy. I just wasn't used to having a roommate. The one thing he did that really got under my skin were the midnight cleaning binges. Not that I minded him cleaning, I think he went into some sort of trance or something when he did it. I'd wake up in the morning and a stack of mail I hadn't gone through yet would be gone. Or the spare keys to the apartment. I luckily retrieved the TV remote from the trash before it was too late.

One weekend when he was gone, I let out all my frustration by building a giant blue totem beast out of cardboard and acrylic paint. In retrospect, I don't know what I was trying to accomlish by doing it. He came home, opened the door and said, "What the frick is that?" He warmed up to it and it sort of became a conversation piece. When a friend saw it, he said that he'd love to be my roommate if that's the kind of stuff I did every time I got pissed at him.

The blue beast was still standing when I moved out. I never did hear of its fate. Now I'm contemplating a giant cardboard/paper mache robot. I don't have any roommates, so maybe now I'm getting on my own nerves.

Lakewood Car Kulture Show

I ran around doing errands in the morning, only to come back home to see that my street was blocked off for some kind of event. It turned out to be the Lakewood Car Kulture Show. It was a good way for me to kill some time, take some pictures and avoid any real work.

Odd Memory

Working on the Grumpy Freak Show, I had to buy a can of spray paint. I went through the self-checkout and the sale didn't immediately go through because they had to check my ID. I couldn't believe I got carded for one can of spray paint. Later, I was talking about it with a friend. I thought it was because they didn't want kids using it for graffiti. (Although any true graf artist would just steal it.) My friend thought it was because kids huff it. Seemed plausable, although I didn't get the metallic paint, which is supposed to give you a much better high.

At any rate, when huffing aerosol was mentioned, I immediately flashed back to 7th grade Science class. Mr. Hoyt, who talked like Elmer Fudd, was lecturing on the harms of drugs and huffing aerosols. He told us a story of one of his previous students who made a habit of huffing aerosols in the bathroom when he got home from school. One day, he began vomiting blood in the bathtub. He was actually vomiting up his lungs. The story never quite rang true to me. Is it actually possible to throw up your lungs? And wouldn't I have heard the story before? Like maybe on a boy scout overnight, "have you heard the one about the kid who barfed up his lungs?"

Then again, the following year, there was a full page photo of a student with the caption "In memory of...." I never knew the kid nor found out how he died. So, I guess maybe it is possible to barf up a lung.

New Savage Monsters Demo Reel (in the works)

Amazing how when a project is looming over my head, like the Grumpy Freak Show I'm inspired to work on any project that isn't that. I ended up working on updating my animation demo reel last night. It's something that I've been meaning to do and have worked on sporadically over the past few years. I'm hoping that I'll finally pull it together this fall.

Fontastic

Living fast and dying young. Went home for a very extended weekend. Seeing family and friends was good. But I also had a couple of LONG layovers in Milwaukee going to and from KC from Cleveland. Luckily, I had my laptop and the Milwaukee airport has places to plug in your laptop. I spent a few hours doing the tedious chore of making fonts. For the most part, I've got a bunch of letter and number forms done for a couple dozen fonts. It's all a matter of dragging them individually into Fontographer to make the fonts. And then realize all the perifery symbols that you' ve gotta make...semi colons, carrots, ampersands. I did get a bunch of the tedious stuff done for a few fonts. Hopefully one day soon I'll have some fonts up for sale on one of my sites. And people will want to buy them, for a nominal fee, of course.

Letting Go of the Anger

Against better judgement, here's my secret web site that documents some of my anger at my previous job. In the 3 years that I was there, I was the ONLY one to put anything in the "suggestion box." And they were all complete gags. The VP who received them couldn't tell if the were serious or not, after all, "Dave Savage is a creative guy; he COULD be serious. Can't believe it took me 3 years to get out of there. Looking back, a lot of the crap I put up with was pretty funny. I worked pretty hard on a pirate-themed board game for 6 months or so. They didn't get funding for Phase 2 of the project and I was accused of plagiarism. One of the VPs found another pirate-themed board game that *gasp* was also a map and featured a skull island, a mermaid, a monkey and a sea serpent. Admittedly, the placement of some of those to the one was pretty coincidental, but I'd never seen the other board game before. Plus, the VP who accused me of plagiarism also made me put obscure references to "Gilligan's Island" and "Scooby Doo" on the board. I think it's hard for me to let go of some of this anger because some of these people I loved to hate. And, in their favor, that's probably better than being someone that I'm apathetic to; they've made their impression. And people wonder why I think my new job is a cakewalk.

Weirdo

Always kinda liked this doodle. I originally scanned it in because some ad agency was interested in my doodles for some ad campaign they were working on. That was about a year ago. Apparently I didn't get the gig. I don't think I ever saw the ad campaign either. Maybe it wasn't produced.

Malignant Response

Response to the Malignant Humor show has been great. I still find myself explaining that the show is "malignant" and changes and grows. Seems to be my curse... either not explaining myself enough, or explaining myself ad nauseum. Or just being too obscure for anyone to understand what I'm doing. Most of the time, I don't know what I'm doing myself.

Somehow, I thought the vending machines would be an instant success. Seems (A) people just aren't interested, or (B) they don't realize that they can actually buy art, or at least stickers, temporary tattoos, or buttons out of them. All of those come with a "Freaky Fortune Comic." something kinda like a Bazooka Joe Comic. And there's 54 different ones. And then there's (C), some people just don't understand how the vending machines work.

It all keeps reminding me of the song "Sensitive Artist" by King Missle. Crap. I'm a sensitive artist. And I wanted to grow up to be Batman. Or an outlaw biker or something.

Sensitive Artist
by John S Hall
King Missile (dog fly religion) _Fluting On The Hump_ Shimmy Disc 1987

I am a sensitive artist...

I am a sensitive artist.
Nobody understands me because I am so deep.
In my work I make allusions to books that nobody else has read,
Music that nobody else has heard,
And art that nobody else has seen.
I can't help it
Because I am so much more intelligent
And well-rounded
Than everyone who surrounds me.

I stopped watching tv when I was six months old
Because it was so boring and stupid
And started reading books
And going to recitals
And art galleries.
I don't go to recitals anymore
Because my hearing is too sensitive
And I don't go to art galleries anymore
Because there are people there
And I can't deal with people
Because they don't understand me.

I stay home
Reading books that are beneath me,
And working on my work,
Which no one understands

I am sensitive...
I am a sensitive artist

For more Malignancy....

Be sure to check out Saxton's blog for more pics and a more complete overview of the show at sacks10.blogspot.com. And check out Jorge Lacera's stuff at lacera.blogspot.com.

A dream date above....Barbie and Godzilla. Polaroid trasfer.

Malignant Sack Puppet Saturday Humor

I ended up doing a wall of sack puppets at the Malignant Humor show. I've also got 10 of the bigger ones in a display case all with their mouths slightly open so you can see what's going on in there.

Malignant Humor Week 2

Acrylic paintings on found boards. I did the 3 on the right last night. They're a bit rough, but fun. Probably should've spent a bit more time on them.
Saxton's bunny and my 2 headed baby. Making friends and making fiends.
Saxton in action on a new piece.
I did the totem pole on a found piece of wood when I lived in Hoboken. I've had to touch it up every time I've moved. This will also be my first show with the vending machines. I'm hoping they'll go over well and people will realize that they can actually buy stuff out of them.

I just put up some more of my stuff for week 2 of Malignant Humor. Saxton's been adding to the wall and doing another piece on the brown paper. I've got more pics of some of the other pieces I put up....more sack puppets and some Polaroid tranfers. I'll post them soon.

Pretty

A friend just asked me to do "something pretty" for her. Not exactly my area of expertise, so I started going through the archive to see if I could find anything "pretty" that I've done in the past. Found this drawing from a figure drawing class that I did years ago. Sadly, it's one of my better figure drawings. Such a hard thing to master. I don't think this is what she meant by "pretty." Guess I'll have to do something new.

Malignant Humor Show

Video from Saxton Moore of Saxton, Jorge and me painting the wall. Check Saxton's blog for more pics.

Surreal Spam

More surreal truncated spam. I think they were trying to loan me "$488,000.00 at a 3.67,% fixed-rateA." Unfortunately, I think I missed the deadline.... "these ofers will expre TONIGHT."


go ahead, so that call see you every second. Don't look back and keep your
the stench was coming from himself. The odor was disgusting, but somehow

"It's damp." He put away the flask, chose a sandwich, and set to
and it squeaked distinctly, turning in the light breeze. The mange must have
the soup and started on the pork and beans, and then he could creep out into

how he could have lived for so long in the impenetrable, exitless gloom. He
But when he talked about this, his voice was hearty. You couldn't ignore
thirty or forty yards away.
his lips. "How do you know what we're after here?"

in his teeth, his burnt face gave off heat, and the sweat poured right into
observation. But the stupid orderlies, who had spent their time during the