The Katz's Crew Spreads Its Wings

In the spirit of the Katz's Crew, I'm trying to start up a new informal weekly meeting of creatives in Cleveland. When I lived in NYC, we had a pretty good group of cartoonists, illustrators, animators and other assorted creatives who all met up at Katz's Deli on Thursday nights. Sean Taggart, Lance Tooks and I were a few of the ones who got that group going. The group slowly fizzled out as people (like me) left the city or got caught up in their own lives. I miss it. And I know some of the other guys do, too. In that spirit, I'm seeing if I can get something like that started here. Inaugural night will be Monday, April 2, 2007 at Sullivan's Pub around 6-ish until whenever. It'll be interesting to see what, if anything becomes of the group. I've got hope, but no expectations.

Avoiding Life and Making Fonts

I'm not sure what I should be doing, but whatever it is, I'm avoiding it, and working on fonts instead. Looks like I've got around 19 fonts that are somewhat near completion. Most of them have lots of little buggy things going on with them. Weird kerning, no numerals, no punctuation. Or missing other little things here and there. The ultimate goal is to get them complete and up for sale on Savage Monsters or maybe some font site.

Hey Daddy-O, I Don't Want to Go...

down to the basement...





Ever since I got glass block windows installed in my basement, people ask what I do down there, like I've got some kind of fiendish secret. Unfortunately, it's not that exciting. Just laundry. And I'm sort of gearing up to get a decent screen printing shop going. I've done a bit of printing so far, but I'm nowhere near to where I'd like to be with it. And everything I've printed has been sloppy one color stuff on paper that I got out of the dumpster. Nothing great, but it's been fun.

Horrible Stickers

Somehow I got on a kick to design some retro type "word" stickers. Yet another cool project that I have no funding for. I can't recall at the moment, but I'm going to blame John Coulter for giving me the idea.

Bummer Dude

After a few years of not doing it, I finally started submitting stuff to Threadless again. Or at least I put in one submission. I did the art a few years ago and never really did anything with it, so I said, "what the heck." And this design is probably more in line with the Threadless-buying crowd than the stuff I submitted years ago.

Lil Devil

This Lil' Devil came about while developing some simple little characters. Cute lil' bugger.

The Bowels of My Computer

It's been a week of finding all kinds of art that I've forgotten about. Some of it in the attic. And other stuff in the bowels of my computer. Funny how I find all this stuff when I'm looking for a file that I actually need.

SPACES Setup

One of my co-workers, Chuck Wimmer told me I should hang some work for ArtMart at Spaces Gallery. My gallery opening at Asterisk was just a week ago and all my new art is there. I ended up hanging a bunch of old stuff that I had laying around. Some of it I'd forgotten about. My work is in the middle and Chuck's is to the right of me. Not sure whose work is on the left side. Opening reception is Friday, March 23. Come buy some art!

Transplant Setup

Things are finally slowing down for me a bit and I've had time to post some pics of my part of the TRANSPLANT show being set up. It seems like it was so long ago. I didn't realize just how few pics I actually took. Keep in mind, these were taken while I was hanging the show. I did straighten them up a bit. And there were more lights on during the actual opening. To get a better gander at some of the work, go here.
Or trot on down to Asterisk Gallery. I believe the show is up until April 13.

TRANSPLANT Review

We got a pretty good review for the show at Cleveland Scene. I'm pretty happy with what they said about my work. I've got no problems being compared to Garbage Pail Kids. Although my original inspiration were Sillisculpts, it's still the same ballpark. Wish they would've put some pictures or links or something with the review, but what can you do? I've got most of my art from the show here.

Jorge and Carlos got their props, too.

Somehow they neglected to say anything about Saxton's work. Not sure if it's oversite or what, but it's a bummer. If it weren't for Sax, the show never would've happened.

Draw Me!

A few weeks ago, I created this "Draw Me" sheet and tacked a dozen or so up on the bulletin board at work. Sort of a subversive, no pressure, creative release. Above are the results.

Cosmic Meanings in My Work

The Transplant show opened last night and was a great success. It was a constant stream of people from 6 PM until around 11:30. Throughout the night I had the opportunity to meet and talk to quite a few interesting people. One of the more intriguing people was an older gentleman who pulled me aside and really dissected my work. Overall, he really liked my work but had plenty of questions about where it came from and what it means. The main piece that was in question was my piece with a bunch of goonheads, one of them being red. "Why did you do this piece? Why are there 33 of them...3 rows of 11? Did you know that 33 is an important number in numerology? Why is the red one on the bottom and the 3rd one from the end? Whose color is red? And I'm not talking about Santa Claus?"

All of a sudden, my work was seeming ominous. Most of those questions never crossed my mind. The character is the product of trying to come up with some interesting designs made with simple graphic shapes. And when you're dealing with being graphic, that usually means black, white and red; the simplest, most graphic palette there is.

How the piece came together for the show was really pretty much a fluke. Saxton had seen the goonhead and suggested that I should put it in the show. And suggested that I do one with a bunch of rows of goonheads and make one of them red. It sounded like an easy piece to do, so I went about setting up the art on my computer. At the moment, I can't recall why I chose to make it a horizontal piece as opposed to vertical, but I did. I knew the final print was going to be 13 by 19 inches (that's the size of paper my printer takes and I've got no idea about the numerology behind it), so I began making rows of goonheads and scaled them up and down to see what looked good. 2 rows were too few and the goonheads were getting too small with 4 rows so I settled on 3. I never bothered to count how many were in the rows. As far as coloring one red, I did the same thing, I did what optically looked good to me. All coincidence? Forces from another dimension?

And then there was discussion about frogs and images of frogs giving babies and toddlers mental problems and making them insane.

Transplant Opening Coming Up! The Countdown is On!

I've been working on the Transplant show all weekend. I currently have 52 pieces framed and ready to hang. Four more will be ready as soon as I get more frames tomorrow. Final count should be around 56 or 57. Plus, I'm planning on taking my vending machines to the show.

Saxton, Carlos and I worked on the space at Asterisk Gallery today and it's coming along nicely. It should be a really good opening on Friday.

Dumpster Dive Standee Security Devices

I got some standees out of the dumpster at work last week. I've always wanted to make some of my own standees out of some of my monsters, but I'm way too lazy. Anyway, I brought the standees home and put some Halloween masks on a couple of them, and one of my monster heads on another one. The standees are creepy enough on their own, but with the masks on, it just intensifies the effect. I made sure to make one visible from the front door as a burglar deterrent.