Back to life with talk of the dead

I've been hard at various projects but posting is obviously not one of them.That said, it only makes good sense to tout good people who give you an opportunity to show your stuff.

Once again I have the pleasure of being part of Tweet Design's Day of the Dead show at the awesome Young Blood Gallery. This is the final show and so my beautiful wife, who also made a contribution, and I tried to go out on a high note.

If my hastily scanned promo card is not legible enough, the details are as follows:

Opening: Saturday November 3, 7- 10pm at the Young Blood Gallery

The show runs until November 25.

Below are the images from my wife's piece, "Butterfly Girl" . My piece is in the post just below.

Tweet final DoD showPart 2

"White Whale"

This is what I came up with for the show. I had a hard time coming up with something different than the ways I had already approached the past pieces until I was inspired by reading this:

"It's better to fail in originality

than succeed in imitation."

-Herman Melville

and the results kind of fell into place.

Day of the Dead Show 2010! (Part 1)

Well now, that was one hell of an intermission, no? Good news is I've kept my word and I'm posting something other than boxing sketches (although I've got buckets of those to show and probably will do so soon). Better news, it's that time of year again the Tweet Design annual Day of the Dead show. This is the third year for the show and the second that I've been in on it.

Last year the show was at the estimable Eyedrum Gallery but this year it is taking place in the Young Blood Gallery. I haven't been in a show at theYoung Blood since waaaay back in '01 ( at the old location no less). The gallery has grown mightily and I'm excited to be there again. Click the image below for details.

I created two coffins again this year. I wanted to approach the Day of the Dead themes in my own way once again and try to top my pieces from last year. I tried to think of different approaches to the coffin that might be something that hasn't been tried before or at least felt that way.

For the first one I decided to pay tribute to one of my art heroes, Robert Rauschenberg. He used a good many parachutes and things resembling them in his silkscreens and some of his performance pieces so that led to the coffin trading its heaviness for this kind of purpose. He's also famous for his combines in the art world. One of the most famous is Monogram. Throw in some angelic wings and several nods to other bits of his work and you have this:

I should mention that the backing board was merely for display purposes and isn't part of the piece.

DotD 2010 part 2

I wanted to use more of the typical imagery for the second piece and after a good deal of kicking ideas around decided on a warped, but fully functional, pull toy. Images below.

DotD 2010 part 3

The rest of the second coffin images...

and three photographs from a coffin by my beautiful wife.

Tonight!

See you at the Eyedrum!

UPDATE: The show was good fun. Managed to catch someone's eye with one of the pieces opening night. You can see photos of the night on Tweet's flicker page here.

Day of the Dead sneak peek

Here they are. Hope to see you there.

Just in the inbox...

The other project hinted at in the last post:


Should be fun. Check out the talent that is responsible for putting this show together here.