quick update.

sorry i haven't posted here lately. we just moved & i am moving my studio so i haven't gotten a whole lot of work done! i've been gardening a lot & enjoying the nice weather.

i have been messing around with making puppets & doodling a lot lately. more pictures to come!

show friday.

i am currently up north painting a barn, digging ditches, & living the dream, but i am having a show opening this friday at green hand bookshop at 661 congress street in portland. i'm not sure when it is around... you know, first friday time. i'll be there being awkward & the show will be up for two months so you can go another time too.

the show is mostly made up of select images i have used on the backs of postcards over the past year or so in large one of a kind archival/hand drawn print form.. they are finally getting their heyday!

new respirator.

a long time ago back when i was still in college & was doing a lot of spray painting, my mom bought me an AO safety brand respirator (right). i've had this respirator forever & it has probably saved me from breathing countless bad fumes whether spray painting, scraping lead paint, or dealing with some other 'fumey' substances. anyway, new cartridges run about 20 bucks and they really make a huge difference when you are dealing with chemicals. (be sure to drink a lot of fluids too!)

anyway, the other day i went to the hardware store to get some new cartridges and i found out that AO safety had been bought by 3m (the other company that makes respirators) and had discontinued the AO safety respirator model! like many things, cartridges are incompatible between brands (i think they thought of making adapters but OSHA prohibits these in respiratory safety equipment because they run the risk of not working properly) so i basically had no choice but to buy a new 3m respirator & 3m brand cartridges.

i tried it out last night & it has its ups & downs. the 3m respirator has the cartridges kind of tucked back, allowing for a clearer field of vision. it was kind of annoying having these two big cartridges sticking out in your face. it's how i imagine it must be having a big nose (no offense, my nose is just flat as a pancake). the 3m respirator also is better designed, the AO was a bit bulky & didn't make as good of a seal around my face as the 3m respirator does (granted the design was from the early 2000's). the rubber of the 3m respirator seems a better quality too, though this may be due to the fact my respirator is a bit old & i haven't sweat constantly into my new respirator yet!

despite these improvements, the straps & plastic on the 3m respirator seem a bit shabby & less solid. also, the 3m lacks one of the greatest respirator features ever to grace mankind (or the respirator world), the quick latch! the quick latch was a latch on the AO safety respirators that you could unlatch your respirator and re-latch it back on if you had to have a quick communicative conversation. i guess this wasn't the greatest feature because usually when you re-latched your respirator on, you had to readjust the straps to refit it, but it was really handy for low risk environments or if you just wanted to take a break outside & breathe normally.

anyway, i would've been an AO safety respirator user for life, but what can you do when they go out of business? i think 3m owns the respirator field now... what can you do but ride the wave? hopefully 3m will be around for a while (i think they will considering how much crap is under their brand name) so i won't have to switch respirators again. it's like switching razors! a real commitment.

cat twitter.

i will probably never get onboard this whole twitter thing. this summer though we're planning on starting to let the cat out & i am very curious/paranoid about what he might go and do. i thought it might be cool to get this device for him by sony to see what he does all day! hopefully it will not be a prototype in the near future.

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20100601/183099/

ps. i realize i write so many dumb blog postings that are not art related but are just about the cat, so i have added a cat category to the blog.

trash bag shirts.

i made these t-shirts back in the winter & kind of forgot about them. for those of you who don't know, the city of portland pays for its trash program by selling these trash bags that are light blue & have some text printed on them. they are great in that they encourage recycling, but sometimes it is a bummer when you rip a bag or waste a whole bag by accident- they are definitely getting flimsier in quality every year.

anyway, a couple of years ago i was replacing a trash liner when i just was looking at the bag thinking, 'that would make a funny local t-shirt.' anyway, it seemed easy enough to do - i knew what fonts they had used so it'd just be some simple typesetting but i had very little motivation to make them... it was just one of those really easy ideas i thought someone else would eventually make but i don't think anyone did.

then way back in january i found a pile of light blue t-shirts that had been leftover from some zany project that i had abandoned years ago. they were roughly the same color as the portland trash bags so i thought, eh what the heck! & made a few 'trash bag shirts.' i have one for myself but i am too embarassed to wear mine. actually, it's not that, it's that i don't really want to talk to strangers about it.

up to no good!

it's fiddlehead season! one of the many reasons to live in maine is once a year for a few weeks in the spring, fiddleheads are bountiful & cheap! eat 'em while you can because one day they just are gone. (make sure you cook them thoroughly!)



making stop motion puppets. if anyone has some pointers on stop motion animation/puppet making get in touch with me! i'm in way over my head.

toughcats show tomorrow!

colin from the toughcats just sent me this cool stop motion animation they made for their upcoming show using the drawing i did of them in a hot air balloon:



pretty cool!