caught up!

sometimes when people ask me where the i came up with the idea for all the steam city characters i refer them to this music video...

here's a cool thing i would go to...

...if i still lived in brooklyn! but if you do, you should check it out, it is at one of my favorite places in new york (one of the few places i didn't absolutely hate), the brooklyn public library. it is so full of wonderful books & they have a little restaurant/cafeteria place upstairs with some pretty amazing fried chicken! if you're lucky & are there on fried chicken day, check it out (on the third floor). a library with fried chicken?? it's what heaven would be like for me.

anyway, i would totally recommend going to this. jessica abel is one of comics finest gems. her comics journalism is top notch & a lot of what blew me away about comics in the early days was stuff done by her in artbabe. her husband, matt madden, is also a cartoonist & wrote one of my favorite graphic novels, 'odds off,' which is an amazingly paced 9 panel per page novel. i highly recommend it. in college, some kids & i almost got jessica abel to come speak at hampshire but then our funding got pulled by some corrupt elitist asshole students. i won't name names but i'm still bitter about it. & i am pretty sure they embezzled money. our jessica abel money!
then one year i was going to go see her & matt madden speak at MIT & i got sick or something. i guess i am just destined never to see them!

i am not as familiar with gabrielle bell's work, i've read lucky 1 & 2 as well as some stuff in compilations but i liked it. i thought her page in the last kramer's ergot (the olympic sized one) was quite good.

i didn't know jillian tamaki did comics, i am only familiar with her illustration work, but it makes sense that she would have a book out. she has a nice kinetic brushstroke that reminds me of what i used to do in college when i still used brushes only way better!

ps. if there is no fried chicken on the day you go to the library, just go down to the islands it's at the edge of vanderbilt right down the street!

vinyl sundays.

(photo by tom d.)

for those of you that don't know, i work part time at arabica coffee in downtown portland a few days a week. my co-worker salli & i have been talking about doing a thing on sunday mornings where people just bring records they think might be good & play records all morning... vinyl sundays! at first we were thinking of hooking up a turntable to the shop receiver but then i remembered i have a mixer & TWO dedicated turntables, so why not hook THOSE up?

last weekend we spontaneously had our first vinyl sunday from 9.30-noon & i think it went pretty well. we played some pretty random stuff, but what i liked the most about it is we were playing records on a sunday morning instead of a buckwild party late at night & we were listening to a lot of music i normally don't get the chance to listen to because i usually don't want to listen to one song & change a record & then change it again at home.. you know what i mean.

we have a loose schedule of doing it every other week & are planning on doing it again this sunday so if you want to come listen to some old records or even better yet have some records you'd like to share come on by & have a cup of coffee & hang out for vinyl sunday!

i'm still here!

sorry i haven't written an entry in over a month! i took a little break from art after holiday sale season & then have just been working on comics & some other little things since then... the thing about working on comics is there isn't a whole lot to share because it's like... what do i show when everything is done if i've shown everything? & besides, i always end up changing things.

this past week or so i just finished working with the toughcats on art for their new album! i feel kind of weird sharing it here because i don't think they have yet, so you should just check out their website for when they do...

above is a preview though...