I have a new show up at Together Gallery. It’s been really fun to make and Timothy Karpinkski who set the show up for me is amazing.
Here are some words about the show:
The image we all have in our heads of bikinied beach bunnies frolicking in sugary white sand while watching bronzed skinned handsome men shred clean glassy waves of perfection is not surfing in Oregon. Some people don’t even believe you can surf in Oregon, but you can do it, a lot of people do it. These Oregonian surfers are a brave rugged bunch who feel most alive in the challenging elements of the Pacific Northwest. With his first solo show in years, Scrappers will attempt to explain his experiences as an Oregonian surfer using photos, paintings, found objects, and art he’s collected from fellow artists in a show titled OWL: Oregon Wave Logger.
Artwork available online at: Together Gallery >>>
Carlie Armstrong shot me in my home studio as part of her work.place project documenting creative Portlanders in the places they work in. I think she does a darn good job capturing the vibe of the people and the habitats they create in. See what I mean?
Black Wave Red Sun is a benefit art show to help Surfrider Japan do what they can to deal with the environmental destruction caused by the tsunami.
Watch this video of the black wave and you’ll understand the power and destruction that inspired this art show.
Featuring artwork by Bwana Spoons, Scrappers, Manny Pangilinan, Maddie Joyce, Ed Fladung, Jeremy Fish, Corey Arnold, Luke Ramsey, and many more…
The artists involved are donating 100% of the funds raised from sales to Surfrider Japan. Grass Hut is only charging shipping fees for sold artwork.
Artwork will be available through Grass Hut Art Market’s website this Friday, March 18th.
I will have 12 signed and numbered prints like the one below (each with individually painted red suns) available along with some photographs and other pieces of art. 100% of the money spent on the art will go to Surfrider Japan.
To learn about how this show came about keep reading…
A while back I got the total freaking honor to work with the kind folks at OBEY.
By “work” I mean they let me use some of Sharpard Fairey’s art on a cover, but not just any cover. A REMOVABLE COVER!!! A cover that had a dotted line and instructions encouraging readers to cut it out and paste it around town. It was pretty awesome and it worked!
Here’s what some regular commenters at Blogtown thought about it >>>
Thomas James (my new favorite illustrator) interviewed me on Escape from Illustration Island Podcast.
It was cool, I mostly mumble about myself too much, but somehow manage to see beyond my nose long enough to talk about art direction work, illustration work, and what it’s like to work with a creative team.
If you have over 45 minutes to kill and a tolerance for my retarded voice…have a listen here >>>
Sometimes all you need is a good idea and then everything else falls into place.
I heard the newspaper I work for had this tattoo story coming up, so the idea of tattooing the cover onto someone popped into my head. Only in Portland could someone like me have an idea like that and then meet all the right people it would take to make it happen in under a week. Actually it just took one night.
See the slide show here >>>
My son Camper asked for an owl for Christmas, so I decided to make him a book about an owl.
I’ve had this story about a surfing owl bouncing around in my head anyways, so thought this might be a good chance to make a rough draft just for Camper.
I plan on making a second draft of this book, so if you continue reading this draft keep in mind it’s rough.
Continue reading ‘((( OWL’s SURF CLUB )))’
Who needs another t-shirt? I do! Maybe you do too? That’s why I made some new ones for the folks at ThereThere.
If you like Portland maybe this one is for you >>>
If you like Surfing in Oregon (psst…, OWL stands for Oregon Wave Logger) maybe this one is for you >>>
Oh, they have lady sizes too if that’s you’re thing >>>
A couple months ago I won this 1st place award for cover design from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. The award really should have gone to the other art director who won 2nd place Chris Skiles, at the Mauitime he’s a way better designer then me. Chris and I started talking and sending each other the weekly papers we make.
He was getting married around the time I was going on vacation to Maui, so he asked if I wanted to fill in for him and do a cover while I was there. YES!!! I really wanted to see how their office worked anyways. And now I know it works great because of the people who work there, I swear every one of those people do the jobs of three normal employees.
The cover story was about the top ten unreported news stories of 2010 put out by Project Censored. So my challenge was to take these global stories and make them relevant to the island of Maui. The idea I came up with was that these pieces of news washed up on the beach.
After publisher Tommy Russo (who totally rules!) took me to his house (he has pet chickens and ducks in his yard!!) and let me dig around his scrap wood pile (one block from the beach!!!) I cut out shapes, or icons, that symbolized what each of those top ten stories where about. After painting them, I teamed up with local photographer Naomi Sheikin to do a quick shoot on the beach. Working on the beach like that is something I could get used to for sure. The sand there was like Grape Nuts cereal.
It was so much fun to travel to tropical paradise and sit on someone else’s workbench for a change, but after the paper went to print I was glad to be on vacation and get some surfing done on some luxury waves.
It’s RAD when I make stuff that people like and they share it with there friends using the interweb. But it’s such a SUCK when the thing goes so far out of my hands that nobody knows whos hands made it.
This photo for example, it’s got over 2,000 views on my Flickr. Most of those views are from teenage girl’s Tumblr accounts (one even named her account “I’ll Keep You Wild”) and that’s RAD, but not linking back to the source SUCKS. Thousands more have seen it on other people’s sites. I saw it on fffound the other day and was struck with the a good case of the RADS, but it was followed by a heavy dose of the SUCKS, since the picture doesn’t even link to my site, it links to some generic Tumblr.
