Dwell Illustrations

I have these 4 illustrations in the new April issue of Dwell Magazine, which should be out on newsstands in a few days. The article deals with the history and future of manufacturing. The art director let me get a little more experimental with these concepts, perhaps to help liven up the subject matter a bit. The added leeway made these illustrations a lot of fun to work on. (Thanks Brendan!)

Lunar Holiday Poster

Yesterday I finished this holiday poster for Lunar, a product design company based out of San Francisco. They approached me with the general idea of wanting to collaborate on their company holiday card, with the hope that it could become a fold-out poster incorporating lots of different types of imagery. They sent out a questionnaire to their employees in San Francisco, as well as to their offices in Munich and Hong Kong, asking them to name some of their favorite things. The point of this was to gain a bit of a cross-section of the "Lunar culture" as experienced by their employees around the globe. Here's a few sample questions they sent out:

- All time favorite holiday food?
- Favorite corner in the city?
- Favorite LUNAR project of the year?
- Favorite gift to give?
- Favorite festival of the year in SF/Munich/HK?
- What’s your favorite SF/Munich/HK institution?
- Favorite after work/weekend past time?

So I had to take all of the different answers and figure out some way to represent them into a holiday poster context. Here are my first 3 sketches:




They liked the 2nd sketch, but wanted way more stuff going on and more imagery from the answers incorporated into it. They found an image of a vintage Candyland boardgame, which they loved as an idea for more of a path or a map. They felt that referencing this could communicate something like, “LUNAR is a unique place during the holidays". And they loved the way the illustrations tend to combine things in strange ways, much like mine tend to do. So I did some revisions and we came to a final approved sketch..





The final poster will be printed at about 12" x 18". Here are a few close-up sections:

"Now Playing" show at Gallery 1988 SF

I just finished this piece yesterday for a show at Gallery 1988 in San Francisco called "Now Playing". It's a group show where each artist was sent an original movie poster to customize with their own artwork, in whatever way we wanted. We didn't get to pick what poster we'd get, so it was a surprise when the poster tubes were shipped out. I was psyched to get the Terminator 2 poster.. it was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid. I recall trying to emulate Eddie Furlong for a couple of months, at least, after seeing it. I even rocked the same haircut..

After playing around with some other more serious ideas I decided to go with something a little more wacky. I wanted to change "Judgment Day" into something totally different.. like a holiday, for instance. Valentines Day seemed like the funniest choice to me, given the Terminator character and his cold, robotic personality. Plus I had the perfect opportunity to make his hand holding something other than a shotgun.

All of the artwork and type changes were collaged directly on top of the poster. I used a bunch of different types of papers and pages out of books for the background, to give the whole thing a warmer, more stylized feel. Then I drew, painted and collaged more stuff on top of that, including all the flowers and leaves.

The show opens this Friday, September 18th at Gallery 1988 San Francisco: 1173 Sutter St. / Polk St.

"Idiot Box" - Opening April 2nd!

The group show "Idiot Box" opens at 7pm tonight, April 2nd, at Gallery 1988 in LA. It's the gallery's 5-year anniversary, and they're celebrating with a show devoted to "guilty pleasure television." They even got Mr. Belding from Saved By the Bell to be the host of the show!

I contributed these two pieces, nodding to several of my favorite shows from the past. The top one is a piece based on the shows Alf and The X-Files, titled "The Alf-Files". It's a play on the concept of Mulder's and Scully's relentless search for aliens, and finding a rather silly one in the form of Alf. The second one is titled "Miscellaneous TV Outerwear" and is pretty self-explanatory, unless you've been living as a Neo-Luddite for the past several decades.

I picked these frames for their gaudy, kitschy flavor, to reflect the feeling of most of these TV shows. There should be a great mix of killer work, given the lineup of artists and the subject matter, so be sure to check it out if you're in the LA area. Here's the gallery website for more info: http://www.nineteeneightyeight.com