Now through Sunday March 21st you can check out my latest show entitled "At night my enemies come out snarling like vicious dogs"in the Suny Purchase Visual Arts building room 1019. Its a collaborative work between Alex Derwick, Manuel Bova, Ephraim Hafftka, and I. The show is a pronunciation of fear and dismay, an exploration of the discomforting and disorderly. Here's some photos of us working on it from beginning to end:
We each painted a life size self-portrait on cardboard. Thats ^ me!
Then we began the installation. Cardboard city!
Alex D creepin!
Once most of the cardboard was in place we began painting it black!
Ephraim creepin!
Heres how the installation looks with the lights on:
But then we turned the lights off. Every viewer gets a flash light before they enter, and this is the only source of light in the entire room.
For the past couple days we've been working tirelessly, staying up into the wee hours of the morning. I've without a doubt screwed up my sleep patterns for the rest of the week! But I have to say the best part about staying up till 6 in the morning is that you get to witness the beautiful Purchase sunrise.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
So I'm making a conscious effort to make blog posts everyday, or as much as I possibly can.
Heres a real cool vid of Mike Ness talking about the new Social D album!
My buddy Luke has a real cool blog called Party like Awesome. It highlights things such as rock n roll, hot chicks, motorcycles, cigarettes, and of course partying. Basically everything a blog should be about. check it out at www.partylikeawesome.blogspot.com
The past two weeks of my life have been crazy and the rest of this month is only going to get crazier. Two weeks ago Wyldlife played a at a mini ramp in Jersey City. People were shredding it all night while we rocked out. If my 7th grade self could have seen me, he would be so proud of the man he has become. We sandwiched ourselves into our friend Calder's SUV on the way to the show.
Here's Dangerous Dave ripping it up^.
Some cool graffiti on the ramp.
After the show we headed to our favorite Jersey City Food joint, Hollywood Wings. We started walking up to Hollywood, when we noticed a fight breaking out from inside. Some dude ran out, hoped in his Nissan Altima and tried to make a getaway, while another shirtless dude with a bald head threw a parking cone at his windshield. All of a sudden, there were five cop cars barricading the intersection, with cops outside of their cars guns drawn! This was all about a block away from us. We enjoyed our meal as the sirens flashed and people were loaded into ambulances... oh man. Inside Hollywood Wings we found this prison shank knife^ on the floor by the ATM. Just goes to show how classy Jersey City, (aka America's Golden Door) really is.
Heres a video some dude made, you can see a clip of us playing towards the end:
We also opened the junior print show! We spent many hours curating the show, and getting everything in the perfect spot.
Heres me looking fly. And of course no party is complete without a pinata!
This guy obliterated it in one shot!
We had a great turn out, and people really seemed to dig the art.
We played another show in Jersey City last weekend, and it was just as epic, if not more so than the last show. Before we played, our singer Dave broke the news to me that I would be having my first ever solo art show at the Balance Salon where he works. Its a super cool place with really cool people who really seem to embrace the arts. If you ever need a haircut and want to check out some cool art, head to Balance. The show should be in the beginning of May, I'll let you know more info as I get it! Its gonna be sick! Dave also got one of my drawings tattoed on his arm!
David it is truly an honor to have my art on your body! I still can't believe people like my stuff enough to have it on them forever. And I still don't have any ink! Thats not for long though... So the show was at a gallery/venue called 58 and as soon as I arrived I was greeted to murals painted by the prolific graffiti artist Doze Green. Now if you don't know who Doze Green is, he was one of the original New York City graffiti artist's in the late 70's and early 80's. And was one of the first to make the transition from the street to the gallery. I was in awe of the fact that I got to rock out right next to the art of a living legend, I couldn't believe it. Heres a few works from his latest show at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in NYC:
So damn good!
The show went really well and people really loved us. We actually had four encores, something we've never done before!
After the show Dave was selling one of our CD's to this punk guy. He had on the coolest vintage Metallica shirt, and being the hair metal afficiando I am, I told him how much I loved it. He shook my hand and told me he loved our set. When he walked off Dave tapped me on the back and said "You realize who you just talked to right?" "No..." I said "That was Jake Casualty, from the Casualties!" I was blown away! I had to take a seat immediately. Jake Casualty from the legendary punk band the Casualties had seen our set, and better yet told Dave he wants to play shows with us! It was like a scene from a movie. I can remember sitting in my room when I was 13 listening to the Casualties on my boombox, I'm still at a lose for words. Playing with them would truly be a dream come true. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
So.... We've got a show at Webster Hall on March 25th and I cranked out these posters today on the offset lithograph press:
The offset press is real cool because it pretty much prints the image for you in a matter of seconds. Because of this convenience I was able to whip out an edition of 40. You may or may not see these posters scattered around the city...
So heres a brief look at some more stuff I'm doing in the upcoming month... -An art installation with my collective the Tomahawks -Multiple Wyldlife shows, including a Ramones cover show! -Heading to Philadelphia for a printmaking convention -A trip to Atlanta for spring break to do some volunteer work for a week -Many more new prints for you to feast your eyes on
And I'm sure theres much more but its escaping me at the moment...
In other news Social Distortion drummer Atom Willard has left the band! This sucks! The guy can rip on the drums like no other, but he had to leave due to scheduling conflicts with his other band Angels and Airwaves. I dig some of their stuff, but you really left Social D for them??????? what???? This blows even more because Social D just announced that they've begun work on their latest album! Hopefully this won't delay the process too much. Ah! I AM SO STOKED!
Life is pretty damn good.
"You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space." -Johnny Cash
