Living in...

... Manhattan
... my new UNIQLO jeans
... denial

Becky Cloonan's Blog is RAD

Becky Cloonan's blog is great. I thought you should know.

It's amazing to see how much her work has grown since she graduated SVAH. Originally, I didn't like her work as much as some of the other Meathaus guys, because I guess I thought she was a weak draftsman compared to someone like James Jean or Mu.
(that's not to say i didn't like some of her earlier published work ie~ DEMO) BUT WOW she's really come into her own and her current work is very impressive.

I totally heart Becky in so many ways.

Mark Ryden

Mark Ryden's new show has been blogged about everywhere, and most sources cite the interesting write up in LA Weekly, Shooting Low, Aiming High. I've never been a huge fan of Ryden's work, but his current exhibition really appeals to me. What I found most interesting was a quote from Kohn stating, “[Ryden] had no problem selling paintings. He came to us because he wanted to be selling paintings to the ‘right’ people.” hmmmm...

A couple months ago, Lowbrow "Juxtapose" artwork was brought up in my drawing class and my instructor gave his thoughts on Ryden's work. Although he liked it but he said that Ryden wasn't "selling to the right people" and therefore doing himself a great disservice.

He further explained that Ryden's "buyers" were rock stars, celebrities, and people who bought his work out of trendiness and probably didn't know how or didn't care enough to treat his paintings properly.

Later on (the very talented and extremely nice) Kenichi Hoshine visited my Illustration class. Although trained as an Illustrator, he is basically just making a living off of his artwork in a fine art capacity. However, he also said that at this stage in his career he doesn't have any concrete collectors/buyers list, nor is he represented by a gallery on the east coast(although he's represented on the west cost).

The common thread I see ( aside from the west coast's receptiveness to low brow and figurative artwork) is the inability for an artist to control or choose his market. This is not something really taught in art school, but it's obviously an important part of one's long term success. As brilliant and talented as Mark Ryden is, whose to stop his work(or anyone else's) from ending up in the garbage?

But then again so much of this art shit remains a mystery to me, who knows....?

It's HEEERE

Woohoo! The nearly annual New York Comic Con Is here. I haven't been to a convention in over three years, so I'm pretty excited.

Anyway here's some old art that I never posted up due to unkown causes(and this is crap oddly cropped photo, so I'll put up a better quality image laters). This was originally a homework assignment that later was included in a show at Nate's now defunct Ironworks gallery.
Recently, it's been hanging in the student lounge at SVA, and I also made a pretty spiffy digital print for a friend's valintines day present to her bf. And, I still wanna try to silkscreen it.

Yeah Batman and Robin get around.

NEW

Hey all, I decided to start a new blog because...


...I'm a luddite and I couldn't figure out how to transfer that blog to this account.


Oh well.