Project: Astoria

I'm going to be in Chicago in a couple of weeks to help high five Todd Baxter and open his new show at Lula. This is one of the pictures:

Todd has been a friend for twenty years – since we were painting students together at the University of New Mexico. Back then he was doing exquisitely painted scenes with little collage elements cut from books and magazines inserted so seamlessly that you sometimes couldn't tell what was real and what was invented. Sometime after that he got hold of something called Photoshop and now he does the same thing with his own photographs, culled from shoots in Guam, Morocco, the Pacific Northwest, rural Kentucky and the space museum in Washington D.C., among other places, as well as in studio shoots with hired models. I've posted about his work now and then on this blog, occasionally I've been lucky enough to collaborate with him, and we've shown his work several times at Lula. He's one mega-talented s.o.b. (with a similarly talented collaborator in Aubrey Videtto) and we're beyond delighted to show this new body of weird loveliness as it develops over the next few years – this is the first of what are projected to be several semi-annual showcases at Lula. So come get in on the ground floor. More about the Astoria backstory here. And a facebook event page for the opening is here.

Rage of Poseidon 'Originals'

I'm doing a reading from the book – and giving a talk about making books – next Friday at the MCBA in Minneapolis, 7pm. And then again in Chicago at CityLit (with Jessica Hopper) December 15th.

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Live: The Goddess of Wisdom stumbles around her apartment hung-over as $%&#.

By which I mean my talk tonight will be streamed live (and then archived) here. It starts at 7pm Central time.

More Coming Attractions

Thursday is Give to the Max day, an annual fundraising occasion for all sorts of non-profits with Minnesota connections. Autoptic is getting in on the action. Help out here.

Coming Attractions

I've got a few talks and things coming up*. This Tuesday I'll be at St. Olaf College in Northfield Minnesota reading from Rage of Poseidon and discussing a new book I've recently begun.

December 6th I'm doing a reading at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts here in Minneapolis and, apropos of the venue, I'll talk a bit about various short run book and mini-comic projects I've done over the years in weird handmade formats, as well as the aforementioned new project.

Stuff in Chicago, L.A. and at Stanford coming up as well. Details to follow.

Meanwhile, here's a drawing I did recently of Kris Kristofferson for Cinefamily in L.A. (it makes a nice pair with the Dennis Hopper drawing I did for them a few years ago.)

*Anders Nilsen is a fiscal year 2013 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; and by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

A Frailty Overhead

This Summer I did a collaboration with my friend the novelist and skateboarder  Kyle Beachy (here he is doing a nose manual). He gave me a few short prose pieces, I chose one and did some illustrations for it. It ended up as a four pager, which has just been published in Make Magazine, in Chicago. The format is similar to Rage of Poseidon – one image on a page with text underneath, though the images are more comic-y and complicated, as above. You can get a copy here.