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Project: Astoria

For those of you who may not be able to make it to Chicago this Winter, here are a few more images from Todd Baxter's Project Astoria: Test I, which is up now at Lula Cafe in Chicago.

One of the great things about having the chance to show this stuff in Chicago was that some of the models for the project came to the opening. They all looked about three years younger in real life. Todd said he had considered using the main model several years ago when he was casting for the Owl Scouts, but hadn't been able to find a boy to match her, quite. When he got back in touch for Astoria he asked if she had any friends who might be interested in joining her for the shoot, which she did. One of them flew in from the East coast where she'd recently moved, to hang out with her friends again and get photographed on an alien moon.

The last photo is of Todd cooling his nerves before people start arriving. Many thanks to Todd, Aubrey Videtto and Marianne Fairbanks.

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Holly Munoz is making a record

My very good friend Holly Munoz is making a record. It's pretty serious. John Vanderslice is producing it, a guy from Iron and Wine is playing cello, etc. Holly is crowdfunding the production and rollout, and if she makes the goal, I get to do her cover art. Some of the rewards for contributors include the original painting I'm doing for the cover as well as the drawings and sketches that happen beforehand (and a bunch of other great stuff). The imagery is in the early turning-it-over-in-my-mind stages, but here's a little painting she commissioned from me last year for a friend. The record cover will be similarly landscape-ish, painted in gouache, but more grand in scale (and not including Hello Kitty).

Holly is the best. She's a great friend who reached out to me when I first moved back to Minneapolis and helped make the move way more friendly. There's a song on the record that was partly inspired by a piece in my book The End, written before we ever met. So doing her cover completes a nice little circle. The record promises to be great. Kick in a few bucks here.

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All About the Travels of Louella, Chapter 1

I uncovered this little hand made book in my mother's archives this morning. It's a little book of etchings I made for my little sister in probably 1994 or so, when she was 2 or 3. It's post Two Headed Boy, but pre-Big Questions. Its also a precurser to a more complete and refined book I made for her a few years later.

Just last Saturday I was talking with Jenny Schmid at Santopticlaus about why I'm not a good printmaker. I have little-to-no patience for involved processes and I always change my mind in the middle of printing. This is a good example. I was etching used plates, trying to do aquatint (gave up after the first two images), and just generally making a mess. Also I hadn't quite figured out how to write backwards on the plates, and the typewriter I was using was missing its 'w'. Still, this thing makes me smile. Needless to say "to be continued" didn't turn out to be quite true.