This is what I look like. Sort of.

Not really. Sort of. I was recently tasked with drawing a new self portrait for D&Q.

The Game poster/mini

I recently reprinted The Game, the fully painted strip I contributed to the giant sized Kramer's Ergot #7. I'm releasing it as a folded up, two-sided poster. The original strip, as it appeared in Kramer's was three pages. The poster version includes a fourth page, a sort of extended ending that I left off the original for a variety of reasons. The strip will be available in various comic and specialty book stores, and is now available, also, here. For the first week or so postage will be free.





Included with it also, and indeed included with every order from the picture store while supplies last, will be a Big Questions Trading Card (1 of 24) I recently made.

Also, prices on a couple of prints are temporarily reduced. So, all in all, so many reasons to go there and order some stuff.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Over the last several weeks I have been busily drawing on top of a number of half finished paintings given me by Nick Butcher and Nadine Nakanishi of Sonnenzimmer. The opening reception for the resulting show is being held at Fill In The Blank Gallery this Friday, the 20th of May, from 7-11. above is an unfinished painting, below are details of several more. You can read more about what the hell we were thinking here. The process has been, by turns, a delight, an ordeal, an education... It has turned out to be a vigorous conversation–and at times a vicious internal argument–between abstraction and representation, between painting and drawing, and between playfulness and planning. Come listen in. 5038 N Lincoln Avenue in Chicago.

How Chicago Are You?

I'll be part of a panel talk this evening (6-8) about how and whether the peculiarities of a place (Chicago, in this specific instance) influences the art that happens there. The talk is at the Graham Foundation, which concerns itself with architecture, primarily, though the panel draws from and is intended to address all sorts of disciplines. Leading up to the event we were asked to take some pictures of the city that might bear on what we think about the topic. Below are some of the pictures I'll be showing. Come by to hear what I have to say about them. (The second to last one is hard to read--it's a picture of two long rows of brand new parking meters in a vast, abandoned, perhaps 6-8 square block area of abandoned lots).

What we're supposed to be driving

Below are some images from the Terran Trade Authority Handbook of Spacecraft 2000 to 2100 AD






The illustrators are, in order, Bob Layzell (1), Colin Hay (2-3), Angus Mckee(4-6),

THE BLANK MAP

If you're in Chicago tonight you should come check out this show. It's got a bunch of good stuff in it, not least Mark Booth (below) and Deb Sokolow (below that) who both rule. It's in Pilsen near 18th and Halsted. It's also a benefit for Open Books which might be the best bookstore in the city, and is also a non-profit promoting literacy. Curated by the coincidentally named Sara Drake and Becka Mallard.

breaking news from the interbleb

This interview I did went up a week or so ago at The Long & Shortbox of It, a comics blog.

Discussed:
-Finishing Big Questions
-What you get when you cross Tintin with Daniel Higgs
-A fully painted strip I'm about to self-publish (more on that soon)
-the New Chicago Comics show that was at the MCA in January

Also blogged recently at D&Q was a deeply satisfying comparison between the upcoming, aforementioned Big Questions and Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life, John Porcellino's King-Cat Classix, and the Chicago Manual of Style.

And lastly, here is a post at Busy Beaver Buttons' blog about another button mural I did recently in a private residence, using about a century's worth of family photos as material.