Website (finally) overhauled!

Sometimes it's a little disheartening to look back at old posts where I describe projects I'm working on that never end up materializing. This week, however, I can finally say I've finished one project I've wanted to tackle for the last three years: updating my portfolio site! The new site is live now, have a look here.

I built it using Indexhibit, which I highly recommend for a clean interface and refreshingly stripped-down layout. If you can get over some initial learning curves for those of us not well-versed in css coding (ex: me), there's a good online forum for custom plugins and general support.

Old Yeller's Dance

I worked up a new video recently, an ominous treatment of the crucial scene in Disney's Old Yeller (1957) wherein Yeller battles the rabid wolf that's been terrorizing the Coates family.

(best w/ headphones)

Silverfish as Signature

I never sign my prints - or, at least, I hadn't in ages until we were asked to do so for our editions in the new Justseeds/Iraq Veterans Against the War portfolio (just completed, coming soon). After hand-signing 150 prints and scrawling messages on each of them, I really wanted a stamp or, better yet, an embosser to imprint future signatures. So, I had one made with an image of a silverfish (Lepisma saccharina), most commonly known for being the casual destroyers of paper 'round the world...

DIYDPW - a new blog series

This morning I've posted the first installment of what I hope will be a regular, weekly blog post every Wednesday on Justseeds highlighting global examples of Do It Yourself Department of Public Works (DIYDPW) projects (I wish I had come up with that acronym, but I owe the idea idea to a friend). Basically, I would define these as any examples of municipal signage or infrastructure, generated by citizens outside of state-sanctioned means, that fulfill a perceived need in the situation within which they are installed. I'll be focusing specifically on street signage and way-finding graphics, and I'll be taking contributions from Justseeds blog readers. Do you have a photo of a great handmade (or otherwise DIY) sign that fixes a problem the local municipality had otherwise overlooked? Send it my way. Email (include a web-ready image and location found) to DIYDPW at gmail dot com

MFA dot biz...

New "bandit sign" project with Jerstin Crosby. The URL is live...

New projects in motion...

Back for a month now from a five-week stint around Europe, and working on getting some new projects underway:

- look out for a street sign project with collaborator Jerstin Crosby that I keep chuckling to myself about, photos (and a website) forthcoming.

- initiated a new collaboration with recent Portland-to-Pittsburgh transplant Tesar Freeman. Venue is 707 Penn gallery in downtown Pittsburgh this upcoming June 2012; theme is American history, loosely defined at the moment. Right now we're using Tumblr to banter about all sorts of ideas and imagery almost daily, and you're more than welcome to have a look (and follow us) here.

- right before leaving town, the 2011 Pittsburgh Biennial opened it's second wave at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon and the Andy Warhol Museum. I took an organizational role in seeing the Justseeds installation through over at the Miller, with the help of Mary Tremonte and Bec Young (and quite a bit from the aforementioned Tesar Freeman in his capacity as exhibition coordinator at the Miller). Seventeen Justseeds folks participated in this project - we built an indoor landscape of fluorescent-lit billboards, and you can see some in-progress photos here and the finished work here. The Biennial at the Miller was curated by Astria Suparak.

- while in Europe, I worked with 13 Justseeds collaborators (and more friends and cohorts) on an installation for the 29th Graphics Biennial in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Justseeds won the Gran Prix in 2009, resulting in our 2011 invitation to do an installation at Alkatraz Gallery at Metelkova. There's a whole mess of images from the installation here. After Slovenia, I eventually ended up in Copenhagen, where Mary Tremonte and I (while graciously hosted by Bonnie Fortune and Brett Bloom) put on a Justseeds: Resourced Portfolio exhibit/presentation at YNKB, and also managed to slip out of town for presentations at schools in Odenske and Holbæk (thanks to Jakob Jakobson and Nis Rømer).

- other travel photos for the curious can be found here...

- and I'm back at editing video again, currently plugging away at a reworking of the scene in Old Yeller where Yeller and the Wolf battle to the death. Stay tuned.

Two New Prints on Justseeds

I posted a couple of new prints on the Justseeds site this month. One of them a fairly silly but ultimately honest little letterpress number:

 ...and also my print for the upcoming Justseeds collaboration with Iraq Veterans Against the War this November. You can read about (and order) the first print here, and the IVAW print here. I also published a "how-to" on the IVAW print here.