An Amazing Illustration By Tré From Our New Book Moonscape Phase I

For a whole year my partner Tré and I wrote a book in haiku form about the phases of the moon and where we were individually and together on our journey during those moon phases. Then Tré took the haiku pairings we had created and drew an illustration for each one. Seventy separate illustrations. 

It only took Tré three months to do the illustrations, which is an incredible pace when you see how intricate and full of nuance they are. I remember how much fun it was as Tré unveiled each new illustration. 

Now after almost a whole year of editing our book is finished! Moonscape Haiku Phase I is the first of a trilogy of haiku books we will be doing together. Treescape and Dreamscape will be the second and third.

After the Solstice/The Longest Night is page 69 from that book.

The entire book is this incredibly lush and intricate, and the printer did an impeccable job of capturing the subtle gradients of Tré's shading. I've never been more fulfilled and excited to show others what we've been working on for over two years now. You can see the video about how Moonscape came to be and how it all turned out here at our Kickstarter. 

Order Moonscape

 

  

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David Bowie Watercolor

My creative partner is a great watercolor artist. Last week she did this painting. The song "Absolute Beginners" has always been a special song for us. That and "Kooks." We have been asked about this piece many times today. So, yes, we will make 11"x10" copies if people want them. This was painted last week for Bowie's 69th birthday. Like everyone else, we are devastated today. 

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Ape Face Rockefeller By Gentleman Brothers

Fall Art Scene happened a couple of weekends ago here in Rockford. Even though I'm not a visual artist, I had been hoping for about a decade that I would be invited to participate in a show at one of the venues. Then two years ago, I was, and what made it better, and worth waiting all those years for, was I got to show with almost every other artist in town that I respect and follow. The show was organized by Andrew Davis, and had no particular theme. Just artists that wanted to show their works and hadn't been invited to do so elsewhere. It was of course the best show in Art Scene that year. 

This year most of us showed again, at Lucette. Among other things, I heard Andrew Davis was making an action figure of his comic book character Ape-Face Rockefeller. I am a big fan of Ape-Face Rockefeller, and one of the world's foremost collectors of Ape-Face Rockefellers, so I was really excited about this action figure. When I saw pictures of the work he was putting in on Facebook I knew it was going to turn out magnificently, and I messaged him asking if I could have the first opportunity to buy it. He put me off, saying it was not nearly finished yet. I had the feeling either he didn't want to sell it, which I would have understood completely, or that someone else wanted the piece, too. As the show neared I saw an almost completed version of Ape-Face and once again inquired if he had settled on a price. He was once again evasive, and said he had not. I took the clue and backed off.

On Friday, the opening night of Art Scene, I stayed with the kids so Jenny could do a show at her gallery. Later in the evening I saw a picture that broke my heart. It was a picture of the Ape-Face Rockefeller action figure with a sold a sticker on it. I was sad, but I figured either he had decided not to sell it, or someone out there really wanted it more than me. 

On Saturday we made the rounds of Art Scene and ended up at Lucette for our own show, We went over to see Ape-Face in person and I once again lamented that someone had bought what turned out to be an awesomely cool piece. It was then that Jenny revealed that she was the one who had bought the piece. She has contacted Andrew and bought the piece when I first saw it. And that is how I became the world's foremost collector of Ape-Face Rockefellers.

Ape-Face Rockefeller action figure by Andrew FoodStamp Davis of Gentleman Brothers

Reunited and it feels so good. See more from FoodStamp Davis on Threadless

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Chico Is the Man

Chico is the man. This is Chico...

Chico by Jesus Correa

horse glue

How was I going to do this. How was I going to bring myself to murder her horse. She loved that horse, her and her horse had grown up together, they were like inter-species siblings, and I couldn’t imagine them not being together. They longed for one another, her and her horse, and when she wasn’t near the horse she was thinking about that horse, thinking about riding her horse, and grooming her horse, talking to and feeding her horse; and I liked to think that that horse thought about her too, when she was gone away to school, when she got her first job at the Dairy Queen, when she was out on her first date; I liked to think that that horse was sitting there in that stable, missing her as much as I know she missed him.

How was I going to do this? Slit it’s throat, maybe a shotgun, poison? How do you kill a loved one, how do you bring yourself to do what must be done, to do the right thing, knowing it will hurt someone you love? I needed a drink, I needed to just be out of my head a little.

I went in the house, my wife sitting there at the table, knitting a scarf for the young whore who had just moved in the house up the road a bit, humming a Slayer song under her breath, smelling like an old whore herself.

“Ma, are you sure we have to kill the poor horse, are you really sure that’s necessary?” I asked before raising the cup of bourbon I had just poured to my face, the part of my face with the hole in it, where words and spit came out, where bourbon and vagina juice went in.

“We got to do it Pa, sorry, it’s our only choice, unless you really feel like going to the store and buying some glue. You know we need the glue Pa, you know we do.”

She was right, we did need the glue, for the Popsicle house we were building, and I just didn’t have it in me to drive all the way to the store to buy a whole bottle of glue; no, we had to kill that horse, and quick, before we didn’t feel like making a Popsicle house no more. I got out my shotgun and took another drink of that fire water, and headed out to the barn to kill that horse, to make the glue that we needed to make that Popsicle house that we had been talking about making since yesterday.

-Jesus Correa

Chico 2. I have to find the perfect place for Chico now at my apartment, among things that make me happy. 

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You Are NOT The Proud Owner of a Friedrich Schroder Sonnenstern

Last fall Jenny got a call from her dad that he had gotten a contract to clean out a 10,000 square foot warehouse, and wanted to give her the first chance to see if there was anything there she wanted. I've learned never to ignore the possibility that anything this man does might not turn into an adventure, so I was in. When we got there it was 10,000 square feet. Of ammonia jugs, bleach, curtain rods, water bottles, light bulbs, wire hangers... you see, the man had owned a surplus department store called Insurance Liquidators, and had a couple of decades of junk stockpiled. Now, I like bleach as much as the next guy, so I did grab a few jugs, but after all it only costs a dollar a gallon, so we wondered if it was even going to be worth the drive out there. Jenny's dad was trying to convince her to take all kinds of useless items, and I could see she was getting annoyed with him, so I used the opportunity to sneak off into another part of the warehouse, where I discovered an office. Finally, I thought, if any treasure has been left behind it would surely have been deposited here. Unfortunately, after a few minutes I was unable to unearth anything more interesting than a stack of old country music records. Oak Ridge Boys, Slim Whitman, the obligatory Engelbert Humperdink. Also, it was cold, and the kids were in the car. The treasure hunt had turned into an ordeal. I needed to find something, anything, to justify the drive out there. Then I saw this ...

The art you're looking at at first appears to be polyurethane, or plexiglass. I just thought it was tacky as hell and wanted it immediately for the 70's themed den we are planning downstairs. It also does have a sort of strange appeal, and is not without any artistic merit. But my first assessment was that it was a cheap piece of mass-produced decoration from the 1970's that he had ordered for the store. And it may very well be that. But it is signed. By an artist named Schroder. I put this out of mind for several months, but looking at it again a few weeks ago I vowed  to make a concentrated effort to discover the identity of the artist.

I was initially excited by the possibility that the piece might have been done by Friedrich Schroder Sonnenstern, a German Outsider artist who did work I find very unique and appealing. It fits roughly into his style, but it just wasn't right. I was NOT the proud owner of an original Friedrich Schroder Sonnenstern

Friedrich Schröder-Sonnenstern
Vitanovaseturine
1951/52
Michael Werner Gallery

Which left only one other Schroder in my Google search results... Henner Schroder. A glass artist. A glass artist? Surely this is a promising lead, I thought to myself. And since Henner Schroder is alive and working in the Northwest, I thought I had a good lead, and contacted him with a picture of my art. 

And he disavowed the piece. Said it wasn't his.

What choice do I have but to believe him? I was unable to find the signature of either artist to make a comparison, but here's a piece by Henner Schroder...

Now that Henner Schroder asserts the piece is not his, I can only go back to my original hypothesis that it's a rather cheap and tacky decorative piece ala 1980, the sort of piece someone who owned a discount retail store might acquire in volume. I asked around, and Insurance Liquidators did indeed on occasion sell home decorations and such. Is it possible there are a couple copies of  my Schroder floating around? Is it an original Schroder. Who is Schroder? I doubt now I will ever get an answer to any of these questions, but I like the work of both Schroders I discovered and would have been proud to possess one of their pieces. 

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Eight Strangest Popsicle Flavors

Some years ago I decided I wanted to paint for a while. Many of my friends are visual artists, and no one reads poetry. So I bought some canvases and acrylic paints at the art supply store, and I sat there trying to decide what it was I was even capable of painting. I settled on coming up with a series of Popsicles. The worst, most revolting flavors I could think of, then I tried to create colors that would represent those terrible fluids. I eventually painted 8 different canvases, and called the Poopsicles. I'm not going to put the original titles on those here because most of them were too disgusting for a mixed audience. I can probably get away with saying this first one was originally titled "Tim Russert's Thrombosis," and I thought that was pretty funny, until I had emergency heart surgery and now deal with the very real everyday threat of internal bleeding or blood clots. 

1) Tim Russert's Thrombosis

2) John Holmes

There was more to the title of this Poopsicle, but I'm not going to say it here

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3) Jenna Jameson

The title of this was what Jenna Jameson did in an audition before she became famous. 

4) The Turd That Killed Elvis

Elvis died on the throne. 

5) Vic Tayback's Toe Jam

Unlike most of the others, Vic Tayback's Toe Jam was the original title of this painting. I probably even tried to look up toe jam on the internet. What I did learn seemed more interesting. I learned early in the Zodiac Killer investigation, actor Vic Tayback was considered one of the leading suspects.

6) Oprah Winfrey's Vajayjay

I spent the most time on this one, pushing around small piles of acrylic paint to create the walls and folds of a woman's vagina. Charts and graphs were consulted. I took this seriously.

7) Garbage Dumpster Juice

I had to drive back to the apartment to take a picture of the last two Poopsicle Popsicles. This was the first one I painted. The juice at the bottom of a garbage dumpster in an alley behind four restaurants after Saturday night seemed like one of the most disgusting  things I could think of.



8) Jesse Garon Presley

I hated this even as I was painting it. The twin Popsicle sort of lent itself to this concept, but in concept and execution I dislike this piece. I need to do a couple more Poopsicles to replace the two I don't think are all that interesting. 

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C130 Hercules Illustration By Jenny Mathews

C130 

The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is a four-engine turboprop military transport aircraft designed and built originally by Lockheed, now Lockheed Martin. Capable of using unprepared runways for takeoffs and landings, the C-130 was originally designed as a troop, medical evacuation, and cargo transport aircraft. The versatile airframe has found uses in a variety of other roles, including as a gunship (AC-130), for airborne assault, search and rescue, scientific research support, weather reconnaissance, aerial refueling, maritime patrol, and aerial firefighting. It is now the main tactical airlifter for many military forces worldwide. Over 40 models and variants of the Hercules serve with more than 60 nations.

The C-130 entered service with U.S. in the 1950s, followed by Australia and others. During its years of service, the Hercules family has participated in numerous military, civilian and humanitarian aid operations. The family has the longest continuous production run of any military aircraft in history. In 2007, the C-130 became the fifth aircraft—after the English Electric Canberra, Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, Tupolev Tu-95, and Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker, all designs with various forms of aviation gas turbine powerplants—to mark 50 years of continuous use with its original primary customer, in this case, the United States Air Force. The C-130 is one of the only military aircraft to remain in continuous production for over 50 years with its original customer, as the updated C-130J Super Hercules.

C130 hand-drawn illustration, available from artist Jenny Mathews at Rockford Illustrating

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Cock Cannon

This is a painting I have titled "Cock Cannon," by Roni Golan. I remember seeing it at Spring Art Scene, and kept thinking about it, until a few weeks ago I just had to buy it. 

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Iced Cream Illustration Number 4

Illustration 4 From Iced Cream By Jesus Correa

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Let's Save Democracy By Jesus Abraham Correa VII

Let's Save Democracy, one of nine illustrations from the book Iced Cream, by Jesus Correa VII

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What a Revolution Is Not

What a Revolution is Not by Bradley Lastname

I wonder if it is a federal crime to deface money in China. 

I'd like to have more art in my study. But I have some. This piece is by Surrealist Bradley Lastname. 

I have other pieces by Andrew Davis, Jesus Correa, and Jenny Mathews. Then I have a few of my own Poopsicle paintings. 

For a lot of this day I've been trying to get VHS tapes back into the boxes they belong in. I frequently regret as we drive past buildings that used to be video stores that only a few years ago these stores were basically giving people money to take VHS tapes out of their stores. 

Also, I see people paying more than what would have been full price twenty years ago for vinyl records. I can't bring myself to take it seriously that I might oneday buy albums I bought when I was fifteen years ago again on vinyl. The train is gone. 

I'm having a calm day at the Downtown Office. Cleaning and organizing, trying to stumble into something meaningful to do or watch or listen to. Winter won't break. I may watch something from the Movie Macabre series and review it.  Pin It