Last year I did the program cover for the Encyclopedia Show and my topic was The Tower of Babel. According to one source I came across in my research, the last word spoken before the tower fell was "sack." It was fun to use the characters to illustrate something I normally wouldn't draw and play around with layering. The Tower contains layers of  pages of a dictionary.

Truth

Sadly, this doodle is more true than I'd like to admit.

Myths and stories

A bit ago I was talking to someone and I realized just how much I still think back to all the Greek mythology I learned in high school (not to mention my continued love of classic movies like Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans) and so it only made sense to start a series based on the crazy stories from various mythologies. I mean do you realize how many things Zeus turned himself into in order to have his way with women? Poor Hera, protector of marriage and she was married to the biggest man whore on Mt. Olympus.
Here are some of my early brainstorming from this new project. And a picture of my helper this morning.

Late night dancing.

 More little moments from recent sketchbooks. I have come to think of these doodles, and the finished drawings too, as though you've caught a glimpse of secret impromptu late night dance parties. They are made up of overheard conversations and snip-its of inner monologues, and of course lots of dancing.

I draw jewels now.

That's all. Funny how long it took me to discover how much I enjoy what is basically a bunch of triangles grouped together. Loving the bright colors on the bright paper.

More little collages

Just playing around with some ideas. I am currently engaged in a doodle war with one of my coworkers at the museum. Which basically just means that we pass little drawings back and forth a couple times a week. But calling it a war sounds more dramatic and exciting. Adds a little sass. So this little cat piece was one of my contributions to the battle. At this point I am not sure who is winning, but really that isn't the point.

Making marks

I never know what to call these drawings. For me they are like expanded doodles. Explorations of color, line and mark making. I have long been interested in our need to organize information and label it in order to comprehend the world, and my drawings often play with ambiguity and this fascination with organization. Repetition of patterns, map-like images, mazes of lines, color and multiple layers to evoke a sort of fabricated environment. These drawings are an exploration of familiar gestures and almost archetypal shapes and are informed by found images and topographical images.

 

 

 

Wee little collages

I got some artsy fashion magazine from work that was old and they were going to recycle. It had some great textures and colors and I was inspired to do some little collages. I was just messing around, but I quite liked the results. Of course I had to use some triangles and my favorite witchy cloud.

Sketchbooks galore

One of the things I love about my practice is that I have consistently kept a working sketchbook (filled with basically everything I am doing in life) for almost a decade now. These books become a record of my ideas, sketches, grocery lists, calendars, silly ideas, songs I am obsessed with and so on. Its rather rewarding to look back and see how characters have developed over time, along with my general aesthetic and style.

Work in progress

My work was featured in the Ground Teeth group show at Offwhite gallery about a month ago. It was an exhibition all about anxiety. So I created these drawings with my little guys worried and anxious about various things. Like flesh wounds and the Titanic filled with bears and of course the meaning of the art we make.

Breakfast of Champions

A good friend of mine put out a little zine on the topic of breakfast and so I submitted the following drawings. It was kind of nice to work in grey scale again. Mmm... pancakes. 

I stand for pie!

One of my projects from last summer was making a flag for the Temporary Allegiance project at University of Illinois at Chicago. An ongoing project that originated in 2004, a 25 foot flag pole was installed on the UIC campus and artist Philip von Zweck now runs the project in front of the College of Architecture and the Arts building.  This space is open to anyone in the greater-Chicago area to use for one week. For my week, I decided to make a pie flag.  So I drew a giant slice of berry pie.

Because who doesn't love pie?  More information about the project and how to sign up can be found on their website:http://www.uic.edu/aa/college/gallery400/temporaryallegiance/project.htm

Long overdue post

It may seem as though I feel off the face of the internet, but that doesn't mean I have been madly working on art and other craftiness. Because I have been madly working. I promise. Since last March or whenever I last posted I have done a few small art shows around Chicago and had a handful of commissions. But I am back!  And ready to post lots of images of things I have been working on.

Stickers and buttons

So for the show on Saturday I made a bunch of buttons and stickers to hand out and sell. These are some of the designs I came up. I particularly love the last little guy with his snaggle teeth.

Shameless self promotion and some new characters

I am gonna be in an art show in a few weeks. Here are the details:

Lion VS Gorilla Presents: Mar(t)ch Madness!

Saturday, March 19 at 8:00pm-12:00am

Fulton Street Collective, 2000 W. Fulton St. Chicago, IL

Mar(t)ch Madness is an art show and event conceived in the spirit of a certain famous collegiate basketball tournament, and presented by Lion VS Gorilla. The show will begin with artwork from 16 established and emerging artists. Over the course of four bracketed rounds, viewers will vote to narrow down the playing field to their two favorite artists, and those artists will then compete for the championship trophy. We believe that art should be rowdy, that people should fight for it, and that viewing should never be passive. In short: this is going to be a fun, high-energy event, and an opportunity for members of Chicago's arts community to come together and celebrate some of the amazing work being produced in this city.

Doors open at 8pm. The first round of voting, along with artists' introductions, will begin at 8:30 sharp.

-Suggested donation: $5 at the door.
-Refreshments will be available.
-Part of the proceeds will go to benefit The Howard Brown Health Center.

Also I have a new breed of creature if you will that I have been drawing for about a month or two now and I thought it was high time these masked guys were formally introduced to the world. So here they are along with a bunch of other random doodles from my sketchbook.






If you ever see some girl madly drawing on the bus whilst listening to her iPod in the mornings, that is probably me.

Part of an Invite

This is the beginnings of the invite for a holiday party some friends and I are hosting this holiday season. Basically it was an excuse to play around with some new ideas and these awesome opaque pens I have been totally in love with lately. I was trying to go for wintery without being too Christmas-y or anything.

Cultural references

So I created this series last night. Inspired by a weekend's worth of conversations and the things we talk about at parties or dinner and how absurd some of it is. Oh and of course the wide world of the Internet and commercials too.