rewind pt1

So I think I'll start Skeleton Hug with a little recap of what I've been up to for the last few months, cause I think I've been into some sorta interesting stuff...

So lets start it off with this past summer... I spent the entire summer getting ready for my first solo in NYC. I was excited and terrified in equal parts. I really wanted to do a great job, pushed it pretty hard, and I started to go a little crazy... I wanted to do somewhere between 45 to 50 pieces for the show... which meant sleeping 3 or 4 hour nights, Andrew (my summer assistant) worked 5 days a week, but slept in the studio every night. He'd show up monday morning for work, and leave friday night; we pulled two mattresses into the space and slept there every night in short shifts... Basically this summer was hell. Everytime Carolyn would visit she'd take pity on me, and help with the show or clean the bathroom or something...

I wish I took more studio shots during this time, the whole experience was crazy. Here's a couple, it appears that andrew and I decided to make masks that day. Some parts of the summer are a bit blurry. Here's another pic... I was broke for most of the summer, but sold some pieces out of the blue which meant getting paid... I only get paid every now and then, so when a payday comes out of the blue like that, its reason to celebrate. Here's Andrew holding $10 000 cash. It seems cool, but once I paid off all my debt and bought some new supplies, I had enough left over for a couple months of rent, a few pairs of socks, and a cup of coffee... Andrew had a good time with it though. Andrew's pretty much the best guy ever, I pay him cause he helps me out in the studio, but I'd probably also pay him just to hang around the studio and sit on my couch and drink tea and stuff. I think he brings good luck.

Ok, so we finished the show, Carolyn moved to Italy, and now its time for the opening. The show was at Fredericks and Freiser Gallery, I'm repped by them, but I hadn't had a solo until now... A few of us took a bus down to NYC for the show, it was an awesome experience, we stayed in a really creepy hostal that would only accept cash for some reason. It had a Malibu theme, which was weird.

Here are some photos of the installation, the opening, the party afterwards.

The gallery's installation shots.

Me infront of the two centerpieces.

Andrew x 8

Opening reception

At the after party I got drunk and creeped out some girls.

When I drink, I always think its a good idea to give the devil horns in photos, then the next morning I look at the photos, and I look like an asshole in every one. So yeah, I look like a penis in this picture, but I like it cause Zak Smith is in it, he got me into the gallery a couple of years back. The guy beside me is Ian, he's a good dude who makes me smile.

This is Maia, my best bud in NYC, we met about 4 or 5 years ago at my very first group show down there. She gets absolutely wasted every single time we hang out. She danced a lot this night.

Ok, so thats it, the end of the first recap... hmmm... I think my blog might be lame, I can't tell if this stuff is in anyway interesting or not. The show was fun, but I was happy it was over, I think I slept for two weeks straight after the opening... I'll leave it off with a few scans of work in the show...

On the Road of Knives

A few weeks ago, two of my buddies/favourite artists, Shawn Cheng and Zak Smith asked me to join a comic project that they have been working on... heres the description they have on their website:

"So this is how it works: Zak draws something. Shawn draws something that will fight it. Zak draws his thing fighting back. Shawn draws his thing fighting back and maybe tripping over a statue. Then maybe Zak's thing kills Shawn's with the statue's head. Then Shawn draws a new thing. Zak's surviving thing attacks it. And so on. Zak and Shawn got things started, and now Nick has joined the fray. Though not exactly an exquisite corpse, it will be exquisite, and there will be many corpses."

http://www.roadofknives.com

enjoy.

welcome to the skeleton hug...

Ok, so I signed up for a blog... I never thought I would, I always thought that Blogs were all about complaining about your parents and talking about the new Saves the Day album...

Then I got addicted to reading Jeff Soto's blog, and through that I found a bunch of other really great art blogs, and I've sort of realized that a blog can do things that a regular website can't do very well: really give you an idea of what an artist's practice is like, show the work that didn't really turn out, give you an idea of what they do on their time off, that sort of stuff... So yeah, here's Skeleton Hug, the (other) online space of me... I'll be posting pics, studio shots, links and shows I like, stuff like that... Hopefully I'll update it every few days or at least weekly. Ok, here's a picture!:

Here's another picture!:


OK, here are two more pictures: