Show flicks and the hidden basement

Rose sent me some flicks from the opening...here we go. They are mostly crowd shots or shots of me, and I don't think anyone wants to see too many photos of me...






This is me looking really surprised at something... The girl in the back is Patti, one of my best buds... She works across the street from my studio and always brings me coffee or gatorade or company...




This is my friend Rose who took all of the photos, except this one I guess... No, wait, I think I borrowed her camera and took them myself... I can't remember. Oh, Rose and her friend Steph run a company together, you should go to the website and buy things... www.p0isson.com Oh, I see that they have a blog now too...

http://p0isson.blogspot.com/

I'm not good with computers and I don't know how to make hyperlinks...



Hmmm...what happened this week? Oh, Nicolina worked her first shift as a paid studio assistant, except I didn't have any cash to pay her, but I'm good for it...or rather I hope to shit I'll be good for it within the next couple of weeks... uh, sorry Nicolina, you are important to me...

Look how happy she looks:



Then Nicolina cleaned my studio and found a bloody tooth on the floor. My first reaction was to check my mouth, but it was all good. Then I thought maybe it was Andrews from when he got hit by that car, but I saw the teeth he lost and neither looked like this... So Nicolina found a bloody tooth on the floor, and we have no idea where it came from...



A couple of friends from across the hall came over and said they found a hidden basement in the building. This was very exciting news, I've been in the building for about 3 years in total, and I never heard anything about a hidden basement... So we explored it:








So after all that walking we found an old office with rotten cans of coke in the fridge. And there was a desk and in the desk we found 2 big boxes of condoms, and an unopened bottle of chocolate body...stuff. I don't know what its called, that stuff that people put on each other and have sex with it... Chocolate body paste? Lotion?



Beside the desk there was a little hobbit sized door that lead to a scary dark corridor with ladders to climb:







I also drew a bunch, But I haven't finished any of the drawings yet, I have a few on the go at once, getting some small paper drawings ready for the Toronto Internation Art Fair, which is in late October I think...

Oh, I sent 5 pieces to that Strange Brew show in Seatlle that I posted the flyer for. Two of the pieces I sent were small watercolours, 4" x 6"... Its the first time I've really used watercolours, uh, I'm not brilliant, but I wanted to post them in here for some variation... The scans look pretty fucked up, this was from before we calibrated my scanner... They are brother and sister Coral Gnomes...



Ok, thats all I got for now...

Catching up...

Birds are Terrifying Creatures comes down next week, thanks to everyone who came out. The opening went well, art was seen, booze was drank...Here are some images of the work in the show... I didn't take any photos at the opening, but my buddy Rose did and I'll post them once she sends them over...

It was a crazy summer. Carolyn and I went our seperate ways somewhere along the way, Andrew and I crashed in the studio almost every night, I eventually moved in with my buddies Team Macho and I'm just getting settled in now... When I'm working hard on a show I tend to neglect every other element in my life, so now I'm done, but my phone has been shut off, I missed the last 5 months rent on my studio, and I've got 2 collection agencies calling me up. Well, they were calling me up before my phone got cut off, now they are mailing me letters. The letters are getting kind of scary, the latest one just says this:

WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY WE HAVE NOT HEARD FROM YOU.

PLEASE ADVISE YOUR INTENTIONS.

I don't even know what that means! When you call the phone company, the music that they play when you are on hold is really relaxing love song type stuff. When you call the collection agency, they play terrifying German horror music. But yeah, this is the fourth summer in a row that I have had a solo at the end, and the fourth time this sort of thing has happened. But once some payments come in from work things sort themselves out usually...

First off I want to thank my co-op student Nicolina Cloutier, shes an illustration student from Sheridan College. She worked really hard this summer helping Andrew and I in the studio, and did all of the shitty jobs that we didn't want to do and barely even complained about them. I'm hiring her on as an assistant starting this week, so now she gets to do a whole bunch of shitty jobs around the studio but she gets paid... But yeah, she was awesome to be around and pretty funny and I'm really excited that she'll still be around the studio this fall...

Here is a photo of her buying me socks and underwear from Winners:



I'll spare you the boredom of a million random studio photos, but heres a good one... A week before the show had to be finished Andrew got hit by a car. And not just a little hit, but face-smashes-the-windshield-missing-teeth sort of hit. I'm not sure if "hit" is the proper word, I think "smoked" is more accurate.

So he gets knocked out and when he comes to, he finds his teeth, puts them in his pocket, and immediately calls me and says: "um...I'm not sure if I'll be able to come into work today. I just got hit by a car. I'm about to go into emergency, but I'll give you a call as soon as I get out. Depending on what time it is maybe I can still come in and get some work done." What a selfish guy, he should have came into the studio FIRST, finished his work for the day, and THEN gone into emergency...



What a beautiful face...

okok, so here is a bunch of images of the work from the show...











The piece that looks like a grey scale doesn't translate very well, its actually a grid of 7780 bird portraits. I've posted the last image of the grids before, we released limited edition offset lithos of them at the show...

After the show I relaxed a bit, drew a bit, and went "up north" to chop some firewood...here are a few random photos of "up north":












As soon as I got back from the cabin, I got an email that my friend Crystal Yin ( www.flapflapfly.com ) and her sister Michelle was in town. I use the term friend loosely, we like each others work and have been emailing each other off and on for a few years, but had never met, but get along pretty well over the world wide inter web. What I wasn't prepared for however was her being the prettiest girl in the world and I had just spent 7 days in the woods and i was totally thrown off... I tried to show them the city but I was really nervous and tripped a lot and made long rambling sentences that made very little sense. Worst tourguide ever. But yeah, check out her site, her and Michelle make Sweet Toofs, they are really quite cool...

I didn't really get any photos, except for photos of their backs of them looking up at the CN Tower. Since 1976, it has been the world's tallest free-standing structure on land, though it will most likely lose this title to the still under construction Burj Dubai, which surpassed the CN Tower's height on September 12, 2007. The tower is the signature icon of the city, attracting more than two million international visitors annually. I took that whole last part from Wikipedia...




Ok, so that catches everything up to yesterday... So this time for sure, I'm going to update once a week! Except a drawing takes more than a week to complete so I don't know what I'll write about...I guess not every post will be art related...

Strange Brew

I'm in a group show tonight in Seattle entitled Strange Brew. Its curated by Robert Hardgrave and features a number of his favourite Canadian artists... I'm a fan of all of these guys as well and feel pretty lucky to be included in this group. Plus Thesis is in it! Thesis! That guy is pretty much the best as far as I'm concerned, I just wish I could get over to the west coast to check out the work in person. But if you are in the area, check it out. Its at BLVD gallery, 6-10, and the show runs for a month. Thesis!

Birds are Terrifying Creatures

Ok, so my show opens up tomorrow night at LE. Gallery, I'm pretty stoked and pretty exausted. Wil (the director of the gallery) and I hung the show yesterday, and one of my favourite artists in the city, Julie moon was getting set up in the front room when I left...

Its going to be a fun night, so its tomorrow, friday september 7th... Oh shit,, the day after that is my mom's birthday! Unfoortunately for her I think she's getting art for her birthday this year...

1183 Dundas street west, check out the LE site for more details...

www.le-gallery.ca





This is from the other day, Andrew likes taking photos of me when I fall asleep in ridiculous positions, like when I'm sitting in a chair, but he doesn't realize thats how feelings get hurt...





Theres a lot of people I have to thank for helping me finish the show, I had an awesome co-op student named Nicolina for the whole summer, I want to hire her for the school year as an assistant if I can... Anyway, yes, I have a lot of people to thank and many pictrures to post, and I'll do that after the show...

Oh, one more thing, I'm releasing my first offset litho prints at the show, get in touch with the gallery if you are interested...

Nick