getting started...

Carolyn moved back from Italy! Its been a long 8 months... I'm a cheeseball and here are some photos of her...







We are renting a room together north of Chinatown. We painted it bright turquoise and I have a little table I can draw on:







It's attached to an alley with some pretty awesome grafitti in it, heres one of my favourites.



Now that I'm done the work for Volta I'm getting set up to start the work for my solo show in September. Here's Andrew Wilson, this will be his 4th summer working for me as an assistant:



His first task was to clean my studio. Its become quite a wreck, it took him two days to get the job done. Heres a before and after:





Then he got excited and played with a roll of bubble wrap for awhile:



Then we hung the bubble wrap from the ceiling and glued his head to it:



Carolyn's also been around the studio. She'll be running the mediumphobic.com store from now on. We're launching a new site and stocking it up with lots of new merch. I'll post it on here when the new site is done. I notice that I'm writing in short and simple sentences. It must be because I'm sleepy.



Now that I have an apartment finally and not couch surfing or sleeping at the studio everynight, my schedual is a bit more stable so i hope to post something on here every sunday. Except I'm keeping all of the work for my solo show under wraps until the opening, and all I'm working on is the solo show until then, so the updates may be lame... i don't know what I'll write about... I'll figure something out...

work for Volta in Switzerland

Sorry for the lack of updates, for the last little while I've just been hunched over my desk finishing my work for Volta which is coming up soon in Switzerland, so I haven't had that much to post. I've got black and white scans of the work here, the actual drawings are black on cream (like my previous sketchbook-style posts), but the colour scans are on my friend's computer, all I have on mine for now are these... I'll post the colour ones on my website shortly...

There are six pieces, each section of the grid is roughly the size of a nickle, and the series is entitled: "The 528 Fiercest Creatures in the Animal Kingdom".

fact file 2

SLUGINE

Male Slugine

Female Slugine

Appearance:

The appearance of these stout, dwarfish creatures varies greatly between the sexes. The male stands upright on two legs, possesses a distinct, almost humanoid upper and lower half, and has a think slimy tail protruding from its lower back. The female is much more slug-like in structure, possessing a more slender equine head. Her body is tubular with three sets of arms protruding from her front side. This seemingly more primitive body structure does not hinder her mobility; keeping her six arms firmly tucked to her side, she can make her way much as a serpent does, and at an impressive pace.


Temperament and Social Behaviour:

Slugines live in secluded mating couplets in dense swamp-like terrain. They are slow moving and rather docile creatures, but that is not to say they are dim-witted or overly vulnerable to attack from predators. When threatened, the slugine secretes a white mucus from four openings on its body: one behind each of its ears, one above its genitalia, and one roughly half-way down the underside of its tail. This mucus forms a toxic barrier around its entire body which repels most enemies.


Diet:

Slugines spend much of their day gorging on whatever they can find or catch, including fish, amphibians, reptiles, small mammals, medium-sized mammals, carrion, non-poisonous fungi, moss, shrubbery, small trees, scorpions, crickets, non-poisonous insects, crustaceans, berries, various herbs, tree bark, low-flying birds, and bananas.


Mating habits:

Slugines pair up at an early age and mate for life. They will produce between 1 to 3 offspring. Both parents play an equal part in caring for and raising the young. The children will usually live with the parents as a family unit for up to 15 years, at which point they leave to find mates of their own. Notably, the youngest child will always remain with their parents to tend to them in their old age.


Life Cycle:

After a gestation period of just 6 to 8 days, the female slugine births a small moist larva. This creature, in no way displaying any horse-like qualities, suckles from the mucus glands of both its mother and father. It will molt several times during this stage in its development, growing quite large and fat. The sex of the larva at this state is indeterminable. After about 6 months it will nestle itself into a crevice or burrow, spin a cocoon and enter the pupa stage of its life. The chemistry of the fibers of this cocoon contains the same toxins the poisonous mucus that the adults secrete . Thus the pupa is quite safe from predators and parasites during this time. The pupa period lasts for exactly 28 months . Knowing that their child is perfectly safe, the parents will sometimes leave the nest for weeks on end and visit other nearby slugine families. When the offspring emerges from its cocoon, it does so as a fully-formed slugine, but roughly a quarter the size of an adult .

Political Affiliations:

No slugines have been known to make any public political alliances, although an orphaned brother and sister were once adopted by the acclaimed war veteran of the Queen's Navy, the HMS Minotaur.

recent press

I haven't updated in a month, I've just been hunched over my desk working on some drawings for an upcoming artfair, so there hasn't been much worth mentioning... I thought i should give the blog some sort of update though. This might be boring as shit, but here are some recent magazines I've had work in... Oh wait, I just thought of a better update! Wait, no, I'll post the better update next time... The photos on this post are not too crisp, I took them with my camera phone, but it was a litle too dark I think...

A little bit back I was in a Spanish mag called Belio, it had like 100 illustrations in it, a lot of them were pretty sick... I didn't take a photo of my work in it though.


The next mag blew my mind, its a Brazilian teen magazine marketed towards young ladies. Its got stuff like fashion tips and photos of cute boys and horoscopes. Its cool that they have an art section though...




Here's a page from the mag to give you an idea of what it's like...


The most recent mag is from Taiwan, a publication called DPI. The woman that I was talking to from the mag was named Lulu, and she was amazing. I'd be all like: "Sorry I gave you these images 2 weeks late..." and she was all like: "It doesn't matter! Meeting artists makes my life worth living! I love everything!" I'm not making fun of her at all, she blew my mind, I imagine that going on a date with her would be like chilling out at Pee-wee's Playhouse for the afternoon... Also, I got 8 pages, I've never had that large of a spread before...










The last mag is out of Paris, its the first time I've had a cover, so that felt pretty good. They never sent me a free copy though, so I had to take a photo of me holding it in a magazine store cause it costs $30. One of my friends felt sorry for me and bought me a copy in the end... In the magazines defense, they may have sent me a copy, theres a really good chance that I sent them the wrong address...


Ok, I'll be the first to say that this entry sucks. I'm not trying to be all like: "I'm in magazines, I'm cool", but i don't know what I'm trying to be "all like." I spend almost every waking moment sitting at a desk listen to Star Wars audiobooks and I haven't had sex in months, I know I'm not cool! I guess I just needed something to post because its been a bit, and I'm not done the work for the fair yet... Oh, but tomorrow's post will be better, it will have slugs and horses n it! OK, back to my desk to draw...

rewind pt5

This is an old post that I started but never finished cause I couldn't get to a mac to upload photos from my camera onto...

Since I've come back to Canada I've:

- Lived with my parents long enough to finish some work for the Armory:






Here are some pics of the installation at the Armory... I didn't make it down there in person, thanks to my buddies Shauna and Brett for the photos...




Thats Zak's stuff on the right hand side there, I really wish i had a better shot of it...

- Set up a new studio in Toronto:






Here's my studiomate Tami, the room is split down the middle...She's got that red-eye thing going on in this pic... Wait, no, the picture is black and white. Why is this picture black and white?


This is the view from the fire escape, the studio is on the 8th floor of an industrial-ish building...


- Taken in some Jello Wrestling:






- Slept on a lot of couches/floors/other people's beds...










I've also drawn almost non-stop, i've posted a bit, and I'll keep posting more...

On the Road of Knives

I finished my new On the Road of Knives page... again, it's a little small, so click on the image...


It's a little bit sexy, check out all the action here:

www.roadofknives.com

I'm sleepy and I can't figure out how to make that a link, just copy and paste it...