Monday, September 24, 2007

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...

Friday, September 14, 2007

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!


Thursday, September 6, 2007

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

Friday, August 24, 2007

mostly done the show and mostly still alive...

Yesyes, I've been locked up in the studio the last couple of months, but I took most of the work to the framer yesterday, Andrew and I got proper sleep last night, we only have a couple of pieces left to finish, and they are both half done... I'm going to put a full post of the work and the process soon, but here are a bunch of random studio photos from the last little bit, just cause I want to put something on here before I head out of the house...



















Wednesday, July 11, 2007

I've been living in the studio the last few weeks, putting as much time as possible into the new show... I don't have the internet there so I'm slacking with the blog as usual and going crazy as usual but heres a picture of a puppy climbing a tree!

Sunday, May 6, 2007

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...

Friday, May 4, 2007

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".