Been busy beyond all point of reason

Howdy everyone. It's been a while between updates, and that's because I have been absurdly busy prepping for upcoming shows and getting things in order to leave town for 4 months.

I'm leaving Seattle in about three weeks to ride my bike across the country! I'm flying myself (and my faithful steed) down to southern California and am going to be biking from San Diego to somewhere in Florida. If you have friends in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida and possibly Georgia, I am actively looking for couches, floors or yards to sleep in. I'm also extremely interested in checking out art and artists along the way, so if you know of any artist colonies, intentional communities, enclaves of treehouses, or anything generally strange and at the margins, do let me know.

I've been working on a series of paintings that incorporate some of my favorite book passages about travel and wanderlust, and am going to be selling a limited print run to partially fund my trip. I'm **hoping** to have everything up and running for the prints to go on sale next week. More on that later, but for now here in a sneak peek of the first print, the text is from an essay by Barbara Kingsolver.

In other announcements, big thanks to everyone who came out to my opening at Monster and made the show such a great success. I'm happy to report that every piece in the show sold! In large part that is why I have been a bit incommunicado on the blog front-- I've been in my studio finishing paintings for XX: A Tribute to the Female Chromosomes, a group show opening next Friday at Bherd Studios. It's an all ladies show featuring work from myself, 179, Jenn Brisson, Sly Cooley, Devon Urquhart and Redd Walitzki.

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And here's a sneak peek at one of the pieces in the show. I've been slowly but surely creeping up to working on a larger scale, this will be the first time I'm showing some of my larger pieces.

Opening this Saturday at Monster, delicious dumplings, a mural

Getting anything productive done during the Thanksgiving-New Year holiday corridor is more or less impossible. It's like six weeks are just lost to the Bermuda Triangle. Somehow, in spite of feeling like time has been slipping away, I have managed to make all sorts of new paintings during the last few months, and I'm going to show them all to you this Saturday! I'll be showing my new works at Monster Art and Clothing as part of the Ballard art walk, and there will be catered snacks, a guest aerialist, and general shennanigans all around.

I'm also currently showing with Justin Kane Elder at newly opened restaurant Revel/Quoin in Fremont. Here are a few reasons to go check it out:
1. The bar makes an amazing Manhattan
2. The architecture is beautiful
3. Justin's work is incredible and you will be totally in awe of the fact that it is all spraypaint
4. DUMPLINGS! RIDICULOUSLY DELICIOUS DUMPLINGS! Granted I am biased because dumplings are pretty much a religious experience in my book, but seriously go eat them.

In other art updates, I'm hopefully going down to Portland next week to paint a mural. It's been a looooonnnngggg time since I last worked on a mural, and I'm super excited at the prospect of working on a large scale again! There's something extremely satisfying about painting directly on a wall and creating something that interacts so directly with viewers.

Woo hoo painkiller stupor!

I sprained my ankle at my open studio last week-- surprisingly it did not happen during the dance party or pullup contest, but rather while I was walking down my hallway. My pride was hurt just as much as my ankle, and I have been sprawled on my couch working my way through my friend's leftover vicodan stash (thanks Rebeccar! You're the best!) while absent mindedly sketching out some new pieces.

I have some pieces opening at Urban Light Studio's 2nd Anniversary group show tomorrow night, looks like it's going to be a solid lineup and a lot of fun!

In other news, I recently interviewed Stacey Rozich (one of my absolute favorite Seattle artists!) for Redefine Magazine. We were both really happy with how the interview came out, it turns out we have boatloads of common interests and motivations, including a deep and abiding love of detailed Eastern European folk garb. Check out the interview here!

It seems like my work has been going in a bit of a new direction of late, and I'm excited to see where the series I'm currently working is going to end up. To give you an idea of this aesthetic shift, here's a work in a progress peek of the giant painting I've been working on for... er... a really long time now:

Interview on Proxart Blog

I recently chatted with the folks over at Proxart magazine about my work, you can read the interview here.

I've got a bunch of things lined up in the next couple months and have been locked in my studio a lot of late. Here's a sneak peek, I've been using lots of triangles of.

A more designy project

I've been working on a rather disparate assortment of projects of late and have been doing some more design-based work than usual. Here's a peek at a poster design I just finished for 826 Seattle.I had a lot of fun working in an intentionally childish style. My color palette a few years leaned heavily towards bright blues and oranges, and I made myself intentionally move towards more muted tones because I wasn't happy with the way my color choices made everything I made seem cartoonish. That said, I'm still extremely drawn to crazy bright colors (one of my studio walls is painted a lovely color named Tequila Sunrise), so it was nice to have a project where wince-worthy hues were totally in keeping with the style I was going for.

Right now I'm also working on a somewhat secretive project. I've always wanted to delve more into comics and graphic novels, and I'm making a comic book for my friend's really awesome project that you should submit to. I'm a little worried I'm not going to finish in time because I have a lot on my plate at the moment, but all I did manage to use this project to justify buying myself the complete Calvin and Hobbes boxed set as "reference material." Turns out that was an extremely unproductive idea because now I'm re-reading the entirety of Calvin and Hobbes to procrastinate on all my painting deadlines.

Running with this Russian fairytale theme

I just finished this piece a few days ago, not quite sure what's going on in it, but it seems like even more of a straight illustration than most of my stuff. I think I'm writing a story but have yet to figure out what the plot is.