Here they are! All in one place!

I’m very excited by this new piece, which is now hanging in my kitchen. Surrealism should be a part of everyone’s morning meal! Pop a few paintings in the toaster and break out the jam! It was a fun challenge making all the art history parodies. I also did something new by incorporating birch plywood shapes for the butter and jam as well as the backing piece to create a muli-layered effect.

The little tub of margarine is a play on Magritte’s “Treachery of Images” as well as his frequent use of the unidentified man in a bowler hat. The French should translate to “This is not butter.”

The jar of jam here with the melty strawberry is a play on Dali’s “Persistence of Memory.” “The Persistence of Strawberry” still makes me laugh.

This work is a play on Marcel Duchamp’s “L.H.O.O.Q”, which was a play on da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, hence the moustache and goatee. I was really happy with the way this part came together. Who wouldn’t be intimidated at the idea of recreating such a famous work? The painting behind it is a play on Man Ray’s famous photograph, “Ingre’s Violin”

Lots of nerdy art history humor here. Much more work to come!

The bird is done!

This was a fun project and I tried some new things in it, like the speech bubble. Now that it’s finished and hanging on the wall, I’m not sure how I feel about it as a whole. Should the bird be smoking? How should I be using the border? What kind of statement am I actually making here? (Consider that I just made this because I thought it was fun, not with a particular message in mind.)

More to come!

A new cut-out for a new year. A bomber birdie behaving boldly. Too much tobacco?

No one can see you try and eat a banana through your spacesuit.

Some works in progress. Cups and saucers! Pies and astronauts!

November 4th-26th, come see a real live artwork of mine on display at the Shoe Factory Co-op’s November Show “Once Upon a Coffee Table”! The opening is First Friday, November 4th from 5-9pm.

The Shoe Factory is located at 250 N. Goodman St. in Studios 212, 212A & 215. Hope to see you there!

Some things never change… even in the afterlife.

Life post-camp is shaping up. It’s taking some time to remember how to do things: be a teacher, manage a schedule, and be an artist. I’m happy to show some visible progress on this last item! In the past month I’ve purchased a few new toys (a scroll saw and a random orbit sander) and I’ve been working steadily on these two simple wood animals. I’ve also recently picked up a ton of scrap wood, including some heavily painted 1x12s, that should keep me occupied for some time.

Now I just need a space to work in. I can’t just go and produce pounds of sawdust in my tiny apartment. Well, I could, but I wouldn’t recommend it. With the winter coming along at a swift Rochester pace and lots of cool ideas piling up in my sketchbook, the birdie and rhino you see here won’t keep me satisfied for long.

And for my next tool? I’m thinking jigsaw!

People have been asking me what kind of wood working I would like to do now that I’m back from camp. Frankly, I haven’t been able to come up with a simple answer.

I recently purchased a used scroll saw and am thinking about where I can set it up to start generating lots of sawdust. I liked the works I did at camp this summer and want to follow that line of work, especially since it means accumulating lots of noisy tools.

These works remind me of Mr. Atomic, two artists I remember from Ohio, who create surreal and trippy comic illustrations out of wood. These initial wood illustrations are much simpler, but I can’t wait to see how they develop.