art from the toilet?

Local artist Paste Eater and myself have a show coming up next month at the Visual Arts Collective. that there is the double-sided postcard for it. (crossing fingers.. the show is sort of last minute, in that we have had about a month's notice to prepare beforehand.) do come and check it out! i'll have a bunch of new stuff, some small works too, and hopefully milquetoast t-shirts for sale too.
the flying m in downtown boise also has a dog-themed group show coming up from august 7-28 that i've got a piece in. it's a silent auction for all pieces with half the sales going to the humane society. i'm not sure who all is participating in it yet.
and! i've got thirteen posters left from the josh ritter/andrew bird concert last monday (see below). i will be putting them up for sale on the milquetoast website in the next week or so. after those thirteen are gone, i can't promise there will be more. we'll see.

argentinians and the ever-ticking clock.

my favorite Argentinian family has just updated their site with the family's photos for year 2008. i've been watching them age for three years now, and every june 17th, i anxiously await the new photos to see how they've changed. wrinkles discerning, glasses appearing, hair disheveled.. i've also developed a school-girl crush on nicolás. happily, this year he appears to have married and the beginnings of a spin-off annual photo series has begun.
the assignment is intriguing in a way that is very un-american. the regarding, and essentially a resignation, of the passing of time and what it does to not just a single human body, but one family as a unit. i imagine this ritual as a jovial grabbing-time-by-the-throat and saying: hey, we can make this fun.
in other news, art-related, local musician jeremiah james just released a new cd that i was fortunate enough to do the artwork for. there's also a poster i designed for his cd release party floating around somewhere.... ah! there it is. (i hear he's selling these as well, so if you like it, you should track him down and get one.)
i also designed a poster for the knitting factory's josh ritter and andrew bird show coming up in july (see above). the poster idea is a city mouse/country mouse theme. i should be doing another run of posters for this show in the coming weeks and will probably by selling them off the store website very soon.

work. and michael douglas.

http://view.break.com/513310 - Watch more free videos

ever have one of these days? here we see an example of work-related stress. watch it, mouth agape, realizing that perhaps you and that crazy, loose cannon might not be that different. who hasn't wanted to smack some dolt upside the head at some point? most of us, however, possess a certain social barrier that rarely gets crossed.
what is baffling to me about this situation, and really any sort of unusual "situation," is the phenomenon of the instinctual relay from reality to media. people pull out their camera phones to witness this horrific display of one man gone mad max on the office. instead of fleeing from flying computer monitors and a tornado of tossed papers, they choose to watch the event from a falsely-perceived forcefield of media. instead of helping stop the insanity, they watch in curiosity.
disturbing.
(and here! with sound! in color!)
does this remind anyone of michael douglas in that movie "falling down"?

built to spill.

this is the poster i designed for the built to spill show at the visual arts collective. it's going to be a 21 and over show, unfortunately, so if you're of age, come out and support a great local gallery/venue/space.
a lot of local businesses/galleries/venues are being forced to become 21 and over due to puritanical and ancient liquor laws that restrict youth from being in the presence of adults who are consuming alcohol in public settings, or some lame-ass crap worded similarily. politicians seem to think that a business like the visual arts collective, or the big easy/knitting factory shouldn't have to rely on alcohol sales to establish itself. true.. in an ideal world. but that just seems unrealistic to me. it's not the reality of the situation and to ignore the reality is plain illogical and retarded. (it's just like saying that we shouldn't teach the youth about sex because then they might go out and get it on like a bunch of rabbits. gasp! but... haven't youth been doing it since, i don't know, the beginning of time? regardless of whether they are taught the facts about sex or not? so. don't you think it would be better to be educated about it?)
anyway... go to the show. tickets are available online, just follow the link to the VaC's myspace.

cuanto me allegro.

the pups celebrate their first birthday today. they both got a plate of lamb cuts and vegetables in a gravy sauce over their dry food in celebration. Andie has begun celebrating in other ways, however.. such as by humping Jackson's head to prove her dominance though she is half his size.
my old roomie lost her dog the other week. cuddles was older and battling kidney problems, and unfortunately did not make it. i can remember back on those nights in college, staying up late to finish projects, and cuddles would saunter into my room. she'd crawl right onto my sad camping mattress on the floor and situate herself under the covers before letting out a very content sigh. i know my roomie misses her pup, and my heart goes out to her.
queen cuddles, give my best to francis when you see her.
we traipsed all over camelsback park friday night after nichole's birthday bbq. it was dark, and we ran into three teenage girls on the hill who asked us if we were rapists.. we inquired as to their activity, and they said they were planning to ski down the side of the hill. now, this hill was quite steep. enough so to warrant some worry and morbid curiosity. they were young enough to not know any better and their parents of course had no idea what their precious princesses were up to. they'd had experience in skiing, but not on sand. brandon quite matter-of-factly says, "you know you're gonna get sand in your bindings, right?"
we were the reluctant parent league. and them our rebellious daughters. we tried humorously to make sure their decision to skate the mountain was a sound one.
are you drunk? no. do you have cellphones? yes. do your parents know what you're up to? ...of course not.
i hope you're aware of the fact that you could get quite a lot of sand in your buttcrack. (amused laughter.)
okay then! as you were!
the first run was a success, a test try, but kind of tame. we all concurred that she needed a higher starting point. the next height chosen on this steep sandy hillside was also a success. she flew past us, kicking up sandy dust and shortly after disappeared into the dark, screaming with equal parts joy and fear.. all we could see of her were the sparks flying from her skiis into the night air. one of her cholos ran down the hill to make sure she was okay, and five minutes later called the the cellphone of the girl still on the hill with us.
"what was ___ wearing? i don't see her."
we all laughed. it was near midnight and the only people in this park were either us, misbehaving or the methhead chick under the soggy pine tree who asked us if we were her friends.
"keep looking!" we scream, "she might be embedded in the crowd!"
the girl down the mountainside had no luck tracking down her friend for at least another two minutes, we started to gather a mild concern. suddenly, there's a shout from above. shockingly, lady fifteenyearold daredevil had climbed the stairs-- there were stairs?!-- to the top. her pal scampered to the top, and for some time they plotted out her start with cellphone light to illuminate the rocky path. it's fucking moguls up there. jokes are made in reference to the l word episode with bette and helena on the mountain.
"can you ski moguls??"
"no i cannot ski fucking moguls!"
katie b keeps pacing as we line the fence awaiting this sure disaster, repeating, "this is sooo not a good idea."
half the group decides to move to the other side of the path, worrying that as this girl rolls down this baby mountain hill, she will undoubtedly plow into us in a rally of pain. we are so into this moving of sides, that we barely take notice of the lady daredevil as she flies past us, nearly taking out the half of the posse that moved, at the speed of sand and light, her skiis setting a spark storm and screaming the entire way down.
"that was fucking awesome."

hey that's my bike.

i'm back from sleeping under my best pal's ceiling in the biggest little city.
i've been home a day and a half from my weekend excursion and i've had a hard time concentrating. as much as i love my job, it felt wrong getting up and going to work this morning. i feel i have become distracted from what it is i set out to do in the first place, especially in the last few months. my trip to reno/sanfrancisco seems to have jolted me into remembering what i wanted of myself and discovering that i have lost sight of what's important to me. i'm still working on things in my head- as the whole of my generation seems to be doing now. i'm not alone in being lost, but i feel i'm closer to seeing for the first time exactly what i want.
landing a few jobs in the last few days that are more along the lines of what i want to do be doing has given me some confidence. and being in a state of missing my best friend has also given me some perspective on what i can do to help fix that. where do i want to be? what do i want to do? more importantly, how can i make that a reality once i figure that out?
i took an online quiz for kicks, a 'which reality bites character are you?' and discovered, little shock to me, that i am troy dyer. well, mostly. except without the guitar and greasy hair. but that closed-off romantic, unrealized potential is wrapped up in here somewhere. if you discover my lelaina on some random rooftop smoking cigarettes, send her my way.

fatty fat fat.

in my unruly youth years ago, i remember sitting in the back of the bus on the way to some band competition with the tubas and the drum corps. we were harassing head drum major leah for some reason i can't recall, most likely in response to some insult or comment she made about the drum corps or any one of its members. and to boot, she was on the other bus in the lane next to us, so it was not as though she could hear our insults anyway. i'm sure she deserved at least ten percent of the abuse, but all i remember is chris georgeson spelling out "fatty fat fat" in christmas sticker-decals on the window of the bus for her to read as we cruised past. dallis shrieked out soon after that she wouldn't be able to read it because it would appear backwards to the other bus. the rest of the drum corps scrambled to correct it in time for leah to see. whether or not leah saw it-- though she was not "fatty fat fat" in technical terms-- i can't say for certain. she glared at us anyway.
but the sound of my pals voices crying out "fatty fat fat" still rings very clear in my older ears. it was all in adolescent fun anyway.
i'm posting some photos of the bathroom i haven't before, including a detail of the fatty fat fat rat in honor of my chubby little, frozen rat i finally buried today. and thank you to my dad who dug the hole.

finish. repent.

i managed to pull out a finish on the mural work at the VaC around three this morning. i don't have progress shots for the mice above the mirrors because i painted them in one night. there's nothing like the pressure of knowing they open tomorrow and i have no more time to debate on the finer details. on the plus side, i spent the last three years observing my rat, so research was not necessary-- and i draw a pretty mean mouse when pressed. i have wanted to get back to my rodent roots and i had a funny little idea of a chubby mouse and the word "repent" scrawled into my tiny sketchbook that i wanted to turn into something.

the candies look delightful. i'm more than pleased that this is finally done. i also regretted that i didn't have a DeathStall for Pancho Villa, so i snuck him in behind the door.