ONA ZETTA I just came across these videos directed by my good friend Jorge Torres, they're from a dvd he did set to the music we made as a band called ONA ZETTA. Probably the most rewarding major musical collaboration I've ever been a part of, Ona Zetta started as 4 track recordings Jorge did on his own, then we imported them into my old Power PC computer and I rearranged them a little (or a lot, depending) and added new computer stuff and loops and shit. Then he, his brother Jean and I learned how to play all the songs live for the one show we ever played (opening up for drone-meisters PELT). Then Jorge moved away to athens, GA and we never really worked on anything again. Which is a real shame, because i think all 3 of us got really excited about the results and possibilities of O.Z... AH WELL. We also sat on an offer from bubblecore records to release the EP we'd made, because we naively thought we could capture lightning in a bottle TWICE via long distance collaboration. Needless to say, that never happened and we should have let them release the EP.

Anyhow, Jorge later made this long continuous video of the album and apparently put some of it up on youtube. I think it turned out really nicely, here you go you can check it out for yourself:


  ¶ 10:25 PM 0 Comments

  Magically yours
"Spartan_Worries"
OH MAN. so the Magik Show at the Pony Club was a complete success!
click this image to see a photoset of the whole show:


I've also scanned and uploaded my own contributions to the show here. I ended up doing a lot of painting with gouache, which I'm getting really into.

"Hidden Ghosts"

"Hongry Man"

Here are the two things I did I'm most proud of.

"Wizard Battle 1: Necro-Nurse VS. Cumulus Apprentice" - The bottom layers are silkscreened on one piece of paper which I split in two and then painted the figures on in gouache. Click here to see it big.

"Chasing the Godhead", 22"x11" - I started with Higgins ink washes and then painted into it with gouache and did some of the finishing touches with pen. Click here to see it big.

All in all both curating and working in these new directions were very rewarding, tiring, and exciting!   ¶ 5:43 AM 0 Comments

  The Magik Show! I'm not sure how in the world I've managed to not post about this, my first job at curating:

art by Till Thomas

art by Rey Ortega and Theo Ellsworth

It's been kind of insane, actually. Here's the press release:


The Pony Club Gallery is proud to announce their show for April, 2008: "The Magik Show". 41 artists from Portland and around the world converge to bring you their vision of what magic means to them. Interpretations run the gamut from the sublime to the surreal, captured in a truly prodigious amount of "small works" by some of the most exciting new artists possible. To celebrate, The Pony Club will be having not just our customary "1st Thursday" celebration on April 3rd, but a blow-out closing party on April 27th, which will coincide with the final day of the Stumptown Comics Festival. Artists will be in attendance for both events, many of whom will be in town for the Comics Festival as well. "The Magik Show" is curated by Pony Club member Zack Soto.

The Pony Club Gallery is located at
625 NW Everett St., #105 Portland, OR 97209
Open Tues-Sat, 11am-6pm

Artists included in this exhibition are:

- Mike Bertino www.mikebertino.com/
- Zack Soto www.studygroup12.com
- Tom Neely www.iwilldestroyyou.com
- Till Thomas tdthomas.de/
- Fay Ryu www.fayryu.com/
- Jennifer Parks jenniferparks.blogspot.com/
- Jason T. Miles jasontmiles.blogspot.com/
- Levon Jihanian www.levonjihanian.com/
- Ben Catmull www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/briefings/commentary/6275/
- Theo Ellsworth artcapacity.com/
- Sohale Kevin Darouian www.myspace.com/kev333
- Rey Ortega www.rey-o.com/
- David Youngblood
- Dalton Webb www.mrmanifesto.com/
- Andrice Arp www.hi-horse.com/aa/portfolio.html
- Timothy Johnson
- Wendy Chin sugarpusher.com/
- Hope Larson www.hopelarson.com/
- APAK apakstudio.com/
- Luster Kaboom iamlusterkaboom.blogspot.com/
- Jesse Reklaw slowwave.com/reklaw/paints.php?i=PC07
- Chris Cilla ccillaswamp.blogspot.com/
- Nick Gazin skeleteen.livejournal.com/
- Pete Lavigne
- Roxanne Zuniga
- Cord Bueker
- Kristoffer Kjølberg www.dongery.no/
- David Wien
- Kevin Abel
- Seth Neefus sethneefus.com/
- Miguel Porto www.miguelporto.com
- Calvin Wong www.flickr.com/photos/calwong/
- Justin Scrappers scrapperstown.com/
- Andrew Hadle andrewhadle.com/
- Tom Kaczynski www.robot26.com/
- Sean Christensen seanchristensen.blogspot.com/
  ¶ 2:37 PM 0 Comments

  Suiho Tagawa Decals
Found in a Portland area thrift store, these are probably from the '30s. There's a bunch of bootleg American characters in addition to Tagawa's Norakuro character. Fleisher Bros. & Disney characters share the page, drawn with gloriously off-model designs. I kind of love this, it only cost me $9.  ¶ 3:07 AM 0 Comments

  HEROIC DEATH

""Well It Sure Feels Intentional""


""Some Things Cannot Be Unseen""


""My Battle Armor Only Works So Well""


""Which Part Did You Even Want?""

ink, pencil, ink wash, gouache.
Series of super hero deaths done for the Alter Egos show at the Pony Club Gallery, curated by Jennifer Parks.
You can see bigger versions at the flickr pages.  ¶ 11:24 PM 0 Comments

  SUPER DUDERZ

MEET THE SUPER DUDERZ:

THE PINK POUNDER

FISTORR

THE NUCLEAR CRAB

Gouache figures.
Cut out and stuck on the wall.
Done for the Alter Egos show at the Pony Club Gallery, curated by Jennifer Parks.  ¶ 10:02 PM 0 Comments

  My Neighborhood, Portraits.
This is old stuff.. I think it's from the end of 2004? For my Thesis/Senior Project in school, I made a body of work I called "My Neighborhood", and these portraits were one part of it... the real center of the show was a series of large hand painted & drawn landscapes detailing a strange little neighborhood, with some characters travelling from one panel to the next, and these continuing characters were shown even larger in full-body shots that were silkscreened, placed in between the landscape panels. The first secion of which is the only thing I have a photo of right now, but it looked like this:

(Click the image for a bigger view)

These are small (4"x4") portraits of almost all the other characters inhabiting the series... I'm kind of bummed, but there's a few of these missing for one reason or another. Here's a few of my favorites, but the whole set is here, on flickr.





  ¶ 4:55 AM 0 Comments

  Uncontrollable Tubes Some recent silkscreens. I've been doing a lot of tube imagery, the meaning of which is probably pretty transparent even without the titles..

This one is probably my favorite. If you've been reading the blog, you've seen this in various stages, here's the actual silkscreen. If you scroll down, you can see the computer mock up of my color scheme, and see how things change from idea to actually mixing colors.
"Autonomous Coping Ritual"
11 colors, 8.5" x 17" on Arches 88 paper.

the rest are HERE, at my flickr set  ¶ 11:22 AM 0 Comments

  DIRE WROM
My tribute to ROM: SPACEKNIGHT for the Floating World comics art show, a benefit for Bill Mantlo.
I really dug rom when I was a kid, even though I came to him kind of late. It was weird shit. Everyone should go to the show on the 6th. You should also go to the show at the pony club that night, because I'll have a shit ton of prints like this:
  ¶ 5:27 PM 0 Comments

  birthday sketches I drew these two on my birthday. I was in a kind of distracted state of mind, but I kind of like how they came out.


Here's a drawing of my friend Jennifer that really doesn't look a lot like her, but somehow does. I like the expression on her face here, it's a little heartbroken, or maybe like she's having a very intense moment on an acid trip or something. This drawing actually started out as me trying to capture the neat way her hair was falling.
  ¶ 1:37 PM 0 Comments