A Roman Holiday Strikes Back

Just finished this poster for the band, "A Roman Holiday." If you are curious you can download their entire "Death by Roman Holiday" album on bandcamp for FREE. 

 

General Update

Still spending most of my time working on a long term commissioned comic project for VCU's Facilities Management and a booklet for VCUarts' Communication Arts Department. Fitting stuff like this in between. I'll make sure to post pages of both closer to their completion.

Also starting to do a sort-of sequel to "The Little Black Fish." More info on that later. Otherwise, still working on a parallel narrative about cats and finishing up Richmond Monuments. 

Bellow is more information about the event

Due to the recent release of "Death by Roman Holiday" it only made since to resurrect the band again. This time with A ROMAN HOLIDAY's kindred spirits Hot Lava and A Roman Holiday superpant's FIRST CREATURE.

A Roman Holiday was/(is for one night) an indie rock band from Richmond in the early 00's that stole riffs from Pavement, David Bowie, Radiohead and was infamous for their cover of the Queen/Bowie hit "Under Pressure" and Outkast's "Hey Ya" in the basements of Catherine Nottingham's properties.

$5 Cover | 18+ | 9PM Doors // 10PM Sounds

At Strang Matter

929 W. Grace St.
Richmond, VA 23222

http://www.strangematterrva.com/
 

A ROMAN HOLIDAY (reunion show!)
http://www.myspace.com/romanholiday
HOT LAVA-you better recognize!
http://hotlavaiceland.bandcamp.com/
BLACK TAXI
http://www.blacktaxi.com/
FIRST CREATURE-doomy psych pop?
http://firstcreaturerva.bandcamp.com/

New Work Cartoons and Cartoons

I received two requests to do fun cartoon characters. They both requested the same kind of drawing approach so I thought that I would post them both together.


The first is an illustration for the famous kids band, Silly Bus. They are working on a music video and needed a cartoon owl to fly around one of the band members. What you see is a profile and side view - as well as alternate versions of the eyes and what the wings look like separated.

This next project is for James River Grounds Management (JMGM). They wanted me to design their fox mascot wearing the JMGM company uniform in a way that looked similar to their existing costume.

Below you see the initial sketches. 

Work up at Occuprint: We are the 99%

My 99% Poster (picture above) will be exhibited with many other posters that supported the 99% movement during it's beginning stages. The show is up in Bolzano,Italy at AR/GE Kunst Gallery and Museum this month. The exhibition includes a catalogue of all the posters included in the exhibit. More info below.

OCCUPRINT

We are the 99%

Vernissage 14.06.2013 7 pm

14.06. – 03.08.2013

Curated by Luigi Fassi in collaboration with www.occuprint.org

The Occupy phenomenon began with the occupation of Zuccotti Park, Wall Street, New York City, on 17 September 2011, and then quickly spread to 82 countries, unleashing an unexpected global wave of protest, renewal and hope for change in the midst of the economic and social crisis that has gripped most of the Western world. 

At the high point of the movement’s political innovation, the curatorial collective Occuprint was formed in the United States to grant visibility to the most outstanding artistic manifestations produced by the Occupy Movements on an international scale. The trigger was an invitation by the Occupy Wall Street Journal to create a special issue on poster art, in a continuously growing digital platform that conserves and promotes the graphic output of the various Occupy Movements scattered across the continents. 

The posters gathered by Occuprint concentrate on messages and proposals aimed at changing the relationship between the 1% of the world population accused of perpetrating policies for its own gain, and the 99% that is subjected to their consequences. Precisely the statement “We are the 99%” returns most often as a slogan in the materials on display at ar/ge kunst, bearing witness to the collective, worldwide character of the Occupy phenomenon. Resistance, dismantling of the status quo of privilege and absolute opposition to any top-down, anti-democratic policy are thus the key concepts of the Occupy ideology as it is reflected in the posters. 

The main characteristic of the posters shown at ar/ge kunst is their way of representing a true programmatic agenda, ranging from international policy proposals to the renewal of modes of industrial production and labor, all the way to the definition of a new ethical model of collective welfare, based on principles of solidarity and sharing of public assets. The idea of democracy as the sharing of the commons is thus contrasted with the greed of privatizations dictated by neoliberal policies of an American matrix that meet with increasing consensus among European governments.

The Occuprint collection thus reveals political and economic discourse that is much more complex than it might appear at first glance. Slogans, quips, satirical drawings – ranging from Native Americans to the Wall Street bull to protests in Spanish in South American countries, and those in various European cities, form a semiotic arsenal that sums up, in quick lines, all the unsolved problems the Western world will have to approach in the years to come. 

Viewers, including those unaware of the Occupy movements, are thus presented with an overview of the new scenarios that enliven the political debate on a global scale; not the official debate of parliaments and governments, but the more authentic discussion, the reaction that comes from the bottom up as the result of the action of the new citizens of the world, in all the cities of the contemporary world. 

With the kind support of:

Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano, Alto Adige, Deutsche Kultur

Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio, Alto Adige

Città di Bolzano, Ufficio Cultura

www.occuprint.org

Gallery hours

Tu-Fr 10 – 13, 15 – 19  /  Sa 10 – 13

Free Entrance

Little Black Fish in B'Taarof Magazine

My Little Black Fish Adaptation is featured in this months issue of B|ta'arof Magazine: a print magazine & website featuring visual arts, critical essays, curated archives, & oral histories of Iran/Iranians across generational & geographic borders.

You can purchase a copy here.

Remapping Richmond's Hallowed Ground

I made several b/w pen and ink portrait illustrations of Richmond City Monuments for this book about reinterpreting Civil War history. Below is a blown up image of one. The original inks are only a couple inches in size.  There is a reading of the texts in the book coming up this Saturday.

Saturday June 8 at 4 pm. Book Release at Chop Suey,
2913 W Cary St  Richmond, VA 23221

Readings by Dennis Danvers, Harry Kollatz Jr., Anne Bloomsburg, and Ron Smith.

About

An anthology of work by local writers and artists: original fiction, poetry, memoir, photography, and art. The pieces are all related, in one way or another, to the Civil War.

Description

An anthology of work by local writers and artists: original fiction, poetry, memoir, photography, and art. The pieces are all related, in one way or another, to the Civil War. Contributors: Susan Settlemyre Williams, Bizhan Khodabandeh, Mark Gribbin, Joshua Poteat, Dennis Danvers, Ron Smith, Michael Gray Baughan, Audrey Walls, Lea Marshall, Howard Owen, Ann McMillan, Christy Burns, Michele Surat, Martha Erwin, Ron Smith, Anne Bloomsburg, Hannah Lorraine Gropper, Peggy DuVall, Jack R. Johnson, Amie Oliver, Harry Kollatz, Jr., Kathy DuVall 

US and China Poster Exchange 2013

An exhibition of over 100 typographic posters by American and Chinese designers have begun their tour in China. On June, 7th, 2013 this same collection will begin its tour in the United States starting at Richmond, Virginia's Gallery5 and the MoB + Storefront for Community Design, a non-profit design and building resource shared by the Departments of Graphic Design.

Opens 6PM Friday, June 7, 2013
Up until June 28, 2013

Gallery5
200 West Marshall Stœ
Richmond, VA 23220
www.gallery5arts.org

AND

VCUarts MoB + Storefront
205 East Broad Street, Richmond

Performances at Gallery5 by
Paul Ivey and The Rubes (https://www.facebook.com/PaulIveyv.BoE)
Lightfeilds (https://www.facebook.com/lightfieldsrva)
Robes of Alchemy ((ex Sacred Teachers, Invisible Friends)
Isle of Rhodes (http://isleofrhodes.com/)


The mission of the exhibition is to introduce both culture's respective use of typography while helping us better understand our own use of language and inspire new typographic approaches.

www.typoshow.com

The exhibition is co-curated by Bizhan Khodabandeh, Communications Director at VCUarts Dept. of Comm Arts AND Li Xu, an instructor at the Beijing Institute of Graphic Communication,China.