weekend sketchbook

Art Directing a few animated commercials at Bent taught me to be more comfortable sharing raw sketches. Here are a few from tonight and yesterday evening.

acme chalkboards

I took a break from afternoon projects to do something for Kevin's Acme Lounge.

This is a three-panel, low-fi series picking up on the ubiquitous nature theme present everywhere here, from the buffalo photographs on the wall to the deer painted next to the urinal.

Specifically, I was reacting to a piece on public radio that contrasted the way western science and the native american culture viewed nature. To understand the wolf, native americans would observe the wolf and how it moved through a moonless night and would mimic and "become" the animal in order to better understand it. The program contrasted this with the western practice of dissection.

The three panels depict dissection, attack and mimicry.

Reed College Mural

Trader Joe's asked me to do a mural of Reed College, to tie in the SE Portland store with its neighborhood. I like Trader Joe's philosophy, which shirks the image of the corporate grocery store as a bunch of cookie-cutter box stores, instead personalizing each store to its own environs.

This is the first 40% of the painting, which will hang high on the ceiling, and be just under 50 feet long. I'm slated to be done with the piece in November and will post more pictures as that approaches.

Providence Hospital Mural

I was lucky enough to be asked to paint a mural for the brand new Providence Hospital in Newberg, Oregon.

The mural responds to the Healing Garden outside, a place to get away from the hospital environment.

The mural depicts a group of children holding hands in a circle, either dancing or praying, flanked on opposite ends by large plants. For me, the painting came out of searching for comfort with mortality, and finding support for that search in loved ones around me. That seemed appropriate for my experiences in hospitals.

The mural is about 40 feet wide, and just over 8 feet tall. It was painted in sections on small wooden tiles, some recycled from local buildings at the Rebuilding Center, and cut to size in their shop.

New Curtains!

These are from a banner I did for a local grocery store. After having this around in it's complete form for over a year in storage, this summer I took to it with scissors. Cozies up the window seat nicely.

fall hype

This is an early version of the fall card that will be going out in late October. I happened upon a few wedding pictures and was surprised by the contrast between the special moment of a wedding dance and the bland surroundings. Bad flash photography lit up white paper plates, table cloth, folding chairs sitting empty. Occasionally, there was cake. I like that people were smiling and intent on each other, not seeming to notice their surroundings.