We Kill Everything We Love

Here's the final installment of pieces for the Obscured Eye exhibition next week in Calexico. These will hang next to two oversize printouts that each contain text from Kalle Lasn's Culture Jam, the book that was initially the inspiration for this series. I've included the printouts here for your enjoyment and/or enlightenment.

Searching For Elliott Smith

I have been very honored and privileged to work on a documentary for the past few years that is actually about one of my favorite musicians of all-time: Elliott Smith. During all of my three years at Art Center, I set aside extra time to (painstakingly) create hand drawn, frame-by-frame animation for several spots throughout the documentary. It took more than just a long time, but in the end I'd realized that the large amounts of caffeine and all-nighters were well worth the pain. I was given more than a ton of freedom from director/producer/editor Gil Reyes to create these spots, and now that the documentary has finally been completed, it awaits its moment in the spotlight. (It is set to have its world premiere at the CMJ Music Marathon & Film Festival this October in NYC.)

Now that the film is complete, it's time to focus on marketing... I've been given the opportunity to create a poster or two for the film, so I thought I would post the first drafts of them. We are considering a guerrilla marketing campaign in addition to the usual marketing ideas as well, though it will mostly likely be based in and around Los Angeles. A website is also definitely in order, and will be arriving soon. (Yet another project I'm looking forward to!)

I am very, very excited about this film– it has been nothing but a five year long extraordinarily intense labor of love, especially (and mostly) on Gil and Tony Ayala (cinematographer and editor)'s behalf. I am so unbelievably honored to be a part of something that I hold near and dear to my heart, and hope that the world re-discovers Elliott Smith's genius... or discovers it for the first time.


First poster: this is a revision of Gil's original idea.



Second poster: This was my initial idea for the poster... the absense of Elliott from a familiar place that his fans associate him with. (Solutions! memorial wall/"Figure 8" album cover, c. 2006) I did not want a beautiful shot of this wall in keeping with the sort of lo-fi spirit that comprises a lot of Elliott's earlier recordings. I was asked to keep the type the same, but was free to change the imagery.



Third poster: still keeping the type– a hybrid that plays off of both Gil's original idea as well as mine. The Polaroids contain some of the participants in the film. (Clockwise, L-R from top left: Steve Hanft, Ross Harris, Mary Lou Lord, Larry Crane, Jennifer Chiba, Sean Croghan, Tony Lash, David McConnell, Gus Van Sant.)



I'm hoping to create an illustrative version of the poster as well sometime in the very near future (along with a few more others), but in the meantime, here goes nothing!

New stuff around the corner

Just a quick announcement that new pieces will be coming to the blog very soon! I am honored to have been asked to be part of a four person show this fall at San Diego State University's Steppling Gallery (Imperial Valley Campus). So, along with the usual other stuff I have been working on, I am starting a new series based on the idea of consumerism, mostly springing from this quote from Kalle Lasn's amazing book Culture Jam:

The Earth can no longer support the lifestyle of the coolhunting American-style consumer. We have sought, bought, spewed and devoured too much, too fast, too brazenly, and now we're about to pay.

This book has been one of my favorites for years... I was recently re-reading it and figured what with all of the latest environmental reports and (extremely sad) news regarding the state of our world, I'd take the opportunity to address it in my own way. I am playing with transparency and b&w versus color for this series, and needless to say, I'm excited! I hope to have the first piece up within the next couple of days.

Los Angeles 2

This is the second piece in the Los Angeles series, and yet another example of the collision between man and nature. I'm working on a larger scale piece that is rather similar but wanted to do this smaller, more intimate piece before embarking on the larger version. This will also be the first drawing that I put up for sale on Etsy (http://idiotkid.etsy.com).



Graphite and watercolor on paper, approx. 7" x 9 1/2".

preview

days ago...