Alex Pardee - 'Letters from Digested Children' exhibiton

Here are a few pictures from Alex Pardee's recent exhibiton I managed to catch whilst in San Francisco last month. His illustration never totally did it for me in the past - it always seemed a bit nu-rave colour wise but having seen some of his paintings and detailed ink work on clay-board in the flesh I've changed my mind. It's incredible stuff - particularly the ink work where he's painstakingly scratched tiny added detail into the clay-board - a technique I will no doubt be chancing my arm at in the near future if I can ever find some clay-board to buy.

The event itself was rammed on opening night with hipsters as far as the eye could see and a one-in-one-out door policy - despite this Alex stood happily in the middle of the chaos signing and smiling the night away. I think the giclee prints sold out pretty quickly but there are still some original works available to buy and the book is worth grabbing to. You can't really go wrong with monsters and half-digested children as far as art exhibitions go.

I've been slack on the blog front of late trying to sort out a flat in London but I'm happily back at Print Club for an all dayer tomorrow where I'll be screen-printing the artwork I originally did for MuTate Britain before it all went tits up. Watch this space for an up-date in a few days!

Tugboat Printshop - 'America the beautiful' print

Holy shit - just seen this new print for pre-order and oh-my-gosh it's stunning! $125 is a little on the steep side for a print but given it's produced from a wood cut totally justifiable. Tugboat Printshop have some other tasty prints available to buy right now.

Stewart Easton

The postman just dropped this delightful original artwork through my letterbox by a gifted young fella what goes by the name of Stewart Francis Easton. Without wishing to cause him too much offence by way of my shitty ham-fisted descriptions his illustration's have an ineffable wonky charm but there's definitely a little tragedy and sadness that crops up throughout much of his work particularly in the stories he writes. Anyway he's a thoroughly friendly chap and welcomes commissions and the like so get to it.

California record haul

Here are the lps I managed to find on my recent trip to California - I snagged most of them in Amoeba Records in Berkley and in the one on Haight Street (where incidentally I saw DJ Shadow skipping merrily along on Boxing Day - think there was some kind of Quannum in-store at one of the trainer shops) but also got a few at various random second hand book shops in and around Santa Cruz. Nothing particularly rare but a few country/folk records I've been on the look out thanks to a great thread from Little Jimmy Oddman on the Very Good Plus forums and I didn't pay much more than $2 for most of those. I'm still not sure if I made a huge error not buying the recent Dario Argento 'Blood is Red' limited edition (250) vinyl box set featuring five of his most infamous soundtracks and including the outstanding shit-yer-pants-scary prog meets proto-hip-hop of Goblin's 'Profondo Rosso'. When I was in SF last summer the pound reigned supreme rendering everything virtually free however times have changed and $75 was better spent on snowboarding passes and three days of hobbling around like Harold Steptoe...

I also managed to bag some Pentangle and Laura Nyro's 'Stoney End' 7" which like much of the stuff isn't rare but is a bit special. Oh and the flash-destroyed lp bottom right is the Oxes most recent lp featuring the controversially* banned drugs, tits and ass cover.



*the only controversy being they banned it themselves for some publicity.

Sneak preview of my new project...

Coming very soon off the back of the MuTate Britain exhibition - watch this space. It's gonna be mad-silly-stupid limited.
More San Francisco shiznit to follow too...

Daniel Ochoa

Whilst in San Francisco I managed to get along to the Academy of Art to an exhibition hosted by a friend of mine. As someone who thinks the word 'illustrator' is a tad pretentious I was a bit wary of a fine art exhibition - how wrong I was. Daniel Ochoa is fucking aces. I'm not going to embarrass myself by attempting to explain why given my knowledge of 'proper' art and artists is pretty fucking limited but the nearest comparison I can make is with Ashley Wood's paintings. Which is about as high praise as you're likely to get on here even if it is probably a little misguided. If anyone with $3100 wants to buy me a gift please refer to the first picture below. 

Gay for Milk

I've just returned from two weeks in San Francisco hence the momentary silence but I've got lots to post here as soon as I get a chance. In the meantime I thought I'd mention the Harvey Milk film Milk by Gus Van Sant which is astonishingly good - quite probably made all the better when seen in San Francisco.

Sean Penn plays Harvey Milk (the first openly homosexual politician in America) with a warmth I didn't think he was capable of. He's always struck me as a little too self-righteous and overly serious but he's all smiles and joyous camp enthusiasm as Harvey Milk. If Mickey Rourke snatches the best actor oscar off him this year I'll be very disappointed given Rourke is for all intents and purposes playing himself. James Franco, Josh Brolin and Emile Hirsch all turn in fine supporting performances as well.

The whole issue with Prop 8 in California tends to suggest less progress in homosexual rights has been made than the film might depict but with that in mind maybe its release has come at the perfect time acting as a rallying cry for resistance against the progress retarding ways of America's God-damn fundamentalist Christians. It always amazes me that they seem to pick and choose their way through their beloved scriptures with such blinkered hostile perversity they seem to forget all about the 'love' and 'forgiveness' parts.

Hmmm - maybe I ought to stick to drawing and rambling on about drum heavy fuzzy Krautrock in future... Anyway go see it.