cityscape 090731

Wabash Avenue just north of Roosevelt, Chicago 7/31/09

Rationalizing Lemke's appreciation

Peter Lemke's been collecting street art in Chicago, and I was more than surprised to find seven pieces I'd posited around town over the last few years in a display he'd established as part of the innaugural Milwaukee Avenue Arts Fest today, along with a bevy of work from other folk. Mixed emotions; seems he's operating from an appreciation, but also feels like someone who picks all the flowers out of a community garden to "save them" well before a frost... New City ran this article last week that lends some context.

In conversation, Mr. Lemke seems earnest and is readily willing to engage conversation, wants to understand. Publicity has now brought him in touch with doers formerly anonymous to him, and with this engagement hopefully artists can help him understand reciprocity with the objects of his affection they've made, how to participate and extend doers' efforts rather than inadvertently curtail respective agendas. Implicit in sharing art this way is an aversion to conventional galleries and a disruption of capital exchange, money or otherwise -- To appreciate the token physical objects planted in public, it's worth taking stock of underlying motives and reasons for their being.

While artists expend resources making artwork that Lemke's concerned will be removed or painted-over by authorities, perhaps he'd use his resources to provide a sanctioned arena for art that's avoids any gallery pretense?.. I think of sanctioned mural walls where property owners have designated space and cleared regs with the city to provide an opportunity for public expression, and here again I'd relate the community garden metaphor. Or rather than sequester items intended for public domain, perhaps Lemke could take upon himself to reinstall his collection strategically, extend the work geographically and help evade forces that would eradicate it?... I'm just throwing out some ideas that'd be better than squirrelling away or exhibiting work contrary to artists' intentions. Confident there are creative ways for Mr. Lemke to participate with integrity in what's ultimately an open arena. Best of luck in general, Peter.

Photo above is Mr. Lemke standing in front of one of mine, and below are six more I'd posited on poles, fences or whatnot someplace circa 2006(?).

For Kalwinski & Proximity 7/26/09

Had a very comfortable sketching session last Sunday with Dan Rybicky and his dog Miles at their Miller Beach house, exploring visual tacts to accompany a story from Gretchen Kalwinski in an upcoming issue of Proximity Magazine. Real excited. More pics from Dan here.

Wow; where'd this come from?!

Sorting photo files that were stripped of details and randomized on a drive I goofed-up, tripped on this one caught me eye among others -- is this from my camera?.. Curious where in the world it's shot from, not wholly sure I didn't get it from somewhere, but fairly confident I captured it... I dunno though; is it yours? Recognize the place? Here's some interesting detail crops:

Popped up on Design Sponge

The blog Design Sponge covers Caroline Lubbers' (of Goldfish Marketing and Whipped) domestic interior, which lo & behold's got a proud painting of mine in it from 2004!

building across the street from lunch

Resuming work on ACM's Bestiarium

Project's back on & barreling forward!! Here's a peek at latest progress on illustrations for a special bestiarium project with Chicago's ACM -- here's my posts regarding it to-date. They've got a lot of great material assembled for this issue, including short stories & poetry from a wide range of authors; stay tuned for release info!

The Onager, according to antiquity, understands the lunar cycles, and in the background is an interpretive rendering of a local plant called the Marsh Blazing Star. Above image is current status, and below is the working draft.

Drawings up Hwy1 in California, north of Los Angeles 2/28/09

Click to enlarge.

Balloon

From Even Westvang's Flickr area

Mural at AV-Aerie for Chicago Opera Vanguard

Just completed work on a very large scenic device -- "mural", if you will -- for Chicago Opera Vanguard's production of Ricky Ian Gordon's Orpheus and Euridice, opening Thursday 1/29/09 and running Thu-Sun evenings for the next two weekends. Wouldn't want to spoil anything by posting pictures of the work just yet, so for details about the opera visit chicagovanguard.org.

Very thankful for assistance from Eliot Carney, Jeff Forsythe, Aric Henney, and Marshall Preheim in pulling this thing off, along with some additional friends who lent their time & skills.
Beyond COV's performances, the mural will serve as backdrop for a number of music shows, including Thank You + Mi Ami on 2/17/09, DRMWPN + Pillars & Tongues on 3/1/09, and some unconfirmed acts elsewhere -- more news as it becomes available.

hubcap

displayed in a garage near north & sheffield, chicago

organized some books by spine color

Eric Tabuchi's Alphabet Truck series

Photographer Eric Tabuchi's series and limited edition artist's book Alphabet Truck. Visit his site or MySpace page for more info on this and other projects.

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c.1942, Lincoln, Nebraska
Eagle Fruit Store & Capital Hotel
Photographer: John Vachon (1914-1975)
Image detail cropped from Library of Congress source: http://flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2179171500/.

081106

May 1943, Houston, Texas
Photographer: John Vachon (1914-1975), for Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information Collection (12002-59 [DLC] 93845501)
More info & much larger image at http://flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2178246751/

Election Night in Chicago

Grant Park, Chicago

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081103

Round 081101

Elston Avenue just south of Webster, I think it was; west side of the street.

Pullman Car Floorplans

Three original floorplans of Pullman cars from the Newberry Library's Pullman Digital Collection.

3 Tier Tourist Sleeping Car
4-Drawing Room 1-Bedroom Observation Lounge
Baggage Club Car

081015

Handful of randoms

Joe Meno & Arthur Nersesian in Chicago 9/25/08

Short notice, I understand, but hey TOMORROW (Thursday 9/25/08) I've been asked to introduce authors JOE MENO and ARTHUR NERSESIAN for the Chicago stop on their mutual book release tour at Quimby's Books. If you're in the area, this will be a great opportunity to get familiar with these two eminent & irreverent contemporary writers while they read from their latest work and sign books in the friendly environ of Quimby's.

Abraham Levitan of the band Baby Teeth will provide musical accompaniment, and graphic novelist Anders Nilsen will share a special visual presentation to start things off. This event is totally FREE, and proceeds from Joe's new book benefit 826 Chicago, a non-profit org that fosters creative & expository writing skills in students aged 6-18, and helps teachers inspire their students to write with frequency and confidence.

THURSDAY 9/25 at 7:00pm
Quimby's Books
1854 W North Avenue, Chicago

- JOE MENO reads from his new collection of shorts
DEMONS IN THE SPRING

- ARTHUR NERSESIAN reads from his new novel
THE SACRIFICIAL CIRCUMCISION OF THE BRONX

- Special guests include Anders Nilsen, musician
Abraham Levitan, and several artists who contributed
to Meno's book. Event is FREE.


= = = = = = = = = = = =

JOE MENO's new book Demons in the Spring collects 20 of his short, inventive, effervescently curious stories that revolve around calamity and perseverance. Each story is illustrated by a different artist, including popular notables from the realms of fine art, comics and graphic design such as Charles Burns, Ivan Brunetti, Evan Hecox, kozyndan, Anders Nilsen, Archer Prewitt, Jay Ryan, and Chris Uphues, some of whom will be onhand also to join Joe in book-signing. Joe Meno is the best-selling author of the novels Hairstyles of the Damned, The Boy Detective Fails, How the Hula Girl Sings and Tender As Hellfire, and the winner of the 2003 Nelson Algren Award for short fiction. Several stories from Joe are available for online perusal in THE2NDHAND's archive.

ARTHUR NERSESIAN, author of the smash-hit The Fuck-Up and seven other seminal novels, will read from the latest installment in his five-part cycle chronicling lives set in an alternate New York City, rebuilt amid the Nevada desert after a huge disaster at its original location. The new book, the second in said cycle, is titled The Sacrificial Circumcision of the Bronx. Mr. Nersesian will be visiting from Brooklyn for this event. Hear him read from The Fuck-Up courtesy of Salon.com.

Round 080828

Photo by Matthew Bednarik with Greg Ash

Memory Lane: LOA Series 2002

Have been rounding-up documentation for a whole new robfunderburk.com and traipsing down memory lane a bit -- From 2002, here's session photos for a series of paintings produced collaboratively with multi-musician Zebulun Barnow (Z: Why didn't we record audio again?...). This experiment was a sort of dry-run for live performance a few days later at Chicago's Mars Gallery in support of Madshak Dance Company at their annual fundraising event. Point of order was to bridge gap between audio & visual execution and find ways to synchronize mark-making with musicianship. My scans of these are admittedly lousy, but photos are c/o Paul Mroch, who managed tools & paints on-set for this session and the performance. Above, left to right: Me, Zebulun Barnow, Paul Mroch.

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Norman Rockwell's April Fool's Day Covers for the Saturday Evening Post

Had some conversations about these lately and realized they're hard to adequately describe for someone who's unfamiliar with them -- or just essentially averse to Norman Rockwell's work in general, which seems fairly common -- but say whatever you would about what Rockwell's come to represent, I think these picture-puzzle indulgences are a lot of fun. Here's a couple examples.

April Fool's Day 1943 (image c/o eCrater):
April Fool's Day 1948 (image c/o Global Gallery): Following are all the "wrong-things" Rockwell cited for publisher in the 1948 installment directly above:
1) two different moldings on cupboard, 2) woodpecker head on crane's body, 3) coffeepot's spout is upside down, 4) barbed wire instead of clothesline, 5) insignia is on back of fireman's helmet instead of front, 6) green and red lights reversed on ship's lantern, 7) beast crouched on upper shelf, 8) cup not hanging by handle, 9) electric bulbs growing on plant, 10) the girl's head on sculptural bust, 11) rat's tail on chipmunk, 12) pen with pencil eraser, 13) top of brass vase suspended, 14) face in clock, 15) candle where kerosene lamp should be, 16) sampler dated 1216, 17) Winter seen through left window, Summer through right, 18) antique dealer's head on dolls, 19) nine branches on traditional seven-branch candelabrum, 20) girl's hair in pigtail on one side, loose on other, 21) titles on books vertical instead of horizontal, 22) girl's sweater buttoned wrong way, 23) mouthpiece on both ends of phone, 24) phone not connected, 25) goat's head with deer's antlers, 26) no shelf under books, 27) lace cuff on man's shirt, 28) five fingers and thumb on girl's hand, 29) gun barrel in wrong place, 30) saddle on animal, 31) potted plant on lit stove, 32) girl's purse is a book, 33) only half a strap on girl's purse, 34) skunk in girl's arms, 35) sea gull with crane's legs, 36) stovepipe missing, 37) Mona Lisa has halo, 38) Mona Lisa facing wrong way, 39) Abraham Lincoln with General Grant's military coat, 40) stove has "April Fool" on it, 41) hoofs instead of feet on doll, 42) little girl sitting on nothing, 43) Rogers group is combination of soldier from Our Hero and girl from "Blushing Bride," 44) brass kettle has two spouts, 45) spur on antique dealer's shoe, 46) mouse and ground mole conferring, 47) ground mole's tracks in wooden floor, 48) dog's head on cat's body, 49) raccoon's tail on cat's body, 50) ball fringe standing straight up at angle, 51) stove is missing one leg, 52) two kinds of floor, 53) signature reversed, 54) last name spelled wrong, 55) flowers growing in floor, 56) girl's shoes & socks don't match.

Memory Lane: painting practice c.2005

Homan Avenue studio, Chicago, c.2005:

With THE2NDHAND

THE2NDHAND is a free quarterly broadsheet and weekly online magazine featuring short new writing from working authors across the US. The broadsheet enjoys distribution of approx. 2500-3000 copies in several metropolitan regions, circulating wholly via independent channels and subscription. Founding editor Todd Dills has worked with a bevy of enthusiastic contributors over the years, fostering an inclusive mix of seasoned practitioners and insurgent up-&-comers to establish a reliable, progressive avenue for creators of literature and its audiences. It's been my pleasure to contribute to the broadsheet with illustrations & design, occasions of which to-date are listed below along with links to view/download the issues -- Enjoy! And if you like this sort of thing, visit THE2NDHAND.com for a whole lot more fresh writing.

Layout + Illustration:
Broadsheet #19, Winter 2006: "Zangara" by Al Burian
Broadsheet #20, Spring 2006: "This Is How You Paint a House" by Lauren Trojniar (excerpt below)
Broadsheet #20.5, <7/06: Special issue in conjunction with Poetry Magazine for the 2006 Printers' Ball (excerpt below)
Broadsheet #21.5, Summer 2006: Special issue promoting Sons of the Rapture by editor Todd Dills
Broadsheet #22, Fall 2006: "Ghost Walk" by Mickey Hess
Broadsheet #23, Winter 2007: "Spencer Hangs Over Newark" by Tobias Carroll
Broadsheet #24, Spring 2007: "Friends From Cincinnati" by Patrick Somerville
Broadsheet #25, Summer 2007: "318" by Nadria Tucker and "Big Doug Rides Torch" by Jonathan Messinger
Broadsheet #26, Winter 2007: Coordinated this visual mash-up with artists Charles Buchanan and Andrew Davis

Illustration, layouts by Evan Sult:
Broadsheet #13: Illustrations for "Graveyard Shift" by John L. Sheppard
Broadsheet #14: "Errol, Inland" by Susannah Felts
Broadsheet #16: "The Kind of Girl You Read About in New Wave Magazines" by Paul Toth (embedded illustration in version posted here)
Broadsheet #17: "Birthday, With Grandfather's Corpse" by M. Lynx Qualey

Here's some choice bits -- click any to view in full -- First, from Broadsheet #20.5:

From Broadsheet #20 with a bit of Lauren Trojniar's text for context:
For Mickey Hess's ghost-story in Broadsheet #22 (again, click for better viewing -- and send any advice if you've got it about posting without the jaggedness...):
For more about THE2NDHAND, plenty of fresh writing, new broadsheets by editor Todd Dills & friends, and a big archive of great short stories, visit THE2NDHAND.com.

Some ink on Constellations for ACM

A little further along with this one.

"Storyteller" pencil draft

Another prelim pencil for upcoming Beastiary from Chicago's ACM -- call for authors posted here.

"Planes & Football" pencil draft

Above, preliminary pencil stage of an illustration for an upcoming Beastiary from Chicago's ACM -- here, pilots in planes painted with teeth emulate skyborn sharks in their flyover of a football game, one team entering the field enthused with their embodiment of the team's animal moniker. Distinction will come with inkwork; it's hard to understand the image pending differentiation of lights & shadows, edges & such, but I'm saving definitive ink & style-locking till after negotiating concepts on, say, 8 or 10 of these to be consistent in execution. Intending to cut loose some from the literalness in these established pencil bases, btw (others posted so far are tagged "ACM Bestiary Pencil"), use more loosely-slung linework or quasi-geometric interjections in the ink stage and keep it fresh. Here in these pencils are the figuring of a narrative support structure -- ultimately would like for these to operate something like mazes in that initially there's an overwhelming interplay of shapes that starts to yield connections over a recreational duration (...yeah, admittedly, I'm probably over-thinking it, but hey, it's my kicks...). A couple characteristics of Bestiaries from antiquity are their imprecision in relaying facts and susceptibility to diversion -- so with these I'm creating premises in which characters are relaying interpretations of animals or experiencing some embellished understanding of them, typically with a lot of word- or thought-balloons.

Shaker Gift Documents

Top = "Spirit Message" (1843, anonymous); 2nd & 3rd = "The Narrow Path to Zion" (Emily Babcock, 1843) -- two examples of visual poetry from the Shaker community published in France Morin's Heavenly Visions: Shaker Gift Drawings and Gift Songs, gleaned here from Ubu's Ethnopoetics section -- visit Ubu's showcase page for a more examples and informative text.

four movie posters

Four movie posters featured on Grayspace's Poster Gallery -- clockwise from top right: A Coeur Joie (1967), Alibi (1963), Camera Buff (1979) and Devil's Disciple (1962).

N470 & Lion avec ballon

Two from Florentijn Hofman.

From Airplanes, by T.Sargeant

Four shots by Trudi Sargeant, from a set of vehicle photos on her Flickr site -- visit that or LensFlare.org to see more of her photography.

"Fish Story" pencil draft

Initial pencil stage of illustration for upcoming Bestiary from ACM. Reference fish image at left of bottom photo is from Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Words Conflagrating

ReallySimpleSeeds_, the latest generative audiovisual experiment by a Lanvideosource, extracts and compares words from three news websites, then structures a partially-sequenced real-time interaction with audio frequencies to create audio-video interaction feedbacks. (Embedded video c/o Lanvideosource on Vimeo.)

"Constellation" pencil draft + other cow studies

Initial pencil stage of illustration for upcoming Bestiary from ACM and miscellaneous explorations of cows.

Concepts for ACM Bestiary Illos

Concept thumbnails for a series of illustrations to be included in an upcoming Beastiary from ACM (Another Chicago Magazine).

It's Drawing Day

Well, let's get busy.

Pretty Girls

Let's just take a few moments and look at a procession of beautiful cattle from Highridge Farm in Crossville, Tennessee:
Images are courtesy of Highridge Farm -- Visit their site for more information about these animals.

"Moveable Type" at NY Times Building

Photos c/o Ear Studio


A dynamic portrait of The New York Times titled "Moveable Type", by Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin, exists in the ground-floor lobby of The Times' building in NYC. The paper's daily output, archives, and activity of website visitors are parsed by statistical methods and natural-language processing algorithms, resulting in text displayed on 560 vacuum-fluorescent display screens hung along the lobby walls. Coverage at NPR's "On the Media" and in The NY Times. Related projects are Hansen & Rubin's "Listening Post" and a project apparently under consideration at the US Census Bureau.

ACM Bestiary Project

Beginning work on illustrations for an upcoming Beastiary in development with editor Jacob Knabb for ACM (Another Chicago Magazine). Writers: to participate, see Mr. Knabb's call for submissions on his blog, Hambone's Heartache. Previews of progress will be posted (see tags).

Kids in Masks

Doodle referent to image below, photographer unknown (do you?).

1 of 3 circles from 2/08 Brooklyn Suite

Figure 8, Jasper Johns

"Figure 8", Jasper Johns, 1959. Image c/o Mart, Ileana Sonnabend Collection, Rovereto.

Ed Ruscha re: words, print

"I guess I'm a child of communications, and I have always felt attracted to anything that had to do with that phenomenon of people speaking to each other. Maybe that itself becomes synonymous with popular culture in that newspapers, magazines -- printing, specifically -- have had the most dramatic effect on me. Printing was it, to me. When I first became attracted to the idea of being an artist, painting was the last method; it was almost an obsolete, archaic form of communication. I found painting to be the least interesting of all those forms of communication. I felt newspapers, magazines, books -- words -- to be more meaningful than what some damn oil painter was doing. So I suppose it developed from that -- into the idea of questioning the printed word. Then in questioning, I began to see the printed word, and it took off from there."


- Quoted text is Ed Ruscha in Paul Karlstrom's "Interview with Edward Ruscha in His Western Avenue, Hollywood Studio", 1980/81, Archives of American Art, first published in Leave Any Information at the Signal, ed. A.Schwartz, 2002, MIT Press. Image is Ruscha's "The Mountain", 1998, c/o Christie's London via Artnet.

Gagosian Gallery has a particularly impressive and reasonably comprehensive overview of Mr. Ruscha's work, fyi.

one from Matthew Kellen

"Nude" 2004 | Digital Print | 48" by 48"

{detail below}
Visit Matt Kellen.

big picture of a bear

Click either to enlarge. Photo by Tim Floyd, c/o Healthline.com.

A Desk at Josef Sudek's

Josef Sudek (1896-1976) was known as "The Poet of Prague". See this article on Mr. Sudek by Charles Sawyer (with late photos of Mr. Sudek; originally published in Creative Camera, 1980)

Nouns & Verbs in Nature

"A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exist in nature. Things are only the terminal points, or rather the meeting points, of actions, cross-sections cut through actions, snapshots. Neither can a pure verb, an abstract, an abstract motion, be possible in nature. The eye sees noun and verb as one."
- Ernest Fenollosa via Ezra Pound, The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry

two knotted wads

"hair ball" from richt

"08-09 (texture play)" from mimobase

Naval Dazzle

motion graphic from My Fisty

Motion graphic from "My Fisty"

Round 080405

Mike Perry bowl at Seattle's Semigood Design

knots

Knot diagrams courtesy of BLDGBLOG's 4/3/08 post.

Rauschenberg for Talking Heads

Transparent record packaged in clear plastic case with three loose round transparent overlays printed with 1-color collage (cyan, magenta and yellow). Robert Rauschenberg won a Grammy Award for creating this limited-edition album for the Talking Heads in 1983. (More info here).

How longd'it take?

"Often in life we intensely concentrate and obsess over an action that took mere minutes to perform. The tedium and stress of getting it right in our memory so that it sits well within us is a task."

- Jason Foumberg regarding Alex Jovanovich, New City Chicago 3/25/08

Memory Lane: Open End Mural '04

Here's a few pics from a 2004 painting project at Chicago's Open-End (now AV-Aerie), an art & performance venue -- a sort of wrap-around wall mural designed to interact with fixtures and vantage points as people move around in the space.

NYC 2/20-23/08

brooklyn artist nick herman (above left, of ante projects notoriety) proved a fine host for my innaugural visit to new york city. most of four days, productive studio sessions a daily hingepoint of experience. some high points include visiting strand bookstore and printed matter, inc., david smith's "sprays" exhibit at gagosian madison ave., poussin at the met, a wonderful-thick snowfall on central park friday, and the following --
starting with some photos of mark bradford at sikkema jenkins & co.:









a sneak-peek at a few of richard prince's carhoods, part of an upcoming show group show at gagosian madison ave.:





diego perrone at casey kaplan:










feeling fortified, encouraged -- great perspective adjustment.

paint <---> food

Caroline Lubbers (aka "Whipped") executed a delightful and impressive culinary interpretation of this 2004 painting by yours truly, Gretchen & I very happy to enjoy the festive dinner with Caroline and her husband, Vasili. This was really something great -- see Caroline's post about it, and explore her blog from there for more fun with food & drink.

logo quadrant studies 080212

Related:
Saks logo by Michael Bierut & Pentagram (image c/o Under Consideration, LLC):

Illustration by Oliver Munday:
Logólogos:

thumbnails --> screens

Loose pencil thumbnail studies scanned & made vector using Adobe Illustrator Live Trace & Live Paint -- variable settings & "tuning", results stacked in semi-transparent layers. Could be means of resuscitating dormant doodles into new live print project(s)...

from the archives: Funderburk & Webster '04

Paintings are me, sculpture is Jake Webster -- from something we did at the late Labotomy Gallery in 2004 Chicago

dry hump lettering

think they went a different route in identity, but this formerly chicago-based comedy group called dry hump, now residing in l.a., was looking for a logo recently and i encouraged them to resurrect this type cartoon we did a while back for use as an element in it. it's penwork for an event poster done with steve walters from a couple years ago, and as long as i had it out i thought i'd document here before putting it back in the drawer. fun one.

chi trib reviews hiding out

excellent review of hiding out by donna seaman in the 10/27/07 chicago tribune -- here are a couple excerpts regarding the illustrations:

"...Each story begins with a line drawing by Rob Funderburk that riffs on the cover image... Hunched, slumped, defeated guys hiding in plain sight, seeking camouflage and comfort from large, inanimate objects. Are these drawings keys to Messinger's use of the word "decoys?" Well, these are not stories about shooting ducks, or entrapment, exactly, but one dictionary definition -- "Someone or something used to draw attention away from another" -- does apply, albeit in subtle ways...

"...Messinger's prose is the literary equivalent of the line drawings -- deceptively simple and direct -- and reading his succinct stories is as natural as breathing. But like the quick, fool-the-eye, knock-you-flat moves of kung fu (a recurrent theme), these tales of lonely, brooding, sweetly romantic guys pack covert and concentrated power...

"...Just as the figures in Funderburk's drawings turn away from the frenzy and aggression of life in glumness and exhaustion, each man-child in Messinger's wry stories looks inward to superhero daydreams and miniaturized expectations..."

[full transcript is availabe here
(requires a sign-in, fyi), and the book is available direct from featherproof books].

redmoon's machine bird

found this old friend fluttering on a stranger's flickr page today, something i'd drawn for redmoon theater a few years ago that they'd used as a sort of mascot for a time. found a compliment in finding it, and good sort of reminder.
following are a couple prep studies from that assignment, too.

THE2NDHAND #26 will be visual

scrambling to meet my commitment for this quarter's THE2NDHAND broadsheet -- due to printer by month's end and here i am in pencil with a half-baked idear... will feature work by Andrew Davis and printmaker Charles Buchanan besides my scratching, part of which will entail a maze for the verso. normally the broadsheets are short fiction stories but this time we're indulging in cartoons. will post when finished results are out on the streets.

open-end 5/07

wall painting at open-end (2000 w fulton, chicago) in advance of palliard and thin man performances on 5/25/07.

cut-away display engine

weaving two ink noodles

i bet there's a smarter way to do this, but here's the start of a stage II with a coupla ones from earlier. like to think i'll be able to straighten out the wobble a little further on or else work well enough with results. tore 7" wide strips in the primaries from one edge almost to the other and ran them through a paper shredder up to where they're connected, then sat on & off & wove the strips together this evening. got a couple of ideas of next steps, depending on how this one works out. anticipating a simultaneity of the two source matters.

gaper's block reviews hiding out

"...The illustrations that start each chapter (provided by Rob Funderburk) are a flawless complement to Messinger’s stories. They are amusing asides, but possess an almost desperate air to them – what, or who, are these figures trying to hide? The stories in Hiding Out may not provide answers to these questions, but they ask them with heart and with humor and with a sense of urgency, a feeling that these stories must be told." — Veronica, Gaper's Block, 9/27/07

070929

ones

Illos for Messinger's Hiding Out

Had the pleasure recently of providing illustrations for Jonathan Messinger's new collection of short stories, titled Hiding Out -- fifteen rivulets of vicarious experience from the torrent that is Messinger, delivered in the manner that’s made him a favorite among Chicago’s live-reading audiences besides an ace in print. The illustrations open each story, and were initially based on a photo series by Nathan Keay in which subjects do their damnedest to blend in with domestic settings. One of Nathan’s images is the cover shot, and others from this series are posted on his website. I drew thirty or so little ditties after Nathan’s precedence, and the artisans at Featherproof Books selected from among them those that seemed to synchronize with Messinger’s stories best.

Booklist said: “Messinger’s stories are aching, not bleak, and the collection, wittily and expressively illustrated with Rob Funderburk’s line drawings, is fun, engaging, and a bit more than thought-provoking. A fresh, spot-on debut.” Not too shabby, I say.

For more information about the book, visit www.featherproof.com.

Commencement

gotta start somewhere, eh? here begins another blog. and here's to all the miscellaney and ephemeralia come & gone from all of us with scant documentation, forgotten, left to memory, discarded, or grown and transformed such that the notebook inklings are overshadowed and undermined -- salud.