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Yet another art show I’m in this month is taking place at rotopolpress in Kassel,Germany; my first in one of my favourite European countries. This will be the first show in their Post-Democracy series of art shows, and is aptly titled Secret Service. It opens on the 21st of November, and will be showing until February 13th, 2010. This show has quite a large lineup of artists, and the poster is looking pretty radical. It’s made by the man who invited me to take part, Michael Meier.

Mailing art overseas can be expensive, so it’s better to make small images when you’re on a tight budget in order to save those beans. The piece above is pretty straightforward, depiciting your average, tough guy secret service (CSIS?) agent as many have depicted religious figures before us in history (e.g. saint hand + halo). The protector / bullet cushion of politicians, leaders, and other V.I.P.s, not to mention the bane of many conspiracy theorists…

I was recently invited by good Vancouver pal Randy Laybourne to take part in the upcoming art show, Drawing on Vancouver. It’s going down on the 19th of November at Walrus Shop and is being sponsored by the folks over at Vancouver is Awesome. Pretty exciting. There is a great lineup of artists in this one, including one of my personal faves, Andrew Pommier. Also cool is the fact that the poster for the show was created by Jeff Hamada over at BOOOOOOOM! Enough links for you?

Below you can see the two pieces I submitted for the show.

Where are you from? is a poster show being put on by good pal, and designustrator, Gabe Wong, along with around 15-20 other artists revolving around the idea of, well, where we all come from.  It opens September 4th at The ARTery, here in Edmonton. Each artist has been asked to make an image in poster-form that relates to the theme of the show, where  do we come from?

SO, I drew from a memory where I was driving my father’s truck at the tender age of 5 or so, sans seatbealt, with my dad smoking 10 sorts of cigarettes at once.  Sure, I was only sitting at the wheel for a mere few seconds, but the memory really stuck. It also struck a chord about a childhood where the duty of discovery, exploration, and most importantly, danger, are placed upon the shoulders of the child his or herself (maybe with the slightest amount of ‘adult supervision’). The poster is titled “Are we dead yet?”, alluding to the classic childhood roadtrip saying “Are we there yet?”, but with a good disregard for safety and well-being: two ingredients for a good time, something that seems to be slowly disappearing in today’s overexposed Facebooked, GPS’d, cell-phone saturated culture…

The poster is a 2 colour screen-print with only 12 copies printed in total, measuring 50cm x 70cm. If they don’t sell out at the show (most likely)  I’ll throw them online for your purchasing pleasure!

The fine folks over at the Owl and Lion Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland, have recently opened up an exhibition called Story Motel where you can find a nice handful of various handmade zines from 2009. Genevieve and I were approached by the gallery to submit some zines as well, so we threw  a few copies of International Beauty Saloon, Issue 2 their way. If you live in Edinburgh, or are simply just passing through, swing by the gallery and check it out / buy all those lovely zines!

On a side note, the Royal Bison is coming up right away, which means new prints and a new, double thick issue of International Beauty Saloon with contributors from Vancouver to New York. You don’t want to miss this one!

THE FINE ART OF SCHMOOZY is going down this coming Saturday, the 29th of November. It’s a fundraiser for Edmonton’s rocking non-profit artist run center. In that show I will have one of the prints shown in the last post up for grabs. Auction style. There will also be 52 other pieces of art to throw money at, all from local gooders.

I get no cut of the money, so feel free to buy it for copious amounts of cash and the satisfaction in knowing that you’ve supported a good cause! Also, I will be in attendance as well!

The Uppercase Gallery in Calgary has a show coming up on October 18th that’s all about nightmares. It will be up until the 2nd of November. This is the piece I’ve submitted. It’s about guts and how they can sometime be quite the burden.

So go to the Gallery, buy it, and make the world a better place.