Took a drive out to Los Angeles yesterday to show Jonathan Viner around the city. I picked him up from his Hollywood hotel around 10 and we got going. The 10 freeway had a bunch of Atlas tags, I can't belive that guy still gets up!


First stop was the studio of Camille Rose Garcia. She has a studio in downtown L.A. We were greeted by Camille and her husband Jeremy, and they gave us the tour and a sneak preview of her upcoming show.

First thing you see is this huge squid.

This is the painting area where Camille works on her pieces and sets up installations. She was working on a show that opens in a few weeks at Merry Karnowsky gallery.

Jonathan taking a photo of Camille and Jeremy.


They have a big table to work on drawings and signing prints.

Here's some of her paint. Guess she like Golden acrylics. I'm more of a Liquitex/Novacolor guy myself.

Some drawings.

Awesome polar bear painting.

We talked about how purple is becoming an exciting color to both of us. I love this owl piece.

She has a new giclee out.

Is this a dog?

The artist Richard Coleman rents a room in Camille's studio but he was up in San Francisco. I had a strong desire to look through his stuff because his work is so rad, but I decided that would be innappropriate and disrespectful.

Me, Camille and Jonathan. Thanks Camille and Jeremy for your hospitality!

Next stop was to Thinkspace to drop off Jonathan's painting for their group show.

The painting is called "Close Quarters", we were inspecting the package to make sure the piece was unharmed. There was no one home at Thinkspace, but I took a shot through their window of the setup.





I wanted to see Thinkspace because I get out to LA so rarely, but ah well, there was a Slick piece across the street that made up for it. Hells yeah. Always a Slick fan.


Got some lunch and while walking saw this poster. Pretty cool. Anyone know the artist?

After lunch headed over to Wacko/la Luz de Jesus to see Gary Taxali's show and scope out some art books. Sorry for the lack of photos, they had me check my bag at the door. I love this place, I could (and have) spent hours looking at stuff but we we're on a schedule so we headed out.

We shot down La Brea to Merry Karnowsky gallery to check out the Shepard Fairey show. I was really impressed, I mean I've always been a fan but usually I feel "street" art in general looses some of it's power when taken into a gallery setting. This show felt different somehow, it was more political and thoughtful and pertinant, it felt like work that was made for a gallery setting and it worked. And I think, somehow, Shepard Fairey's work is evolving in an extraordinary way, there's more pattern, more craft, more attention to detail in these pieces. And I loved seeing the rubilith that he hand cut for the screenprints (I have done these before, it's a lot of work).



A giant wall mural.

Hand cut rubilith. Shep's got skillz...

One of my favorite pieces in the show.

We both met Merry Karnowsky for the first time and she was super nice. I've been to numerous shows and never said hi all those years. What's my problem?

Next we went to New Image Art on Fairfax and Santa Monica. They have a Neckface show going on, and I'm always up to see me some Neckface. I'm always on the fence about his stuff, I have a strange fascination about his work. Jennifer said he's either a genius or a psychopath- I think she may be right. I'm not really into his graffiti, but in general I like his paintings. There were a series of ink drawings on paper that were really nice.




I'm not as into his installations. It looked like he built a haunted house, complete with a black stuffed cat on the roof and fake cobwebs.

There was a big tattoed bat guy floating menacingly overhead, with hanging babies attached to his wings. I find a lot of his stuff disturbing especially after having a baby, but these hanging toddlers looked like they were enjoying it (or maybe they just looked evil and maybe deserved it). I like this piece.

I wasn't really feeling the room installation Neckface put together.

A two headed caped monster is pulling a fetus (still attached via imbilical cord) from a horrified looking pregnant mother.

There's blood all over the walls, the sheets, and her. Just seems like shock art. Doesn't offend me or anything, just seemed childish. Too simple, know what I'm saying? I like art that is challenging somehow and this was just gory to be gory. At the same time it gave me an emotional response, and how many pieces of art can do that? I think the real question is, does Neckface hate babies?

Gallery owner Marsea showed us some Date Farmers paintings she has. I think these guys are my new favorites. I've been following their work for a couple years now. They just got the cover of Juxtapoz and I hope that helps spread some knowledge on them. Marsea told me Armando Lerma, one of the Date Farmers, met me a long time ago when we were both in high school. Small world eh?









Back wall with Ed Templeton, and some others..

Our last stop was BLK/MRKT gallery in Culver City. Owners Kinsey and Jana were happy to see us and gave us a warm welcome. There's a Tiffany Bozic show going on right now, it was really beautiful work, a must see if you're in town.



She had this awesome owl painting- funny that two of the great things I saw today were owl paintings.

Mice in a ball. The detail on this was crazy. I thought it was a dimensional piece but it's a painting with carefully controlled values.

I have the next show going up, I hope mine looks as good as Tiffany's!

Jana and Kinsey also collect art- everywhere you go upstairs there are paintings and drawings and art to be found.

David Choe closeup

Jose Parla tag on paper.

The last photo of the night. Alexone from France was staying with Kinsey and Jana.

Exhausted and mind swimming with imagery I dropped off Jonathan at his hotel and drove home. Whew what a day.
-Jeff

Dang, been a while since I posted... been busy, painting everyday, making (I hope) some good art for my upcoming show. I'm eating lunch right now, taking a break, I'll type a bit in here...

Today Aaron Mason and I went to Artworks in Pasadena to pick up some giclees, and we decided since we'd be close by, we'd stop by Alex Gross's place to see his new work. He has a show opening November 4th at Copro Nason in L.A. so he had paintings all over the place. The new stuff is beautiful, I forgot my camera so you'll have to take my word for it (and check them out in person if you live in L.A.). Alex also has a book coming out soon. Here's a picture from a couple years ago of Alex and his cat Carlos. Just pretend it was taken today, they both still look the same.


I've been spending alot of time in the studio painting, so it's been pretty boring around here lately. Here are some things that have been going on....


A Darth Vader mask arrived in the mail one morning...


A signed AFI poster arrived in the mail. Davey Havok is a big fan of my artwork....


The new Terrarium Keeper Egg came out, available at www.potatostamp.com...


At home in our backyard we found a possum playing "possum". He just sat there, hissing quietly and drooling. Many people think these marsupials are ugly, I think they're way cute. Living in a house is so different, we're really surrounded by nature which is rad. In our apartment we were surrounded by UCR students, so its a pretty big change.


Shannon loves being able to go outside.

Some works in progress for my show...














And I don't have any screenshots but my brother got in on the "friends and family" Alpha testing for the next World of Warcraft expansion. So of course he gave me the password and key and I've been playing it too! I can't say much because I don't want to get in trouble with Blizzard (and I don't want you all to know the extent of my geekiness), but damn, there is some cool shit going down in Outlands. After my show in November I might have to dork out, tune out, and veg out and play some video games....

So, tomorrow I'm meeting up with the talented Jonathan Weiner AKA Viner in Los Angeles to show him around town. I think this is his first west coast visit, so I hope I show him a good time. We're gonna hit up some galleries and I'll be there taking photos. Check back Wednesday night, I'll try to blog it up.
He has a show at Bergamot this Saturday with A.J. Fosik, Ray Caesar, and Dan Kennedy. It was curated by Jonathan Levine who will also be there Sat. night.

Jeff signing out....

To answer a few questions from the comments- am I closer to Pasadena? We moved a whopping 1 mile further east so no, we're further now (thanks Levon!). Where in Riverside? We live nearby UCR, right at the base of Sugarloaf mountain. And I already felt like a true grown up when our daughter was born. Despite the fact that I was already 30, I felt like I went from kid to adult in one day. I guess responsibility can do that to you.

Speaking of responcibilities, I'll be taking a break from posting in here. I'm taking a much needed break from the internet. There's too many web sites I check daily, too many forums I read on and too many distractions. I'm going to be hibernating in the studio for the next 2 months. I have been so busy with things (moving, birthdays, various art projects, taxes, internet difficulties, travelling, blah blah) that sadly I haven't had much time to just sit and make art.

So I'll be doing just that for awhile. I cleared out most of my ongoing projects, I'm going to let some things slide, and just disappear into my magical lab for a while. Time for experimentation, some soul searching and risk taking. It's time to let the phone ring, let the emails pile up, leave the computer off for weeks and get my hands dirty. Time to consume intense amounts of caffeine, listen to loud music and go to sleep each night just itching to wake up and feel the creative surge all over again. It's time to make some art.

I need to get away for a bit and do my thing. As my career grows sometimes I feel like I do more paperwork than artwork. That's just sad to me. I will still post in here from time to time with news but don't have the time to give this blog the love and pictures it deserves until December when things slow down. Thanks, I know everyone understands..

Free Dog the Bounty Hunter!
-Jeff

We're finishing our weekend of moving, so here's a short blog entry. We've been living in an apartment for four years now and have finally decided to rent a house. It's almost like there's too much space now, I think it's about 3x the square footage of the apartment. We don't know what to do with all the extra room. Now we have a garage, a lawn, an avocado tree, a backyard for the baby, but the best is no more going up and down stairs! And it's quiet, super quiet at night, no one coming and going at all hours, just crickets and sometimes coyotes. They woke me up at 4am and I had a smile on my face because I like their high pitched yelps and barks. I looked out the window, looking east and the moon was out, stars were bright and just at that moment a shooting star flew by. What are the chances? Okay, I need to get back to work. Boxes to unpack, furniture to put back together and still have to clean the old apartment and try to get some of the deposit back...
-Jeff

Went to the supermarket today to use one of those Coinstar machines. You know, the ones where you put all your loose change in. We're moving out in a few days and I thought it's about time to get rid of the two jars of change we have sitting here. One of the jars has been filled up for about 8 years, and I'm pretty sure some of that change is from when I was a kid.

So at the Coinstar machine, when it tries to process a coin and it's not U.S., it spits it out. I thought this was the coolest part, seeing all the weird coins and objects that get rejected.

I found a Chucky Cheese coin, no idea where it came from. Says it's from 1990 but I haven't been there since the 80's. There was a Concourse Bowling Alley coin- I remember oing there with my brothers about 5 years ago. I also found this thick coin that said $100, and I got all excited for a sec but I think it's actually 100 pesos. Cool looking coin though..

Found this San Diego penny. It's from one of those machines that smashes a penny (that you provide) for a couple bucks. I think it's from when me and my brother Jesse stayed on Coronado Island with my Aunt Debbie and cousin Amber. 89 or 90 I think.


Speaking of smashed pennies, check these out. I'm sure many of you have made these, they're flattened by trains. You just lay out a bunch of pennies on the tracks and wait for a train to come by then desperately try to find the coins which will be scattered all over. Dimes work real well too, they get thin as knife blades. Nickels and quarters don't work as well but they're thick enough that you can hear then getting run over. That penny with the half circle notch was from overlapping 5 or so pennies. We were hoping they'd fuse together or some shite but it didn't happen.
Then I found a weird coin that looked strangely familiar. I remembered what it was as I flipped it in my hand. When I was 10 I had this notion that I could flatten out nickels and make them into quarters. Turn 5 cents in 25. I spent a day smashing and shaping nickels, trying to get them the same circumference as quarters. I was going to use them in vending machines. I don't think it worked but this is one of the nickels that somehow over the years has stuck around. And it's actually pretty close in shape to a quarter.




Last I found these rejected "jems". A washer, a gear, a bead. And my old Target pin. It used to be white and red but it looks kinda cool as it has aged. It reminded me of how much I take for granted these days and how hard I've worked to get where I'm at. Pushing shopping carts in 106 degree heat really blew, it was hard labor- we didn't have a Cartmaster 5000, we had to actually use our muscles. And very under appreciated (rarely a thank you for my hard work), but I still took pride in my work. I could have easily blown it off and said the hell with it but for some reason I tried hard to do my best. I guess I felt lucky to even have a job. I always try to think back to working out in the elements, daydreaming about the future while pushing unending lines of carts to waiting shoppers, carving a J+J in the tree by the Garden center, seeing my breath float up in the cold rainy nights. Life was simpler eight years ago. Not that I would ever want to go back in time but it's always good to look back and see what happened.

Okay, some art stuff- many people have been asking about the giclee I have coming out, called "Savior of Nature". I will have more info soon, I'm meeting with the printers tomorrow, and depending on how the first round of proofs look, I may do a preorder. I am working on pricing, it will be between $400-$500 and the edition is 50 prints + 3 AP's. I will know more tomorrow. We're moving soon so I might be out of touch the next few days, but I'll get the info out as soon as I can. Here is the giclee....

Oh yeah, ended up we had over $100 of change sitting there. I had no idea, I estimated about $20 so I was pretty happy.
-Jeff

I have a new assistant/intern/apprentice- Aaron Mason. He's a tattoo artist working out of Soul Expressions in Temecula. He'll be helping out with all sorts of things in the studio, and hopefully I'll be able to pass on some art knowledge.



Aaron and I cleaned out the studio today, organized things a bit. I don't think it's been this cleaned up since I moved in last October. We were making some space for some canvases and panels that were being delivered today.

This is a 5' square canvas and to the left a huge 10' x 3' canvas. I decided for my upcoming show that I wanted to get all the panels professionally made. I called upon the craftsmen over at Lucius Hudson to build all the panels and canvasas. Once you are selling art for decent prices I think it's time to step up and give the collectors the best quality possible. No more warped plywood and Aaron bros. canvases for me.

These are some of the wood panels. Check out how they're constructed. Super sturdy and razor straight.

This is a work in progress on Arches paper. Having fun working on paper...

I still take on the occassional illustration job, though they're getting rarer and rarer. This is a book cover that I'm working on, very different from my gallery work- more fantasy /sci-fi, it's a lot of fun for the dork deep inside me. That's my actual sized sketch and tiny color comp. This job is late and I need to finish it soon.



Ah shit a paper cut. Except it's from a cardboard box which slices deeper. Right under my pinky nail. Stings. We are moving soon, and I'm starting to hate cardboard boxes.

Noooooo!
Steve Irwin "The Crocodile Hunter" has died! I was always amazed at how that guy had never been maimed by the crocs or bitten by a rattler, looks like he was done in by a stingray. News reports say he was pierced through the chest by the stinger. I imagine there's potent poison in Australian stingrays. Guess he died doing what he loved...