Exit Strata asked me to design the cover of their next issue, PRINT! VOL 3. I invited Aaron Liechty, Jacob Liechty, and Sondra Eisenstat to join me in a game of layer tennis that would feed into the final design.

Fuck the Muse pt.7: Sometimes you have a great idea for a project, or one aspect of a project, and you throw everything at it, but the idea turns out to be a dud. You can't ditch the project after putting so much into it, but neither can you force it through. The only way forward is to take a step back.

Dear Poets,

If you are going to spend hours perfecting the placement of a comma and two line breaks, please put the same effort into your reading. You don’t publish without editing, why do you perform without rehearsing? The stage is a different medium. Have you considered working with a voice coach?

Words don’t speak for themselves: they require punctuation.

Sincerely,
— Trying Not To Fall Asleep

Over three years, we've only performed as Teacup Gorilla a handful of times. Now we're making our way back to the original performance vision, starting at the Bouldering Poets series:

March 22, 7:30pm at 303 Vodka | see facebook for details.

We're back, and we have big plans.

Fuck the Muse pt.6: Last week we compiled our curiosity shopping lists, preparing to push out from our seed in every direction. We have the list to guide us: now it's time to go shopping.

Fuck the Muse pt.5: Now that you have a seed worth exploring, you are ready for step 2 of the creative process. The goal of this phase is explosive growth, following your curiosity out from the seed in every direction. What is the content? What materials will you need to build this artwork? What already exists, and what will you need to build? What will be your inspirations? What will be your constraints?

The editors at SpringGun Press asked me to design cover art for The Posture of Contour, a new book by James Belflower. I used the opportunity to get my mind out of an all-digital space, and spent most of my time with pen, paper, and oil pastel.

Fuck the Muse pt.4: You can't start working until you know what you are working towards. That doesn't mean knowing all the answers, it means knowing the questions that will guide you. I refer to those guiding questions as the "seed" of a project.

Last month I posted my first GreenMud reward portrait of Kitten Karlyle. This weekend I finished the second portrait, a joint image of my ongoing collaborators Dan Eisenstat and Sondra Eby.

Fuck the Muse pt.3: Cycles have become the core of my creative process. Thinking in cycles means I always know where I am and where I'm going, even when I feel overwhelmed by the size of a project. If I'm stuck, it's time for a new mindset. If my last move was to zig, my next move is to zag.