oops i forgot to blog about anything for several months again! Whoops

been a little while, obviously, but i’ll try and summarize what’s happened in the last few months and what i’m currently working on. i’m still in school, full-time now and digging it, and continuing to work on… um, everything.

expozine 2023 was. Not amazing, for me. didn’t sell many zines, didn’t sell practically any prints, sold a couple patches. it was very disheartening and while i might sign up for a table next year i will have a drastically reduced amount of stock- at the end of the day i did at least break even, so that’s a positive. i submitted Atlas to the award judges, but i won’t know until this october/november or so if i’ve been nominated for anything. that’s how it goes i guess!

in january i released an ep under the name “mackerel sky” that hopefully will get turned into something more polished in the coming year. am writing more songs for the project and recording demos. this is 100% just for fun; i don’t expect it to go anywhere or to perform it live at any time. really it was just very fun to speed-write/record an ep in a month flat.

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into the nitty gritty: i have two large format projects currently going: The Pathetics and the as of yet untitled hood/mask thing i’m making. the pathetics is going to be a massive collection of drawings of mass-produced porcelain figurines - i’m aiming for at least 50, but if i keep churning them out it might be more by the end- framed and displayed together to overwhelm the viewer. i have to write up a little statement about it that’ll more efficiently explain the point lol

the hood/mask is more in progress insofar as i don’t know what its end format is going to be, but i’m going to document all the parts of making it as thoroughly as i can and maybe turn that part of it into a zine. i have been kind of constantly shying away from making art about anything objectionable and this is going to be a step in that direction.

the hood is kind of a great signifier of the twin stars of my art practice: distance and violence. (it’s kind of crazy how often i find myself coming back to that. i really don’t consciously set out to, but then the more i think about things i’ve made the more i’m like aw shit i did the ol’ dist vio again.) it produces a distance between the wearer and the audience- that of anonymity- and is itself a symbol of violence: the popular viewpoint surrounding bdsm is one of whips and pain and etc. it’s extra cool because despite conjuring up such violent imagery the hood itself is strictly tied to submission- thus the onus of producing the violence conjured is centred on the audience. it is, to crib another piece of mine, which is a weird thing to do feelingswise but i’m doing it anyway, an ultimate surrender.

i plan to use it for some kind of performance art or at least for reference photos for a self portrait but we’ll see about all that.

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anyway that’s most of what i have to say right now. as you can tell i’m starting to get more cerebral about stuff i’m making, which is both fun and annoying bc i can physically feel myself get more irritating about what i’m making the more i think about it. whatever! if i don’t make it in the official art world i’ll just let go of the high concept shit and start drawing stuff for no reason again and nobody will be the wiser. yay

hope you’re doing well. will probably write another post in six months given my current apparent posting frequency.

i did!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

well i mean this isn’t a great thing honestly because i do like having money and being able to pay for such incredible things as Rent and Food but given i got laid off that means i’m eligible for EI which means that i’m gonna be fine. it also means that i have an insane amount of free time right now, at least until the next semester of school starts (which i’ll be doing full time for), and i’ve been using said free time very constructively. made another print (to be scanned), finished a painting (to be photographed), and am currently getting my stuff together for expozine. amazing what you can get done when you don’t have to be doing something you don’t like four days out of the week.

what else! i don’t know! i’m looking into getting the three king gizzard zines risographed, which is proving to be a more difficult/expensive proposal than initially thought. i really, really want to get these babies brought into the physical world and i know that risographing is the best bet… so i’m gonna keep scrounging around for someone with a risograph machine and free time. worst case scenario i shell out mega money for them, but more likely i’ll just have to wait until later this year/early next year for the people i know with risographers to not be completely swamped with projects. i'm also kind of interested at this point in getting a risographer of my own at some point in the future, but that is a huge fucken amount of scratch for something that i’m not sure i can do money-earning shit with. not that i have to do money-earning shit with it, to be fair, but it’s like… you gotta get return on investment unless i can write a fucken grant and get the government of canada to fund my obsession with Making Shit.

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i’m going to keep working on the ideas i’ve been throwing around for the last bit, so please expect more paintings and zines to get deposited on here soon. thank you so much for your patience in the meantime while i continue getting things sorted out. see you soon!

big news folks i am a) sick and b) going to start the studio art program at concordia come september!! Let’s GOOO

i had kind of always wanted to go to art school and i guess this is really shaping up to be the year of Doing Stuff I Wanted To Do. from top surgery to art show to art school to… who knows what else. to going to the pool a lot more this summer, maybe. anyway it’s a good feeling! i will be much older than probably 75% of my classmates but i think doing a 200 level course at age 30 is a nice way to remind myself i still have an amount of grey matter rollin around the ole noggin that didn’t get obliterated by partying.

in terms of other stuff, i’m still preparing for the show. printed a bunch of paper and fabric prints of the various plates, but i think i need to go back and do a couple more (especially of the big ones). considering making a custom tote bag with a bunch of prints on it as well, a sort of one of a kind deal, but i don’t think that’s something i should do at the show so much as put up for sale on instagram. either way it’s shaping up nicely. still don’t know how i’m going to hang the big masonite piece but that’s a problem for future me.

ok that’s all i’ve got for now!

spring has sprung, officially! yay! thank GOD!

with that exuberance expressed i have even more to share with you. i am pleased to announce that i’m having a vernissage! it’ll be may 4-5 at the espace pop in montreal, and i’ll have paintings and prints on display as well as for sale. come on by! look at some art! hang out! ask me questions or something!

i went around yesterday putting up a bunch of these around the mile end/little italy, so if you see one and go oh man nice then i guess you know why. also if you’re seeing this blog post because of these posters, hi! I Hope You Like The Stuff I Have On Display.

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apart from the above not that much is going on- i finished a big fuckoff painting this morning that will be displayed at the show, and am hoping to take photos of it soon. it’s been nice to be able to really coalesce the ideas that i want to portray in my painting practice. i’ve also settled on how i want to make the lifting zine, which is going to ideally be more of a comic. i need to get some stuff together for that- namely, i need to print out or have printed for me a bunch of squares that i can use as panels. it’s the most difficult part of getting myself to draw comics, but once i can get past that everything should come together pretty smoothly. i’m hoping to have time to do that soon.

okay that’s all ive got!

So I Am Carving Another Lino Block. big surprise. i love making linoleum prints more than like 90% of other media but it’s a difficult thing to do properly when one doesn’t have access to things such as printing presses and brayers at deserres cost, ahem, Thirty Dollars. i am not paying Thirty Dollars for a glorified rolling pin thank you very much. heck it does hurt me to pay a gazillion bucks for lino blocks to begin with but unfortunately i’ve not worked out a way to get around that business expense. if anyone knows a place in canada with cheaper options lmk.

anyway i wanted to do a big boy this time around and the largest options at the deserres were 9'“x12” which frankly wasn’t cutting it. so i have jammed two of them together, like so:

they’re just taped on the back side with regular packing tape for now. i figure when i print ‘em it’ll be easy enough to keep them flush. if it ends up being hard, well, that’s a lesson learned i guess and i can attach them another way.

i did a couple preliminary sketches of the design before i drew it onto the blocks proper. you can see in a couple corners i’m not yet sure what to put in— originally they were going to be lutes, but that doesn’t really jive with the overall theme of, i guess, Tranquility In The Face Of Violence. i might just do more dogs or something subtly threatening.

a n y w a y! i decided for the middle panel to go for the more annoying but also much more striking look of white background w/ black outline around white fill, which is deeply tricky to do nicely when you’re going for relatively similar width lines. so i carved all the thin lines out first, then went back with my larger u gouge and got all the solid areas. had to take a break because i am still “recovering” from “surgery” or whatever but you can see where i’m going.

the bottom and top panels are going to be dark; the sides are going to have a sort of faux-argyle pattern going on. it’ll be fun!

okay that’s all i have to report byyyeeee

okay so i was getting sick of my site looking the same for uhhhh 3 years so i am now redoing it. hopefully the new layout and organizational system makes sense to you because it makes sense to me and i’m not redoing it again, at least not for a while, because i am the kind of person who does not enjoy redoing things. well, things of this nature at least. bear with me while i get all the moving parts in order! there are a lot of photos that i need to take- this is going to be the first time that i try to semi-professionally get all my paintings photographed in natural light and in good quality. the DSLR battery is charging as we speak.

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layout aside, i also have had a Big Life Change recently: i got top surgery! woohoo! all my shirts fit better now!! it is also a major ass surgery so i’m going to be out of work for six weeks, which it turns out is a pretty long amount of time. luckily i’m not in pain at this point, two weeks post-, and the main source of discomfort is figuring out what in the good goddamn i want to do with my day. surprisingly it is hard to do shit when one cannot medically lift more than ten pounds or expend much effort with one’s arms. in lieu of doing those things i am making evil plans to do as much- i have a lino cut waiting in the wings, as well as the same zines that i probably talked about in my last post lying around. i’m also painting a lot! hoping to do a vernissage in april. stay tuned for news on that as i have it.

i’m also kind of sad to report that my zine fervour and fever has subsided quite a bit. this doesn’t mean that i’m not going to make more of them; i’m just having a moment with painting and am pouring myself into that right now. i will return to zines. i have a few of them like. completely written out and waiting to be typeset and illustrated, so like, i don’t really have an excuse NOT to get back to them. truthfully all i need is a bit of impetus a la an impending expozine to get my ass into gear. it doesn’t help that i’ve additionally been shying away quite a bit from digital art lately, having found my groove again with physical media. again, this is a temporary thing. if you’re severely missing my digital scribbles just give me a few months and i’ll be back.

anyway, that’s all for now. life’s fairly quiet for me while i convalesce, so i expect i’ll be checking in again in a few weeks with more updates and probably more projects. stay tuned!

YOU HEARD IT HERE PROBABLY NOT FIRST: I GOT NOMINATED FOR THE 2021 EXPOZINE AWARDS!!!!

hWAT

as you can imagine, this is rocking my world like you would not believe. i did not in my wildest dreams think i would get so much as nominated for diddly squat, much less in a category where Every Single Other nominee is part of like an actual publishing house or collective. this is wild to me. i am just a guy writing and illustrating and typesetting and then going to sleep. i would like to heartily thank the expozine award judges for putting me up there and giving me this opportunity. if i win the category’s award i will like. literally expire right there on stage.

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apart from the above, what have i been up to? i know that my updating of this website and blog has been spotty at best, which again is something i swear i’m trying to work on. my day job went absolutely nuts crazy for a few months there and now it’s slowing down so i should have more time to like, work on things that i actually want to be working on. i promise.

i’ve been sewing a lot, first off— part of the benefit of working at a fabric store means i’m surrounded by fabric all day and thus inspiration. before you ask yes i am planning on writing something about sewing/handicrafts that’s part a philosophical screed and part a how to. i know. it’s been fun! i am gaining confidence at a rate that is shocking! i am going to make a pair of black corduroy overalls!

currently on the project docket, that aside, is the following (not an exhaustive list by any means, as i am the reigning champion of Biting Off More Than I Can Chew):

• cookbook (YES! REALLY!)

• aforementioned How To zine

• “cant help myself”, a 40-page novella about violence and drugs and searching for feeling (nearly complete— i’m doing yet another round of edits right now and will be figuring out how to get it out into the world shortly)

• corduroy overalls and burnt orange cowboy shirt (this’ll take a minute)

• PRINTS!!! that you can BUY!!! (auughhg)

• a huge fuckoff painting that’s 90% done but for some mystery final component i haven’t settled on yet

• organizing a co-vernissage with another local artist (shh shh i can’t tell you who)

• a few zines whose ideas i’ve had fermenting for a minute but haven’t settled on how to actually write/draw about… by a few, of course, i mean like 6, and it will take me a while to pin them down but god damn it i’m going to

• applying for a canada council grant

• applying, potentially, for an MFA (??!??!??!?!???!??!?!)

• preparing for top surgery (yup)

• sleeping i think

so yeah i’m a bit busy. lol.

i’m also likely going to be redoing this website aesthetics-wise fairly soon if i can finagle it; i’m kind of looking to do more of a web 2.0 thing that’s easier to navigate and a lot less slick than the current situation. i am dogshit garbage at doing like html or css though so i’m probably going to have to get someone else to help me with it and that involves exchanging of cash money which i do not particularly have a surplus of so this is a bit of a stretch goal. c’est la vie babey.

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so yeah! that’s the business. i’m going to try and make these updates at least monthly if not biweekly moving forward especially given that twitter is currently on precarious legs and that’s my current typical choice for information dissemination. keep your eyes open for new news, is what i’m sayin. until then take it easy and stay warm and uhhh remember to eat leafy greens and probiotics for gut health.

my god i finally did something i said i was going to do!

UNBURDENED HOPE; A SWORD TO REND THE CREEPING HORROR

new print is DONE!!!!! i’m very happy with it, despite a few mistakes that are solely due to my carving blades not being very sharp anymore. c’est la vie i guess, and my fault for not popping by deserres and getting a new set. now i know for next time. if you’re local in montreal and would like one, please hit me up— i’ve also printed it a few times on patches, in both red and white.

apart from the print, i also finished the sending it zine; i’m happy with it, though the tone is pretty dour. that’s what happens a lot of the time when i’m partway through writing something. i get all depresso while being expresso and then you end up with a lot of “man life sucks huh” but… i think i turned it into a positive thing? i hope?

currently on the docket is a final fantasy xiv zine, which i drew the illustrations for like three years ago and then had no idea what to do with. now i know what i’m doing with them! the only problem is due to how much my style’s shifted from 2019-ish i can’t really draw up anything auxiliary, so i’m a little stuck with the illustrations i’ve got. (apart from the cover, which i will be drawing anyway.) it’s very fun to write within another world, reminds me of the dnd zines and worldbuilding i’ve worked on in the past.

what else? novella is tentatively done (still waiting on more feedback), am already thinking about writing another one with even more annoying characters. or maybe i should write more chill characters. it’s unclear. i just read some pynchon on the plane and got inspired. we’ll see where that goes, if anywhere— right now i’m considering typesetting the novella into zine format and seeing if it’s short enough that it’s a feasible zine. if not, i’m going to talk to a publisher i know here and see if it’s possible for them to help me do a print run. (i’m not holding my breath.) either way i’m going to keep editing it and fleshing it out; it can really only get better.

i’m also planning on printing postcard-sized prints on one of my newer illustrations:

it does kind of scream “RISOGRAPH ME!” but i have no idea how to gain access to one of those bad boys. for now i’ll just have it printed regular-style. those should be ready later this summer or at least for expozine.

ok i think that’s all i have today! thank’s for reading! will endeavour to update more often but man i am bad at that!

houuuugh!

wow it has been a minute! i have been Going Through It as the kids say and don’t really have much to talk about here— the xiu xiu zine is out, yay, but finally getting it online has shockingly not solved my creative block. well, okay maybe it’s not a block per se so much as a “everything i’m making takes forever??” phenomenon, which i’m not used to given my typical speedy pace.

currently on the docket is the novella (draft is hesitantly done!), which i’m waiting for people to test read so i can edit it further; i also have some ideas for the doomsaying zine hanging out (it’s going to be a 8-side single page type zine, with the verso a 8x11 illustration) which will be fun to write and awful to read; and i’m likely going to be carving the lino block for new shirts/prints very soon. i tend to have more energy for creative pursuits as it gets warmer out, plus i’m taking a social sabbatical, so these projects are going to get moving as soon as i can make them.

i’m also looking in to some smaller illustrations that i can turn into various prints, specifically postcard-sized things. these i want to draw with coloured pencil, but i haven’t totally decided what i want them to be of yet and need to do some thumbnailing and research. i hate research! i wish i could draw anything at any time.

outside of the above i am also sewing a LOT lately; currently finishing two projects, a bee-themed cowboy shirt and a kim kitsuragi (of disco elysium) style bomber jacket. unlike kim’s, this jacket is fluorescent orange. it’s coming together pretty quickly but i didn’t order enough ribbing for the cuffs/collar/waistband, so i need to go on a little voyage before i can really get it done. here’s hoping i don’t have to order the dang ribbing and slow myself down by another week and a half.

photos of all this stuff should be coming soon. i’m also thinking about starting a sewing blog, if i get decent enough at this shit to have anything interesting to say. we’ll see!

if anyone wants to write a grant for me also please lmk

glad to write to you now that expozine’s over. it went insanely well- sold out of most of the zines i brought, a fair amount of shirts, and i’m down to just one or two tarot decks left. yay! now i can have more space in my apartment for lying around and eating chips. if you came and said hey to me, thank you so much! if you didn’t, go to hell! (kidding. do not go to hell.)

one of the main reasons i like tabling expozine, more than the cash money potentially acquired, is the wealth of inspiration one can gather by just hanging out. i’m working on two zines now; one of them’s about xiu xiu and the other one is written in french and is about bilingualism! we will see how long both of them take me to finish as i’ve been deeply distracted lately by like everything else in my life. i’m excited for my upcoming holiday and the two six-hour train rides i’ll be taking; it’s a great opportunity to reset and “recentre” even though the latter is a huge buzzword and i’m sorry.

as far as art goes i’ve been looking into making more prints because i do love linocuts so much. i also want to start painting again in earnest, as i think a lot of the things i learned last year re: colour are starting to make themselves apparent in my paintings more and more. hopefully that continues! i think i want to begin looking at painting people more, because it’s sort of been a long standing weak spot for me. looking at francis bacon paintings for inspiration because he seems to have a similar discomfort with painting the face. going to try to do some self portraits without worry of being narcissistic!

this likely will be the last time i write this year- see you in 2022, unless i get my act together. then i’ll see you later in 2021 i guess.

heyo i got updates!

tattoo went well, it is healing and gross (flaky) so no photos of it rn. also finished the plates for the long sleeved shirts i’m planning on doing for expozine 20, which has been announced (yaaaaaaaay!) as the 20th-21st of november at the SAT downtown. going to be signing up for a table this week, and hopefully i’ll be able to attend! should have the usual spread of zines, the last of the tarot cards, some patches, prints, and t-shirts. i might also make some prints of the cards that i made for the holidays last year n sell em but we’ll see what’s realistically doable in the next month.

still haven’t made much headway with any of the zines i’m sitting on, mostly because my day job has been NUTS for the last week. things are thankfully slowing down now, so i should have time to dig my heels in and actually make some cool stuff. currently taking notes for some potential autobio comics and a zine idea that’s just cool prophecies- idea might be to have a real small one that a reader could flip thru at random and find something somehow uhhh Edifying. gotta think about it!

here’s the plate for the long-sleeve shirt i’m planning on printing (imagine an arrow pointing directly to the left):

we’ll see how it looks once it’s actually printed! still have to pick up some shirts in bulk— last time i ran out of mediums/larges VERY quickly, so going to try to account for that with the next order.

ok that’s all i got thank you love you mwah

heyoooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

so i figured now that i have a web site i should probably, you know, put stuff on it- and as much as like, the long-ass pages of various paintings/illustrations/zines are fun to look at, it’s kind of hard to keep this bad boy as a living document without inevitably losing some stuff along the way. hence: blog. this way i can post little sketches and such that don’t belong in another collated page and also keep yon audience up to date on what i’m working on and what to look forward to in the future.

pupshaw, a little guy i’m probably going to get tattooed this weekend. (don’t tell my mom.)

if you’re seeing this after meeting me at the most recent expozine endeavour: hi! if you’re not: hi anyway! the outdoor expozine extra thing was super fun and i’m so glad i spent my weekend hangin out and sellin’ zines. thank you everyone for ur patronage and helping me get all the tarot decks that have been collecting dust in my apartment out of my apartment and into your little hands. also thank you for letting me know that making more t-shirts is DEFINITELY something i should do for future events!

which brings me to the Currently Working On section. i’m the kind of person who scoots from project to project with wild abandon, which is why it’s been taking me a while to put out any new zines. my deepest apologies; i’ve been suffering from a bad case of scrambled egg brain thanks to the pandemic and also not going outside and also having simultaneously not enough and way too many new ideas.

in any case, i’m currently mostly focusing on three projects: a) the third layer (aka the sequel to the second layer), a zine that’s continuing the heavy metaphorical journey of the hundred-named through the process of transformation and rebirth; b) long-sleeved linoprinted t-shirts, which i’ve mostly designed but haven’t started carving the plates for yet (soon!!); c) a zine that i actually started in 2018 and then stalled on because i didn’t have any ideas for it that’s essentially a 60s-style catalogue for the stylish spacefarer. do i know when any of these will be done? noooooooope! but they’re on my radar, and the process for all three has already been started.

i’ll post more about those three projects when i make more progress- it’s slow going right now but hopefully with winter coming up i’ll be more productive with personal stuff. in the meantime i’m drawing like so many worms all the time and also working my day job, which is surprisingly fun though mildly stressful.

let me know what you think and if there’s anything in particular you’d like to hear about my process/my art/my life and i’ll add it to next post! going to try to get these out weekly. yell at me if i don’t update them sooner.

xo, thirtybirds.