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I have a couple pieces in a show up now at Roots and Culture through March 21. They’re part of Robert Snowden and Carson Salter’s publication/curatorial project called FloorPlan which consists of drawings of sitcom residences executed from memory. Each artist participating was asked to create drawings from memory of the main sets from Seinfeld, The Simpsons, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Cosby Show or Full House. Some of the results are pretty fantastic and many include notes about what they do and do not remember. There’s even one of the upstairs of the Full House house by Mary Kate Olsen. Can’t wait to see the book. More on The End of Analog.

Me and the Floor Plans (my two second and third from the top, closest to me)

Finally managed to get my main site updated with new work from last semester. Despite the huge interruption that was moving, I still make a lot of stuff. I guess that can happen when you don’t stretch any canvases. I may still do more touching up of some images to make up for my less than stellar photography skills, but at least you can get an idea of what I was up to for the last half of 2008. Check it and let me know what you think.

Last Friday I made a trip down to Pittsburgh with my friend Julian to catch the incredibly mediocre Carnegie International: Life On Mars? show before it closed. We were both pretty underwhelmed overall and agreed that the Barry McGee installation, Wilhelm Sasnal’s paintings and Mike Kelly’s Kandor series were among the strongest work. I’ll throw Rudolf Stingel’s large paintings and the Thomas Hirshhorn’s installation as being noteworthy as well. Biggest disappointment: an entire room of Vija Celmins paintings. I normally like her work when encountered individually but an entire room seemed to deflate their power and failed to hold my interest.

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I’ve been a little slack on the bar napkin portraits, both in the collecting and the posting. This set is from sometime back in October I think. There are some new attempts by people featured in past entries as well as some new ones making their first attempt at drawing my portrait on a bar napkin with a Sharpie.

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A little Crown Royal porn for all the Black Tooth Grin enthusiasts out there. I particularly like the purple Crown Royal bag in the shape of a Christmas stocking.

My car parked in the driveway of my parents house about 12 hours after arriving. Gotta love lake effect snow (although I wish I’d brought my ski clothes).

I currently have work in two shows. The first show is called, I think, “MFA Urban Invitational” in the Gallery at Herron College of Art and Design in Indianapolis. The show coincides with Mid-America College Art Association Biennial Conference and is designed to show how graduate level work in studio art can benefit and transform and individual’s work. Basically everyone in the show has two pieces-one from the beginning of the graduate career and one from later on that is presumably much different. It’s basically a before-and-after kind of thing. My ‘before’ is three panel piece I did called “600 Block Pearl Street” and the ‘after’ is “14206-3120 (III)” which was exhibited at the “Paper Love” show at Devening Projects and Editions over the summer.

The second show is “New Directions ‘08″ at the Barrett Art Center in Poughkeepsie, NY which was juried by Asher Miller who’s a curator of 19th century, Modern and Contemporary art at the Met. The piece selected is “14206-3130 (I)” which I showed at the SAIC’s Graduate Exhibition this past spring. Unfortunately due to geographical constraints I’m not goin to see either show.

Finally, later today I’ll finish moving out of the giant loft I lived in for the last year to better insulated and closer to the CTA Blue Line three bedroom apartment. Moving is a pain, but standing on the corner at 2:30 am in February waiting for a bus to take me to a house that I can only afford to heat to 55 degrees is worse. I’ll post photos of everything if and when I get around to them.

So said Jaime Henderson while executing her bar napkin portrait of me. It’s a new school year and that means a new crop of grad students to draw me. Plus I can get some from folks who didn’t draw me last year. I also cut my hair which means the signifiers have changed making it that much harder to capture my likeness in this most unforgiving of mediums. That being the case, I’m allowing people who drew me during round one to have another go at it. So, keeping with tradition, let’s start things off with Nudelman:

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My band, Fuck Shit City, made a record. This is it. Double A side, recorded over two evenings at Phantom Manor Recording and mastered at Chicago Mastering Service it features the soon to be hit singles “Fuck Shit Moon” and “Spirits”. Quantities are limited and this is sure to be a collectors item so get yours today!

Rode my bike up there the other day. Found it to be a lot better than the locations in Wicker Park and the Loop. Maybe it has something to do with the lower concentration of hipsters up there? Anyway, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular like I was when I visited the Wicker Park store. Maybe that’s why I walked out with so much? Hell, I even put a few things back.

• Cedar Walton: The Electric Boogaloo -Luckily this has nothing to do with bad movies about breakdancing from the 80s.
• Herbie Nichols: The Third World - From Blue Note’s mid 70’s re-issue series.
• Spirit: The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus
• Lynyrd Skynyrd: Street Survivors - With the original cover of the band standing in front of some burning buildings that was pulled from stores after the plane crash.
• Emerson, Lake and Palmer: Pictures at an Exhibition
• Jethro Tull: Benefit
• The Doobie Brothers: What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits - Purchased solely because of the title in the hopes it would live up to it. It doesn’t.
• Sir Victor Uwaifo: Guitar-Boy Superstar 1970-76 - Another great comp from Soundway.