Magic
I have been wanting, and meaning, to write this post for a few weeks, and in part due to the subject at hand, time has been in short supply. I would be remiss, however, if I did not make the time to put down my thoughts about what Abigail has catalyzed for me. I’m writing this off the cuff; I don’t want to edit my emotions or rework them. This is from the heart.
For those of you who don’t know, Abigail is a rock opera about the Salem witch trials; it is a completely original work, created by Michael Xavier, Daniel Knop and Kurt Brown. This marks their first original rock opera after producing a number of successful rock opera “covers”, i.e. The Rocky Horror Show, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar. Few debuts are masterworks, but in my estimation, this one is. Aside from being an outstanding work of art and music, it has also been the catalyst for several momentous milestones in my life, all of which revolve around my return, in earnest, to the joy of music I thought I’d had to leave behind.
Some of you who will read this know my story; most probably don’t. Very briefly, I have been singing and performing onstage since I was six years old. I was active in competitive choir for my elementary, intermediate and high school years. After high school, I joined a band called The Mimsies, which would eventually make something of a splash in Hollywood and tour North America. I left the band under tragic circumstance in 2003, after ten years of nonstop gigging and recording. At that point, in the words of one of my new songs, “I put down the microphone and called it a day.” (more…)
Carnal
Trumpet vines overhang aging stucco doorways, creating some cool respite for the bees seeking sweetness in the stamina of the afternoon. Ruby-throated birds, like mosquitoes, sip a Coca-Cola that has spilled and lies evaporating in a sticky pool on the street. Somewhere, children are yelling after a football.
In the shadows, intentions are made. Intentions wrapped in paper and string. Colognes are opened after baths and caramel skin is anointed in Tres Fleurs and Saint Teresa water. An effusion of Bay Rhum and roses floats out a window on an upper floor, and down to the passers-by, acknowledgment that even in this soporific heat, someone stirs.
Cigars, dry, their outer wrappings peeling, are lit and left to smolder as long as they will. Cones of brown sugar are placed on floors, surrounded by feathers and photos. Veves are drawn in chalk and housepaint. Shirts are swapped for beads. Flames flicker in a hundred glass cylinders, making tiny church windows from images of saints and orisha.
In the heat of the afternoon, someone will be uncrossed.
Wild Boys Always Shine!
To all The Hubbs, congratulations on another boffo show last night. I wish I could have been there, but I look forward to seeing the photos! Another one down, another one coming, this time, in leopard spots and zebra stripes.
I’ve been using the Hubba flyers as a personal forum for artistic growth and experimentation, and with this Wild Animals! edition flyer, I attempted to tighten up a few things that had been bothering me about my previous Hubba offerings to this point. Happily, I think I succeeded.
First, this was a fun theme to tackle; the theme of Wild Animals! calls a number of visuals immediately to mind, and lends itself to lots of light and color, two things I find myself increasingly craving. Creating a double-sided flyer for a new theme each month is a definite challenge. Some themes are easy to illustrate and practically form themselves (Soviet Union!), while others require some serious research, and a good bit of trial-and-error before hitting on the right look or being able to condense the possibilities into something that will fit onto a 4″x6″ piece of card (Caveman Show! Around the World in 80 Girls!).
Further adding to the challenge are the strictures of 1) conveying the pertinent textual information in a clear, legible manner, 2) finding a clear and obvious way to carry the theme over to Side 2, 3) keeping the overall look similar enough to “family” this flyer in with all the others that came before, 4) do justice to that month’s Flyer Girl and 5) not do anything that looks like I’m ripping off R. Black. Throw all those challenges together with one of the more general themes like Awards Show!, and I’ve got myself a real brain-scratcher. Thankfully, Wild Animals! only presented a couple of those challenges and I was able to go from conception to execution relatively quickly.
Dear Hero Imprisoned…
When I was a teenager, I spent hours drawing pictures of Robert Smith, Martin Gore, Alan Wilder, Dave Gahan, Andrew Fletcher (Fletch), Simon LeBon, Nick Rhodes and Morrissey. I wish I still had those; they were some of my best early work.
When This Charming Band hired me to illustrate and design the posters for their annual show celebrating Morrissey’s birthday, I jumped at the opportunity to take a jaunt down memory lane and pay tribute to three bands I’ve loved since childhood.
It was a kick to translate my teenage-daydreaming into a legitimate career skill with this job.
These are the moments I feel I live a charmed life. Even with all the hell my body has put me through (and it’s been a full inferno), overall, my life has been blessed. Blessed with opportunity, blessed with good clients, blessed with the chance to earn my keep doing what comes naturally to, and satisfies, me. I’m very grateful for that. (Although, given the subject of the poster, I feel like I should be mincing about something instead of waxing optimistic.) I’m pleased with the way this turned out, generally, but I get a tickle every time I look at it and realize Moz is glaring at his birthday celebration with disdain. Really, how could it be otherwise?
The Spring Smells of Emeraude
I love these.They were quick and dirty, but for featuring lo-res, vintage pulp art nicked from the ether, I think they shine. I credit their effectiveness to the color palette, as much as to the original images.
Inspiration comes from far and wide, and the inspiration for the colors used here came from an anecdote the client, Jim “Poogie” Sweeney, shared, about recently standing in line behind someone wearing cloying “old lady perfume”. In my gray matter, the words “old lady perfume” immediately dial up one word — Emeraude.
Someone, somewhere, far back in the annals of my existence, gave me a fragrance sampler for an adolescent birthday. I was thrilled, until I began removing the bottle tops and discovered all four perfumes to be nothing more than four unwearable, escalating levels of “cloying”; the type of cloying that appears to have been favored by perfumiers and women everywhere until about 1960. Either our olfactory receptors have mutated, or tastes really do evolve that much. I can’t imagine a woman wearing any of those fragrances now, without someone nearby calling the CDC. One drop would shut down a yoga class faster than you can say “fragrance-free studio”. While I can’t recall the names of the other three levels of cloying contained (barely) in those bottles, I know the fourth-and-utmost of them was Emeraude.
The word cloying, Virginia, was coined for Emeraude. (more…)
The Satisfaction of Typefitting
Kellita, San Francisco’s own Queen of Carnaval, recently paid me the kind of compliment you want to bronze and display on a mantle:
“You ROCK at including a lot of info but maintaining clarity, beauty and cohesion.”
Reading that was a “Wow!” moment for me. Maintaining clarity, beauty and cohesion when including a lot of information on a poster is a skill at which I was not quite adept until recently. Typefitting is very much a skill unto itself, and a skill I actively work at improving with every job I earn.
I freely admit, I’m a font nerd. I love letterforms. I really don’t care for much of what the art world considers “Art”; my heart lies with what the museums and cognoscenti tend to dismiss as illustration, advertising art and/or popular art. There are several reasons my tastes run that way, but the most consistent of these is the inclusion of letterforms in those art modes.
He is Always There
Mucha.
For illustrators and poster artists, he set the bar. His architectural drawing style, his unequaled attention to detail, his ability to strike a balance between realism and graphic design, all with magnificent results, merit him the illustrator’s gold standard. Even when we don’t try to emulate his style, he has a way of sneaking in a cameo appearance. This “Caravan of Boom” image is an excellent example. When I conceptualized the visual from the client’s brief, I wasn’t thinking “Mucha” at all; I had an entirely different direction in mind. Clearly, Alphonse is still working and he slides into illustrators’ brains when we are unaware. He’s there in the color palette, he’s there in the curves and circles of the hair, and he’s there in the ornamentation. Now, let it be known I am not comparing my work to his — I have many years to go before I come close — but his voice guides me, even when I don’t hear it. (more…)
All Good Things Need Never End
(This attracted my eye while I waited in the customer service line at Wal-Mart. It has nothing to do with anything.)
It’s your last night in Louisiana. Actually, it’s your last morning. It’s one a.m. and you just tossed a load of delicates in the washing machine. As Janis said, get it while you can. The next available laundry will be back at California prices, and “free” beats two dollars a load any day. (more…)
Hika
Perhaps you don’t know how to love anymore. Perhaps you’re just learning to love yourself.
That could have been a Doogie Howser screen shot.
You don’t know where you are right now; everything is in transition, just as it always has been. Nothing is ever secure, but these days, somehow, the lack of security sticks in your craw. It resides with you, and you fear it’s making you cynical.
You seek silence. The sort of quiet you came upon ten miles off Interstate 35, when, in a post-show stupor, you decided you could afford to venture an hour out of your way. Later, when your eyes demanded you crouch under the steering column in the Cabela’s parking lot for a few minutes’ sleep, you’d regret it.
You’re still glad you went. The Chickasaw Cultural Center is a temple in which most people will never genuflect. Nestled in reclaimed farmland at the foot of the Arbuckle Mountains, the center has everything it would need to become a world-class destination. The Chickasaw people have done a tremendous job in reclaiming their cultural identity and providing it a worthy nucleus. Every detail of the center is impressive and elegant; formidable. The materials chosen, from building construction to paper stock, are of exquisite quality and are masterfully assembled. Bronze, iron, copper, glass, native Oklahoma woods and stone combine in a way reminiscent of Japanese design, but clearly separate and unique. The architecture is modern Chickasaw. And it’s gorgeous. (more…)
On Tour Forever
Yea, we’re runnin’ a little bit hot tonight/You can barely see the road from the heat comin’ off of it/You reach down/Between my legs/Ease the seat back…
Nikki played Panama for you. Sure, he didn’t know you were listening, but it was still for you. Finally making the north side of Dallas after nightfall, you found a radio station crackling with a familiar voice. You took it as a good omen; another blessing from the Rock Gods that you were, indeed, on the right path. You didn’t know he had a radio show. You never listen to the radio. Yet, driving up to meet your band for the first time in nearly a decade – the band with whom you wrote The Ballad of Nikki Sixx - you have a chance encounter with his broadcast gig, Sixx Sense, and he confers upon you the Panama moment. On the road to Oklahoma, in the November darkness, in the encroaching chill, heat on, windows cracked. You reach down between your legs and ease the seat back and you’re blindin’ and flyin’ right behind the rearview mirror. (more…)
Begin at the Beginning: Handguns and Tootsie Pops.
You’re on the veranda – yes, the veranda – overlooking the Rue Principal, otherwise known as Main Street, in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. The street sign spells out the Gallic name, punctuated by a little fleur-de-lys. This marks the first time you’ve ever used a laptop from the vacillating comfort of a porch swing. The sun is up, and has burned off the chill. It casts focused morning shadows on the four aging, white, Doric columns that support the roof of this porch. If there was ever a place to write anything, this is it. Mere scrawling on a beverage napkin, when composed in such inspiring environs as these, might find its way into the literary canon. It is patently Southern; an office to make proud the likes of Tennessee Williams, Harper Lee and certainly Margaret Mitchell. (more…)
Taking Boxcutters to Points-of-View.
You’ve always loved airports. Some of your earliest memories find their settings in far-flung ports of call like Dhahran and Narita. In fact, some English tot likely wound up with your favorite toy, back in 1979, after you left it in a ladies’ loo at Heathrow. The toy in question was a cheap rubber bat you dubbed Fleeter. You’ve always been fascinated by things that can fly. (more…)
Shooting Through a Shattered Screen
You like machines. You loathe entropy.
Shell Station Obit.
A man gave you crabs at the gas station.
Pardon.
A man at the gas station rewarded you with a live crab for lending him your scissors, so he could cut open a mesh bag in which to put his crabs. Crabs, as in decapoda. As in, crabs he pulled out of the Bay. Yes. That. (more…)
When One of Your Friends Jumps the Shark
Life creeps along at its Macbeth-endorsed petty pace, turning tomorrows and tomorrows and tomorrows into yesterdays without much fanfare. Day after day, your beat-up boots measure mundane metrics down the road of existence, their toes hitting a milestone every now and then. Most of the time, that milestone is firmly planted in your own path, but once in a while, it’s in someone else’s, and their toes hitting it sound a defining moment for you. (more…)
John Young in the Floating World
- Crewman Optical Alignment Site
You miss the new saints. Those steel-hulled heroes who, not so long ago, were erected to tower over us all, giving us reason to look to the sky and whisper, marveling, “we’ve been there”. You miss the rocket jockeys. Those cocksure, half-mad (though eminently sane), hundred-ton-candle-riding buzz junkies who first inspired you to aspire. (more…)
