DIORAMA-O-RAMA! (group art exhibit this weekend)

This Saturday night at 6PM, Billups Art in East Nashville will host The Diorama Show curated by Brooke E. The exhibit will consist of dioramas created by local artists here in the mid-south. Here is a sneak peek at the process I went through with my wife, Aurora and my good friend Alex creating a collaborative piece for this exhibit...

Aurora likes to make origami and we'd wanted to play around with her making some small animals and me drawing on them. The opportunity had not presented itself until Brooke announced this unique group exhibit! We knew right away what we wanted to do and I sketched out a game plan for the box as Aurora worked on the animals we'd be housing in our diorama...


I employed Alex to build our box. I traded Al some art for a very nice shelf that he build me a few years back... he's got mad skills with some molding and wood! A little blueprint and quick trip to the hardware store and we're in business...

I got to staining the box and accents and got everything put together and clear-coated...




...and then painted the inside to give us our background!


Aurora painted her little pets...


...while I got to work drawing out the other elements for the diorama as well as some small details to collage on the origami!



With the origami sprayed down with a sealant and the tree and foreground illustrations laminated and cut out, it's time to put the puzzle together and get the light in!



Be sure to stop by Billups Art in East Nashville this Saturday night between 6-9PM for the exhibit. There will be art from many of the best local artists there are. It's bound to be one interesting journey! $5 at the door gets you in, get's your whistle wet, gets you sixteen artists, and gets you Ronnie Lee Twist and the Future Cats! See you there to check out the Origami Forest in full swing and lit up!!

In Progress: New works for Bram Stoker's Dracula

This October, The Roxy Regional Theatre in Clarksville, TN will run their production of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Charles Bennett and I will have the pleasure of producing a body of artwork to accompany their play for this Halloween season!

Charles and I have had the honor of working with the Roxy in the past with both their Julius Caesar and Frank Sinatra productions which both bore some great work from us both. We'll be creating some collaborative works this time around as well!


Here are some sketches and line work from my works in progress for the exhibit...



Embodiments of vampires from film and Vlad the Impaler...


Christopher Lee and Bela Lugosi...


Count Von Count...

Fright Night Film Fest

Well, I got Con #2 under my belt this past weekend in Louisville, KY at Fright Night Film Fest. I knew the weekend would be fun and I'd be turning my head frequently when I hopped out of the van to check in to the hotel- I took my first double-take at the slashed-throat corpse on the lobby bench (in reality a girl with her head down texting and in full zombie get-up- the head drooped down like that got me though!)

Two weeks ago, I was compelled to draw a portrait of the festival's guest of honor, early B-movie pioneer Roger Corman. Corman was off the beaten path in his time. He directed Jack Nicholson in his first movie, the original Little Shop of Horrors. Later, he went on to direct one of Nicholson's few scripts, The Trip (of which I'm more familiar than most of Corman's work -thanks Ryan!-).



In the movie, Peter Fonda's character takes his first dose of LSD as a self-journey and the basis of the entire movie (the acid is given to him by Bruce Dern via Dennis Hopper, who plays the drug dealer). The film is a very mature and realistic look at the drug experience itself. One of the main reasons for this is that Corman didn't want to make a movie about something he in fact hadn't experienced. So He, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper dropped some LSD in preparation for the project. The first thing you'll probably notice about my illustration (as many did over the weekend) is the famous plant. The part I like the most is the hit of blotter in the corner inspired by The Trip. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Corman in Louisville and talking about the movie early Friday before things kicked off. He seemed surprised when I brought it up, which led me to assume that it's not one many people ask about. I urge you to check out this true gem of rebel cinema. Roger had pleasant things to say about the print of this work which I gave him. I thought it would be neat to give him a souvenir since he's usually on the giving side signing autographs all weekend.


During set-up Friday afternoon, I was humbled with the compliments of a guy who stopped in his tracks when my work caught his eye. We spoke for a minute before I realized he was Jeff Gaither, an artist who's work I've admired for some time. Jeff is a self-taught artist (as am I) who has been making his sick art professionally for thirty years now. He has made album covers and art for hundreds of musicians including The Misfits, Guns 'n' Roses, and Stone Temple Pilots. I ended up trading him one of my new Third Eye books for a nice poster print.

Saturday night, we drove down to Shepherdsville to see my long-lost friend Stacey and his wife. Stacey had been harboring a few paintings I'd left behind when he and I lived in Nashville back in 2001. I think he was just happy to unload some junk! The visit brought the artistic experience full circle seeing work I'd done almost a decade ago.

Sunday, we took the down-time of a slow day to get around and meet some of the other incredible artists who were present. I lugged around one of my new print books (holding the nearly 70 prints I have stocked) and traded prints with some of the guest celebrities and filmmakers in attendance for autographed pics and DVDs also.

Aurora with Mike Christopher who played the Hare Krishna Zombie in the original Dawn of the Dead...



Rochelle Davis (Sarah from The Crow) was a really sweet gal and had some wonderful things to say about my art!



This guy ain't that scary for being the Predator!



If you think this is frightening, you should see her when she's mad. Aurora at the Shadowland booth...

Aldous Huxley Rolls in His Grave

Monday will mark what would have been Aldous Huxley's birthday (well... his like 114th). Huxley explored the boundaries of fiction and nonfiction alike over his amazing and proficient career. Huxley was a scientist but when a condition in his early twenties left him blind for a few years, he turned to writing. Huxley infamously penned Brave New World in 1932, which is what's really always blown my mind since I read it as a teenager. This book which deals with a controlled society and pharmaceuticals and book banning, was sooooo far ahead of it's time.

For my Cult of Personality exhibit at MIR Gallery in Nashville this past December, I illustrated some of my favorite authors. Huxley of course made the cut. Many of the elements of this illustration center around the visionary side of Huxley's work (via the use of mescaline.) The central theme, however, is the concept of him rolling in his grave at his prophesies (really urgent warnings in the form of fiction) taking hold of our world today. Behavior-altering medications are common-place and many societies are facing constant stifling of their freedoms of speech and expression (even in the U.S., there is now twittercide where people are losing their jobs based on tweets they made or blogs they wrote on their own time.) Huxley was one of the most unique voices and minds of the past century. He brought to the forefront of the arts world many issues which effect us today including mood-controlling mediation, the role of government in spiritual freedom, and our cognitive liberties.

Click HERE for Artist Prints of this Portrait from my Web Store!

My newest book THE THIRD EYE

Back in April, I wrote to you about my works centering around The Third Eye (the mind's eye).

When I was writing that blog, I ran through my works involving this subject and found many more pertaining to the theme of the 3rd Eye than I anticipated revisiting. I made a neat thumb collage of some of these illustrations to appease my creative juices for the blog's sake. Then a funny thing happened- the idea ran wild in my brain for a few weeks until I had THE THIRD EYE book designed (and now available for you!)

THE THIRD EYE
works from Brandt Hardin (2004-2010)
24 FULL COLOR works of art in 40 page volume!

In Memoriam: Joey Holmes

My friend, Joel Ray, recently commissioned a portrait of his uncle, Joey Holmes, who passed recently. Joey rode a Harley and lived a fast life. He found religion in the latter portion of his life and was known to preach from his bike and council young people about religion and Christianity.

Joel told me that his uncle was often inspired by the three crosses you see on the sides of highways scattered about the south. Upon researching these crosses for the illustration, I found that Rev. Bernard Coffindaffer actually raises these sets of crosses. Crosses of Mercy - Cast Thy Bread, Inc was the non-profit organization which spent a whopping $3,000,000 putting up crosses in 29 states, Zambia, and The Philipines. Caffindaffer supervised the erection of 1864 crosses between 1984-1993, a short nine years. There is no limit to what a man can accomplish with his will (and money). From humble beginnings as an orphan, the Reverend graduated high school at 14 and went on to get a degree and spend six years in the Marines before running a coal washing business which funded much of his non-profit efforts.

Spirituality is a powerful thing. It can show a man a light within himself to accomplish anything. Man has built monuments, raised crosses, taken to the streets and raged wars for decades in the name of their God. Joey hopped on his bike and spoke from his heart and touched many of the people of his community.

This portrait is for Joel's mom (Joey's sister). Happy Birthday!

Declaration of Tears / Trail of Independence

In the autumn of 2006, I had taken a job in Hopkinsville, a very small town in Southern Kentucky which lies along the route of The Trail of Tears. There's the National Trail of Tears Motor Route and Trail of Tears Park... kinda freaky stuff. As I walked and drove around the first few months in town, I kept getting visuals of blood-soaked soil under the asphalt and sidewalks and buildings. The typical modes of "memorializing" such a sad and terrible incident in human history (classic genocide) kinda put my head in a spin. At the time, I was trying to be very active politically and I wanted to memorialize the Native American culture in a way that didn't "use" them for a lack of a better term. I didn't want to represent them in a work for my OWN agendas or opinions (which even I'll admit are often extreme).

The Bush years really took their tole on me as a young politically-minded person. Bush is kinda like our Nixon, just a very very dumbed down version with a few false flag operations going on under his nose. A good friend of ours, Debbie Bohen, held candle-light vigils locally in Clarksville, TN (bordering Ft. Campbell, KY home of the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army) every week for years during the (ongoing) U.S. invasion of Iraq. Debbie's bravery has always touched me from the moment I met her (thanks to an art exhibit I curated with Miranda Herrick at Alter Gallery). Debbie had these huge hand-made displays which tallied the numbers of Iraqi Citizens and American Troops wounded and killed which were updated every time you saw her. We put this display outside a few art exhibits around the time... and I have to say it makes your palms sweat to stand next to them in a military town with yellow ribbons on every other SUV and truck barreling down University Ave right past you. That summer before I moved to Hopkinsville, Debbie was handing out pocket-sized copies of the Declaration of Independence and The Bill of Rights at one of our political exhibits, We the People, at The Icehouse Cafe. We had a voter registration drive that day with Chris Lugo, the Green Party candidate addressing the audience. Looking back, it was one of the best exhibits I've curated.

Some months later, moved into a new (new to me... verrrrrrry old in reality) house in Hoptown, I was at the drawing table and running through my head what to process onto paper. My wandering mind took my nose into that pocket-sized Declaration of Independence. I read a few pages and began getting visuals again. Like a bolt of lightning (that's how all the good ideas come), the idea came to me to memorialize the Native American culture by drawing inspiration from their art! A few weeks later after a few trips to the library, I had researched much of the Native arts including Kachina dolls, masks, and totem poles. These works translated onto the pages of my copy of the Declaration of Independence. All the works are very small (pages are around five inches tall). I used purple ink for my outlines to avoid interfering with or destroying original text on the pages.