ART (and PEACE) for your EARS

THIS Saturday night, I'll be involved with My Hero | My Villain, a ONE NIGHT ONLY Group Art exhibit at No Egrets Tattoo Studio here in Clarksville featuring a plethora of regional artists who are creating a lowbrowpalooza of the south with Joe Melanson and the shop's help.  If you've been missing out on these exhibits, I'm upping the ante this time around with a MULTIMEDIA exhibit that you can ONLY experience LIVE this Saturday.  My boy TEADS has been mixing up some dubstep theme tracks to go with four portraits I've painted in Superhero Surrealism for the show.  His tracks will be featured on headphone sets which will be hung with the art so the viewer can listen and look to experience this multimedia experience!

Last night, I got a little crafty when I was playing with the headphone sets I purchased to use in the installation this Saturday.  Using some of my foil peace sign stickers, I made the headsets a little more DREGish...

The stickers themselves were just a hair too big for the stickers so I cut our the center bones of the peace signs!

The silver borders on the headphones set them off- it was like it was meant to be!

You can try one on THIS Saturday night!

I wanted to challenge myself with this installation by creating four NEW paintings.  I've only really been painting the past few years live and in group situations so the work for My Hero | My Villain is new territory for me in more ways than one!  RSVP at the Facebook Event Page to come this Saturday and see what IRON MAN is drinking, how the HULK transforms, what bit SPIDERMAN, and BATMAN in a straight jacket!  All four paintings will feature original theme music composed by TEADS!

Click HERE for a sneak peek at IRON MAN

Click HERE for a sneak peek at BATMAN

Click HERE for a sneak peek at my special New Year's Day HULK SMASH post!

The Wolfman Cometh

I was sharing around the flier for MY HERO | MY VILLAIN tonight through the social networks and realized my cohort in villainy, Charles V Bennett's name wasn't featured so I worked up a special version of the poster for him!  Here's the before and after... er- after and before if you will...

Poster Art by Gin Edwards

Click HERE to RSVP for this ONE NIGHT EXHIBIT next Saturday!

Click HERE for a preview of my HULK painting for the show!

Click HERE for a preview of my IRON MAN painting for the show!

Click HERE for a preview of my Topsy-Turvy: Fantastic Four for the show!

Click HERE for a preview of my Topsy-Turvy: Spy vs. Spy for the show!

IRON MAN on the Rocks

Acrylic on Canvas / 2012

January is full of heroism and villainy here at DREGstudios as we prepare for My Hero | My Villain curated by Joe Melanson at No Egrets Tattoo ONE NIGHT ONLY on Saturday, January 28th!

I've spent the past few Sundays teaming up with Amateur Supervillain Charles "Wolfie" Bennett at his lair of acrylic and gouache solitude to paint new material for this unique exhibit.  I am doing four acrylic paintings on canvas which will be the basis of a collaborative multi-media display you can ONLY EXPERIENCE IN PERSON!

On New Year's Day, I showed you the first painting- HULK SMASH! and I've kept a tight seal on my Spiderman which I painted the Sunday after.  Alas, I do have new treats today though with some process pictures from my Iron Man painting.  I decided to go with the old school original armor suit Tony Stark donned long before he became the drunk we love and adore today in reds and golds.  I teamed this Golden Age relic up with his modern habit of the drink though.  What do you figure a billionaire superhero sips on?

To see the final products, I hope you make it out to the exhibit next weekend!  For now, check out these process pictures from my painting session at The Wolfman's...

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TOPSY-TURVY: Spy Vs. Spy

The Spy Vs. Spy Comic Strip from MAD Magazine celebrated 50 years last year, dating all the way back to 1961.  Antonio Prohias, a Cuban cartoonist, created the spies and pitted them against one another in the epic and endless game of cat and mouse, of black and white, of assassination and covert destruction.  The violence and flip flopping action was consistent and made the title the enterprise it is today with trading cards, video games, and animation all rooting from the original black & white strip, to which MAD gave a world-wide audience!

If you're just dropping by in this young year, I'm neck deep in superhero and comic lore for two art projects this month, one of which this preview is for today.  On Saturday, January 28th, Joe Melanson will be curating My Hero | My Villain which will be a ONE NIGHT ONLY extravaganza of visual delight.  Comic vendors, LIVE Body Painting, LIVE Music, LIVE Photography and More will keep you busy where I hope you find my own new works including this TOPSY-TURVY: Spy Vs. Spy which will be framed to hang in either direction!  I have to get it colored along with more brand spanking new illustrations AND four Superhero Paintings which will be on display WITH interactive headphones to listen to original tracks my boy TEADS is mixing up!

Click HERE to RSVP on the Facebook Event Page!

Bomb Linework / Ink on Bristol / 2012

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Friday the 13th (Have a Lucky Day)

There is a term to label the condition of folks afraid of the Fridays which fall on the assumingly unlucky 13th of any given month- it is called friggatriskaidekaphobia. Now say that three times fast and roll the dice baby!  Such superstition surrounding this macabre number date back hundreds of years, mainly due to the irregularity of this number which follows the coveted number 12.  Twelve is the number of wholeness or completeness: 12 having its own term in goods as a dozen, 12 months in the year, 12 Gods of Olympus, 12 Disciples of Christ and so on... By following this holy number, the awkward 13 gets a bad rap as the red-headed stepchild of the numeric system.  

Friday itself takes its own dark undertones from history even without the double-helping of fear brought on by aligning with the 13th day of the month.  Jesus was crucified on a Friday and the worst stock market crash in history was on a Friday- dubbed Black Friday. Friday was even demonized as a dark day as far back as in the 14th century with Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.  Of course, context is everything as you'll find Tuesday the 13th to be ominous day of bad luck in Spanish and Greek-speaking countries.

Here's a blast from the past with an illustration from my Topsy-Turvy series called Lucky Lucky!

Inks on Paper / 2006

Click HERE for MORE of my TOPSY-TURVY Series!

The Joker (in the Eyes of Pop Surrealism)

BAM! POOF! BANG!  I'm movin' right along this month with my two superhero themed projects which will culminate at the end of the month with My Hero | My Villain (an art exhibit at No Egrets Tattoo) and The Sketchbook Project (which will tour the globe in a traveling interactive exhibit before being housed in The Brooklyn Art Library.)  Here's a second helping from The Sketchbook Project where my assigned theme is Heroes & Villains...

Graphite on Paper / 2012

Click HERE for yesterday's sneak peak of The Sketchbook Project with my Batman!

The Dark Knight (in a Straight Jacket)

I'm in superfanboy mode here at DREGstudios! this week with two comic-themed projects this month.  I'm knee deep in my comics and graphic novels scouring for ideas to fill up a sketchbook for Art House Co-op, who do some wonderful group projects collaborating artists from across the globe.  I've previously participated in two of their Sketchbook Projects, from the which my entries are housed in The Brooklyn Art Library with thousands of others artists' work open to public viewing.  Past Sketchbook Projects have gone on tour across the United States, Canada, and Europe before resting on the shelves of this one-of-a-kind library.

Click HERE for a post on my last Sketchbook Project!

For their 2012 World Tour Project, themes were given and I was assigned "Heroes and Villains."  Irony and laws of attraction always seem to align with the compulsion to create taking me by the seat of my pants.  I'm also slated to do an interactive installation at My Hero / My Villain at No Egrets Tattoo here in Clarksville (a one-night extravaganza on January 28th.)  Check out my New Year's Day HULK SMASH post for more!

As the next couple of weeks pass, I'll be giving you some previews of the work for these shows.  Today's sneak peek is special though because it will really be the only work which bridges both the My Hero / My Villain exhibit AND my Sketchbook Project.  Bats is always my favorite because he doesn't have any powers, he's just insane; this insanity being the inspiration behind my first sketch for my Heroes and Villains theme.  I'll also be doing a painting from this sketch for my interactive display at the end of the month!

Batman as the patient at Arkham?