Pushing On

We had a great, but long, holiday. Got a chance to see all the parents and half of the state on a cold snowy christmas day. Overall it was great.

So, moving forward. I have a good iron in the fire on the art side right now. There is this salon that's opening in about a week and a half and the owner, Jade, is this awesome lady that digs some cool art. I am going to be hanging a total of 7 or 8 peices in her salon. This actually has some hope of making some sales. It sounds like she is pushing hard for her salon to be this upscale cool place, and she is making some good moves towards that.

The peice to the right is one I'm workin on for this place. I am also working on a great peice that is 6' long and will be in this little nook above an awesome red leather couch.

2007 is almost gone, I'm looking forward to my first full year as a Portland resident. Pretty soon, I'm going to have to do some goal setting for where I want to be at the end of '08.

Let it be known, once the first big art peice is sold... It will be party time, all will be invited!

Love Portland

Hello my two readers; I think I'm up to two.

I'm told I need to keep these short so people will read them. Imagine that, me, longwinded. Weird.

Try to make this quick:

Art: Met with a Fine Arts dealer, got great feedback; I need to study Color. I got turned down for the show I applied to, but in February at the Kingstad Center there is going to be an "Icons" show inspired by my Colors Of Music series. That's pretty exciting, she said if I have more done in this format that would be great! I have bought 3 new canvases, if you have suggestions fire away!

I'm trying to scale down on the SPEC work, money is nice but I don't like working for people all the much.

Also, got hooked up with a tattoo parlor that wants to trade straight billing costs for one of my paintings. I have the canvas, and just need approval and then I'm getting hooked up with probably a $600 tattoo credit. Expect to see new ink on me and kim with in a year.

Music:

Recorded a new song, I'm pretty proud of it. I still need the drum kit, but we'll see how it all comes together. At least I'm getting bass layers into the music now. I'm meeting a guy tomorrow night for a potential Jam session/band start up. I'm nervous but we'll take it slow. He says he totally loves my lead guitar songs and what not, can't complain about that!!

I'm still waitin on the melodica song from Chris, can't wait!! That one will be fun to work with.

Also, I applied to a local venue in attempts to hook up an acoustic set. Who knows what is going to happen, but that's the fun isn't it!!!

Thanks for reading, stay tuned. The idea is to keep shorter more frequent posts. Who knows if that will happen.

Cheers all.

Portland Fashion Designer?

Yes, more of this talking to nobody deal. I have to attempt to pretend people are going to read this, even though I would say you'd have to be pretty bored.

Sorry if you are actually reading this and I offended you.

SIke, got you, you thought I had feelings... dummy

So, let's see here, Since the last post of course not too much has happened. Turned down the few band opportunities I have had. Not really the right fit, I'm wondering if there is going to be a right fit. I really don't have the resources or the knowledge to start up my own band in portland. Where do we pracitce? How are we going to line up gigs? Let alone actually make music and be organized enough to play something of a set. But my music making days are actually only beginning. My parents are bringin' up Sean's drums, so I'll actually be able to record more of a beat into music as opposed to the kick drum every quarter beat that is annoying during actual music. I really don't have room drums, so I think I am going to set up just the kick drum, snare, hi hat and a symbol. Be ?uestlove style, try to learn some funky hip hop beats I guess. I suppose I'm a musician of opportunity, being self taught my "skill set" is sort of all over the place. I think I can find the hip hop beat in me, I jammed with CO one time on a really funky beat for a long time down in the Val. It was actually almost more natural to me than jammin on some rock stuff. Next instrument comin my way will be special k's bass. It's a little jacked up but playing it at his place has convinced me it will be sufficient for a groovy bass in some songs. Plus, like I said musician of opportunity. I want to go to an open mic night with my acoustic. The problem is that I don't sing, it makes me nervous, I think/know I'm bad and carry can't a tune... and it's hard to do while playing guitar. I don't have that much concentration. Maybe though I can just go up there and play some guitar and drink some beer and they won't kick me off stage. I need to find one in a semi-acceptable place and I think I'm going... oh there is still that set list problem. Hmm, I need better defined songs. I need to work on this album idea more. Adam may remember me trying to record crap guitar parts and mix 'em with fruity loop beats and being excited. I guess not much has changed, but I feel like I'm alot closer to actually making some sort of make shift record. When I come back down to the val, I'm gonna have to be organized and put some friends on instruments and singing so I can come back here and get some work down on a record. Anyone got good record names?

I hear crickets... I suppose if people were reading this we might get further with that question.


Now, on to this idea of fashion. If anyone thought I'd make a mark on the fashion industry, I would say there were harder drugs around than I thought. It seems however that maybe that's a direction I should explore more. I said a little about my collection that I'm putting together well to update a little; I'm putting it together and I'm going to work hard on it. Whether it gets actually make, I get any money, turns out our labor supply is some sweatshop and I get arrested and sued... who knows. At least if I get sued I'll give adam some work maybe. Or I'll go to jail because adam is a drunk pre-drop out fake lawyer who says that he'll defend me "sonny bono *hiccup" So that collection is going to be called the simplistyk collection. As of now I have about 13 or 14 designs that are basically 5 peices of art in a few different colors each. I'm thinking those will take care of shirts and sweatshirts for the more part. They are kind of gritty, darker, rock music and graffiti type peices of art. I'm kind of hoping to view the shirt as a canvas of sorts, place the art where I think it should be...kind of like you do a wall to play a peice of graff I suppose. I wonder if that will turn out bad for me in the end because even though I don't want to I should be viewing the shirt as a shirt and put the peices of art in conventional places. I never have fun following the normal conventions though.

Secondly, I met up with a fashion designer lady named Cat here in portland. She has a little studio off of burnside, and she is going to turn it into this killer fashion botique of sorts. She said she's going to have a permanent run way in the middle of the place, and she making a really really cool line called "Painted on Collection" so that's where I come in, I'm one of the artists painting some stuff on some of her garments. I have three ties, two are really nice one is a goodwill clip on style vintage one, and she wants some graffiti, dirty whatever I want kind of art on these ties. She had a fairly big rack of ties already done and let me tell you I'm in the company of some freakin cool artists. They use the tie so well, I'm hoping I fit in when I turn these in. Right now I have the white nice one and the vintage one done... I think they are prety cool... will anyone else? A cool addition to this story is that for her showing of this collection, 2 months or so, she wants to hang up some of my paintings. Yes, I talked her into it I think, but at the same time this is exactly the type of thing these are going to be good for! Her unit has 30' ceilings or so, SO TALL! It has a loft upstairs and then the store is downstairs but the whole thing is open. Plus it has full length complete front windows. Well she is building racks and manequin displays that sound awesome and then the colors of music series is going to go above them. Yes, that's right. For the first time, Bob, Jimi and Zappa will join forces to complete the painting series I think I'm most proud of. Plus, the guitar player is going to go in between a column and a window and will be framed perfectly and be the FIRST thing you see when you come in because it's straight ahead from the door!!! YES! that painting is so bold it needs to be somewhere like that for full effect.

Anyway, for the one person that is still reading this.... you... thanks you..... Now go do something more entertaining than reading this crap!

Pst... Not to be rude there, but I have updated all pictures and music lately... here are the links.

Pistol River Music Project
Simplistyk Studios

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Art, Music, and Snow oh my

I'm Blogged. Yes, that's right. Ha, I thought that too when I first heard.

I'm going to let you in on a secret. This is really my second attempt, I did something I wasn't supposed and yes here I am starting again.

Guess who made me do this?

So a lot of things are in the mix here. Been in Portland just over a month and had to actually have this conversation with myself today.

Me: Is there enough time in the world to keep working my full time job, join a co-op gallery in the Alberta Arts district requiring 2 days a month from me, attempt to join a band with well laid groundwork in the Portland Music Scene, Ride the luscious mt. hood in a few weeks AND not have Kim complain?

Me: Dude, you'd be a rockstar artist with a full time job and she is marrying you.

Me: stop dreaming and get your ass out of the road before the SUV runs you over and you can't even bring home the wine!

I know I have always been a dreamer but there is this group that put out their first CD with some decent sucsess then their rythm player left and they need someone to fill his spot and potentially put out a new disc. As I don't know them very well yet, I won't release their name. However, sounds promising but requires two nights a week in essentially gresham which is FAR.

The co-op gallery has some incredible art (I reccomend you check it out it's called Six Days Art Co-op) Basically I get some great exposure and can hang work pretty much around the calander but it costs a little money a month and I have to work 16 hours over the month in the gallery. Or I can pay more money and not work in the gallery.

My goal is to wait on the band, record some newer versions of some songs I have been working on and try to just do the art gallery and snowboarding season. Then hopefully my man CO moves his ass up here and we can start our own group.

I can't wait for all my people to move back here, this city rocks.

Oh, snow forecast... saturday on---> SNOW. gonna be a good season.