Jillian

This drawing was commissioned by Halle Butler, intended to become the cover for her first novel, Jillian. The finished copy was to be printed in B&W with gold overlay, filling in the monster spots and pupils, in homage to this cover illustration for Grendel. Here's a digital mockup of the complete design. Imagine the book's spine meeting the right elbow of the crouching monster.

Halle and I met over a year ago to discuss themes and generate ideas. Halle is a good friend; she performed one of the funniest Brain Frame readings ever and we've worked on several films together. She co-wrote Crimes Against Humanity, the feature in which I recently starred. Her work is deceptively mundane, cruel, and hilarious. Jillian is about two miserable female coworkers. As described online:

Halle Butler's debut explores how two people use self-deception and hostility to deal with their lives. Megan, a bitter young medical secretary, takes a break from her overwhelming feelings of social rejection by keeping track of the disgusting habits of her co-worker, Jillian. Meanwhile, Jillian's misguided "go for it!" attitude leads her towards a series of unadvisable decisions.

We settled on two monsters, one lactating and wailing in pain, the other defensive and furious. I sketched several options, carefully considering what should be most visible on the book's spine.

After settling on a composition, I invited Robin Hustle over to model with me. We had a good time contorting our faces and bodies for the camera. Hilarious nude photo shoots are a favorite pastime.

Defining musculature through imagined fur is difficult! It took a long time just to get the poses right. (That crouching pose? Actually impossible.) Once I had the bodies plotted and spots blocked in I began shaping their sub-structures, including genitalia.

I used five different pencils. A 2B mechanical and four wooden pencils, 3-6B. These are the same pencils I use to draw Possession Scenes. When I showed the drawing in progress to Jeremy he said, "Is that your face?"

The completed cover, while treasured by Halle and myself, has proven problematic. The original distributor, Love Symbol Press, dissolved while plans for the book were in progress. Halle pushed her successive distributer, Cubside Splendor, hard to publish this cover, but they declined. Maybe someday, my monsters will see the light. If you saw this book on the shelf, would you scream, or buy it, or both?

Haw Flawrs Blum

This is a book that I made, probably around age 5. It has always been special to me. However, after I started making comic books, I revisited this 'piece' and realized that it is probably the first comic book I ever made. So, yeah. I love this.

Compiled

This is really exciting. I've been meaning to complete this compilation for two years, since I produced the cover for these comics in Offset class. This is really my first full size comic book, and most definitely the first thing I've been proud enough of and confident enough in to send off to publishers, for example, or drop at Quimby's. That's right, I finally have comics at Quimby's.

This book contains five comics and one prose piece. Four of the comics are available in full to read on my blog; the fifth comic is not online, will never be online, and yeah, if you want to read you have to get the book. The written story is the version of They Glistened that I read at Brain Frame 3.

You can see me talk about and flip through Compiled in the video above; here are some closer images of the cover design.

ELSEWHERE: My mother interviewed me about Tumblr! I didn't know she was going to put the audio online, I just thought she was using it to take notes. Oh well, I guess the sounds of me eating and knocking over things in the background aren't that noticeable.

Clam Shell Box

Here's another of my final projects from that artist's books class I took two years ago. This is called a 'clam shell box' because of the way it nestles together, and the broad flexible hinge. It's very similar to the hardback cover of a book with a flat spine, but instead of pages, there's more bookboard making up the sides of the box.


I wanted an interesting cover on the box, so I made two windows in the front bookboard panel, using them as frames for prints of old photographs. I was thinking about a refrigerator (no joke) when I mapped out the two photo-windows.




The rest of the box is made of more bookboard, covered in bookcloth and lined with found sheet music. The slot in the box's bottom wall is there so you can lift out its contents without turning the box upside down. I measured this box to fit the two hardbound books I had just made, but it is also the perfect size for 5x7 photographs, or drug paraphernalia or prophylactics, you know, whatever.

Round Spine, Flat Spine

Back in spring semester of 2009, I was in an artist's book class. Remember? These two books were the last editions I made, and the fanciest. They're real hardback books, with many signatures, stitched and bound traditionally and really nicely. The quality of these editions is something I'm very proud of. First, the round spine:


Both books' innards are 50% found paper (posters, wrapping paper, opalescent tissue) and 50% purchased paper. The paper I bought is soft and ribbed, good for sketching or writing. For the round spine book, I used this drawing paper, striped brown wrapping paper, tissue, and the remnants of an old water-stained poster for Guatemala.






And now, the flat spine:



This pages in this book are comprised of the same soft drawing paper and tissue, as well as found posters from the first Austin Powers movie, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience.








•••

OTHER NEWS:

This Friday, I'm participating the seventh installment of the EAR EATER reading series, previously curated by Cassandra Troyan and Sara Drake, and now curated just by Sara Drake (at least this time). Anyway, I'll be doing a performative reading of the prose version of the story of the Squishsacks, and it should be pretty exciting. I will be really nervous, come watch me try not to shake when I talk.

The other readers at the event are:
Halle Butler
Kristin Hayter
Nick Jackson
Anders Nilsen
and Sara Drake.

You should come. It's at 1622 S. Allport St. Apt. #1, commencing between 8-11pm, on Friday, June 24th.

Chain Stitch Binding

Aaaaand here's some more bookbinding!


This one's called the Chain Stitch, not to be confused with the Chain Stitch that you use to embroider. The more signatures the better when it comes to this artist's book, because then the stiching on the open spine becomes more apparent. I wish I had a better picture to show you guys.

This is what the open book, between two signatures, looks like:


Were you to open the book within a signature it would look the same as any old book, with the stitching running vertically down the middle. This book is filled with blank pages, as well as glassine sheets (thin transparent paper for archival purposes) and found pages from another old book, which you can see above. The spine has a nice loose but strong feel to it, and is very flexible (obviously).

Accordion Book

Actually this is a double accordion. An accordion book is one sheet of paper, encased by two book board covers, folded like an accordion between. For this little experimental book, I took two folded accordions, slit each page vertically to its midpoint, and then scissored them together to create this diamond effect. The book can be opened from both sides, and has the additional awesome factor of an inside space, kind of hidden pages. The covers wrap around and clasp at either end to make a nice package.


Sorry updates have been kind of slow and all book-related recently. I usually try to mix up the mediums that I write about for interest's sake. Right now I'm working on a backlog of photos I took last semester, since the school year ended in May. I've been pretty busy with summer fun and trying to find a real job while scraping by on part-time or one-off gigs. I still have a comic in the works, as well as a couple things I haven't scanned or photographed yet (including - yes - more books!) And just this weekend another project of mine came into fruition. I had a series of works about Llama Man installed at the IASD Dream Art Exhibition, including Llama Man himself (the costume posed on a freestanding armature I created for the exhibit). My film, For My Psychopomp, was installed as a loop on an old TV I got at a thrift store. I got a lot of really great feedback from a community I was incredibly happy to show my artwork to. People were really interested in the dream and how I've worked with it over the years, as well as in awe of Llama Man's towering and terrifying figure. Sunday night was the reception, and I won first prize in the Nancy Richter Brzeski Dream Art Awards! Now I have some money to buy more film to make more creepy movies. Yes! I am so excited and honored to have been recieved in such a wonderful way, and win such a great prize. Thanks IASD!

Coptic Binding

More from last semester's artists books class. This is called coptic binding, and uses multiple signatures (groups of pages). I triple wrapped the thread each time I came to the head or tail of the spine to create the thicker number of lines there.



I also made a cover for this book, out of cardstock and bookcloth, and colored paper for the inside cover.