Things

Halloween Decorations

This year I got it in my head to build a window display. It's pretty simple, a landscape made from cardboard along with a few set-pieces made from carved and painted styrofoam. The big 'attraction' is a floating ghostly skull which hovers between the archway in the front. It's done using 'Peppers ghost', an old stagecraft illusion which is used heavily by David Hoffas. I projected a simple animation on a sheet in the background using a fresnel lens and a tv. Here's a terrible picture of it at night. You can sort of see the skull there.

And some details:

The Archway with a little snippet of the TV which helps create the Peppers Ghost illusion.

Anyone else do any fun decorating this year?

Grant Writing Tips

Barb Hunt had a grant writing talk on the weekend and my friend Ya-Ling went and today she gave me the notes. There's some good stuff in there, so I scanned them in and here they are. There are also notes about organizing group shows... On that note, the deadline for Canada Council Grants is December 1st. Apparantly, you have to have three juried shows.
www.canadacouncil.ca
Link to Assistance for Visual Artists (Project Grants)

To meet the above definition of a professional visual artist, you must have:
*produced an independent body of work
*made at least three public presentations of work in a professional context over a three year period (this means juried exhibitions)
*maintained an independent professional practice for at least three years.

There ya go!! Get to it now, and apply for city and provincial grants too! If this stuff below is too hard to read, lemme know and I'll mail you a hard copy.

New Paintings

Carousel Ponies, 3'x2.5', acrylic and permanent marker on canvas

(not quite finished)

Cowboy with Seahorse (after Julian Opie), 2'x2',

acrylic and permanent marker on canvas

Two new paintings in the works for me this week, that's a lot! The seahorse painting is for RCA's Flattering the Masters show, which opened today. Their big fundraiser auction is on November 4th. And today we printed a similar design at Living Planet, so go on down and get yerself a new shirt.

It's in 3-D!

Check it out! AA sent me a 3-D sketch pad! It doesn't seem to work quite as well on the compy, but if you have some blue/red 3-D glasses at home, slap 'em on and have a look.

Two new paintings

I finished up two paintings before I finished up the albums posted down below this post. It takes me a while to document stuff sometimes. The top one is made from a hunk of Masonite I was using for a cutting board, and I just used the gouges as guides for the paint. The bottom painting is mostly pigment experiments with kool-aid, fabric dye and jello type stuff. it's got some fun textures if you see it in person.