Everything Lost and Wonderful and Sad

It's 3:00 a.m. and I've spent the last few hours flipping through a collection of pictures of Risley, the arts dorm at Cornell where my artist-in-residence adventure took place. I don't even recognize half the people in the photos, and Lord was that place covered in nerd (the SCA practiced on our lawn!), but right now, sitting in my hermetic LA loft with the windows clamped shut to keep out toxic flame ash, I somehow smell autumn and rainstorms, and I feel in my belly a bit of that manic excitement you have when everything in your world is still new and unfolding.

Here would be a great place to write something about the effect of other people's nostalgia and make a clever segue to this:



Years ago I had the idea of making dozens of plein air Sears paintings. Searses of all shapes and sizes, showing the differences in landscape and architecture. I tried a few experiments that didn't quite feel right, before realizing, No: It shouldn't be about capturing the realness of Sears, it should be about creating that one perfect Sears, the Sears you see in your mind, the Sears that's more Sears than Sears ever was. So here is A Perfect Moment Braced in Time, Like Falling in Love. Click through to see all seven feet of awesome beigeness.

It's one of my paintings from the "Monsters of Pop" show, which is still up at Gallery 1988 through this weekend. I'll roll out the others over the next week or so as I finish scanning and cleaning them up, and I've got some other drawings and such waiting in the wings as well. It's time to breathe some life back into the ol' brandonbird.com.

Art on the Way

I don't even know what happened to June and July; I've just been barreling towards this show, hoping to get some amount of paintings done in time:

"Monsters of Pop"
Brandon Bird, Kiersten Essenpreis, Dave MacDowell, Netherland
Opening Reception Tuesday August 11, runs till September 5th
Gallery 1988
7020 Melrose, Los Angeles CA

If you can make it out, please do.

And then... I think that's going to be my last gallery show for a while. It's cool they've helped raise my profile & selling price, but they're also anathema to how I like to exist. I feel I was at something of a peak from 2003 to 2006 or so (curiously, when I wasn't so much self-employed as unemployed). I'd think of something--a Law & Order coloring book or what have you--and then just... make it. Now it's more like, "Shit, I just got the best idea ever, but I have to paint Magneto tonight and the next night and the night after that." So I don't mean I'm not going to exhibit, just that I'm not going to commit to any long-term, outside deadlines, and be more open to possibilities as they crop up. Does that even make sense?

Speaking of wich, here's some stuff that's cropped up or in the process of cropping up: I'll have a table at APE in San Francisco in October. I also met the Topatoco dudes for the three hours I was at Comic-con; they're getting a hugemongous booth next year and I'll be there to join in the hoe-down. I might sneak in to some of the East Coast cons, too.

Dream Cast

Man oh man I can't wait for Star Trek 2: The Next Generation.

Die Walken

I'm not too surprised by this, because if you really think about, if you have college students pretend to be kids writing Christmas letters to Chris Walken, it's pretty much inevitable that someone is going to take the text of one of those letters and transform it into a smashing opera piece:

"An Acquaintance" by Ryan Walker, based on "An Acquaintance?" by Ming Doyle.

VDO as DV

I would like to share something I came across in my continuing "Law & Order" research:

Wow.

Fucillo! HUUUUGEST!

"Gawd, can't you do prints any bigger?" people bark as they spit on me in the street. Well, now you can order enormous prints (some three or nearly four feet long) at TopatoCo.com! Prints are unsigned and come on semi-glossy photo paper, or can be upgraded to textured fine art paper or super-premium canvas (they even varnish it!). They also have a couple new, exclusive T-shirt designs like the one above.

When you order through TopatoCo you're buying from a real company with fast shipping and an excellent record of customer service, and you can combine your order with any of the other hilarious products they offer from other web artists.

All my signed & limited stuff will of course continue to be available through brandonbird.com. But now you've got more options!

From the hell inside Germany

My second hate mail in six years:

"hello, brandonbird,
I´m from germany, i have so much so problems, problems from where you´d never think, it is possible.
and............................i want to tell you only something...............you are a bastard. your picture is
a lie and you know it. but why you made shit like this? ron l. hubbard, was a man, who had a heart and mind you never reach it. i love him, until he is dead, i know, but its the same as with jesus...............his ideas, his thougts, his understanding, about human being, still lives on and on and on and with your fucking bullshit picture, with your lie about r. l.hubbard, i hope your go to hell, as soon as possible. with love and hope i send you greetings, from fucking germany, hamburg, the hell inside germany, bye bye, i hope, i never met you. silvia klein"