thundra // saturday december 17th

It's the Thundra Records show [Noel En Famille 2, to be exact] featuring Martiens, La Cage De Bruits, Flood, Plajia & guests (if you don't own any of the above mentionned bands' cds, well you're missing out -- especially if you haven't gotten a copy of "La Zone Des Fous" by Martiens, in my opinion, the greatest album to come out of Montreal over the past five years). Don't you get caught up in our Spin-created Middle-St-Laurent Montreal-Seattle buzz, not every Montrealer has an Arcade Fire t-shirt, and there's genius/inovation & integrtiy at work under the Thundra imprint (oh and I do like la Casa and Rossa, don't get me wrong, just saying). I'll also be playing a quiet solo act, some acoustic le soir tunes so come on over: Saturday December 17th 2005 Thundra's Noel En Famille 2,@ La Place A Coté, 4571 Papineau, Montreal (Quebec) Canada. Be sure to grab our annual anti-design IVRE À COLORIER while you're there too.

201105

Really trying my best to move forward these past few weeks (yes be forewarned this is my typical grayscale ranting) and I'm having a hard time. 'Tis the season I guess, it takes me back. Listen to blood embrace by Superwolf, that should explain some things. I live with constant reminders, nothing I can turn a blind eye to (really that's all it comes down to, a place where I'd rather be). So the opposite would be to venture where I have no desire to be, am I right? Either paths will hurt, though one of them at least is all new to me. Go go optimism 2005.

fuckers

emerdegenzzza is poison. I won't waste precious type elaborating on that but I will share a "funny" that occured this week during another one of their hilarious transparent spams:

emergenzzzza: Hi there! I wish to book your band for the world's greateast contest for unsigned bands (major bullshit follows...)
me: Really... what IS my band then?
emergenzzzza: Descendo?

awesome, it looks as though "descendo" is a band, what a bunch of assholes. I can forward the email if anyone wants it ;)

pygmalion, seven weeks to go

Week 45 out of 52... why is it called pygmalion? Am I a photographer? Not at all, but it's been an interesting discipline. Only a few of them aren't taken in Montreal. There are two that weren't shot in Canada. 39 celebrates 23 (or the other way around), 31 marks the spot, a shitload of shots are relevant to 02 and will end with 51, 25 was horrible, 07 was my heart, 30 made me strong... then some are detailed here somehow. There's no specific theme, nor any cohrent continuity/subject matter, no real appeal to the imagery, all personal BLAND shots I can go back to - identifying every week of 2005. The section itself gets a surprising number of visitors. Wondering what to do for next year. Could be the stupidest idea I've ever come up with but fuck-- I enjoy it. www.descendo.com/pygmalion

interfere with lovers [01]

Going through all the drafts, paintings, sketches and collages for a print collection that I started to work on about a year ago called interfere with lovers. This was intended to be my "descendo prints: series three", a very raw series of hand made mediums I hadn't used in the previous collection (see here: whistler scars) but to this day no one has ever seen even a glimpse of em', nothing's been completed either (in fact, la nuit rouge "descendo prints: series four" which follows "three" is already nearly complete). This particular collection deals with some very negative issues, everytime I get back to completing the pieces I'm eventually brought back to an awful place -- despite my efforts to avoid it. It's art at its worst. As much as I would like to be done with them, there's this childish resentment I have towards them; I want to expose the prints, sell them, get them hung up on stranger's walls -- I had a strange sense of accomplishment with the previous ones (could go as far as saying that I somehow felt at ease but I can't be too certain about that, it was all very disengenious back then, and that, was on my behalf also). The obvious feeling of accomplishment was that this was my first (public) attempt at doing my signature prints. It sold just fine at the beginning and it got a bit more complicated with the larger sized prints but all in all it was a great experience, one that I am dreadfully late on reproducing. That was me on those walls, not my commissionned work. So why all the whinning? Get over yourself and complete the work. Sounds so simple... I don't feel like going into any specifics (nor will I) but I will elaborate some details in upcoming posts, I'd like to treat it as an essay, an essay on very honest art and its' distribution. There are huge differences between unique/single art pieces and those that are reproduced and sharred all over the world (duh). Although both are very appealing to me, for the meantime I'm still testing out the "online" advantages. A trophy for any collector to have the original piece but I hate the idea of people having mere copies. You can make sure no copies are made... then the art is barely sharred. I do this with most of my paintings, but I give them away to friends, 'cause I know they care. Above is a photo I took near Strawberry Fields in New York earlier this year, it was during that time (or maybe at that specific moment, on a cold misty gray day so far away from it all) that I felt it wasn't necessary to complete the interfere with lovers prints... it felt meaningless but to this day, it still feels unresolved. I was too late. Like whistler scars, they should've been completed on the spur of the moment, in the thick of it all. Going back NOW is just so much of a burden but it remains a statement that I would like to expose. I probably will.. but the idiotic dilemma is costing me plenty of valuable time and unnecessary anguish... not to mention that it's art -- on a very negative yet passionate vibe.

mathematical printed type

I must not own half of what I've worked on. I get to see most of it on location. I've seen some of my printed works for the first time when I was in NY, LA etc. and even here in Montreal; it's scarce. There are posters I get a chance to check out solely when I notice them plastered on the streets of Montreal. What I'm getting at is that it's a real joy when I get to carefully observe my printed client projects. I can just look at them for hours, not that much of an analytical look either -- I do go on flaw-hunts but really I'm just wondering what the overall reaction will be. Looking at it from different eyes. The first thing I do everytime I pick up a cd booklet is check out the credits. That's what the quote / unquote music industry people do. Generally, non-industry peeps probably won't keep tabs on engineers, art directors etc. but I do. Then there's the subtle compacting of it all, how the information is distributed throughout the artwork. It's insane how indiependant releases can camouflage this better than any mainstream release, generally speaking, the intent may differ but it's in their benefit to produce the opposite. Budget is everything. Someone who says otherwise is a bad artist. And I've been handling huge UK campaigns this past summer, weather or not this was direct market stuff, the art ultimately suffered. And by that I mean that it revolved around the strategies, not at all an uncommon factor, the art in itself was very nice but I just can't help but wonder what the public opinion is (and not only in that demographic... as cold as that may sound).

an attempt at vaudeville

Figured I could share some of these, a little silent film nostalgia trip... also a nice break from previous downer entries.

Those Crazy Bastards [ circa 1922 ]
episode one
episode two