CRAFTY BASTARDS, I love Adams Morgan.

Our booth, just before the swarm arrived.



Well we just got back from Crafty Bastards in the very I-could-live-there neighborhood of DC known as Adams Morgan. The show was also very friendly. I have to admit it must have been the friendliest show I've ever attended. Not only did we get a large amount of space for a small fee, but there were literally a hundred volunteers walking around through out the day helping us load and unload our loot, keeping our stuff dry during the rainy spells and feeding us lunch. Whoever heard of feeding your vendors lunch. Comic Conventions need to stand up and take notes. Beyond that the crowd was huge, most of which walked or biked to the show and as a whole showed a lot more interest and were a lot more interactive than I'm used to. The only downside of the day was I was so busy talking with people about posters and shirts and printing that I didn't even have time for my own family and friends who came by to see us. Sorry guys and thanks for coming out to support. And of course I couldn't have made it through with help from Carra whose jewelry made a killing at her Face Metal booth.
So if you missed this show, come by next time. Here's some of the people we met. The list is short because we were too busy to interact with very many vendors:

Dirty Pictures - honest to goodness hand done silk screened posters in DC.

El Jefe - silk screened rock posters in DC.

These guys I guess are competitors in the same market, but they're both real nice guys and I hope there will always be plenty of work for the both of them.

Teleological Art

I came across this book in a used bookstore last week.  I can't find any further information about the paintings that it mentions, but it's pretty amazing.  Does anyone out there know more about this?

Excerpted from “Teleological Art,” by Ferraro Strauss.  Published by Elenchus House, 1989.

Pg. 112

“While an executive order demanding that all religious idols be stricken from the home and replaced with images of the leader himself may seem outlandish to us today, in Stalinist Russia this was official policy.  Any who dared to disobey would be branded a traitor and an undesirable, and face exile or death. 

But some Russian Christians, perhaps more afraid of an eternity in hell then a life of false idols, took extraordinary steps to circumvent and undermine this law.

Recently, researchers have uncovered proof that a secret cabal existed, one devoted to producing otherwise state approved works of art that secretly included coded Christian messages and hidden Christian symbols.   These works often relied on elaborate puns or images so steeped in symbolism that an almost scholarly understanding of Christianity would be needed to pick them out. 

One of the artists who risked his life to produce these works was Guiseppe Nekenbruli, an Italian painter who emigrated to Stalinist Russia with the express purpose of producing Stalinist Christian works.  It is unclear how many works Nekenbruli produced.  His reliance on pseudonyms, as well as the imperative to hide these Christian images as well as possible, made cataloguing his work nearly impossible.  It is known that in 1979 he donated one piece, titled [untranslatable] to the Vatican Museum.  This work is notable for the fact that Nekenbruli hid images of Jesus Christ in Stalin’s very own mustache.  In fact, when viewed under a microscope, it is revealed that each hair in the mustache hides an image of Christ, over 200 hundred in all.  The fact that Nekenbruli was able to pull of such an audacious stunt in nothing less then amazing.”

On the Boards: "Stir Crazy"

Sometimes in the next few days (but sadly, not in time for Crafty Bastards), ink-slinger extraordinaire Spencer will be pulling my first piece for Team 8! The first in what may become a series on the theme of Girls + Coffee, "Stir Crazy" is five colors on 100 lb. French Pop-Tone stock.

Big thanks to Spencer for the invitation to join the party over here...I can't wait to see the prints!

Screen Printed Jewelry, really?!?!

Yes, you heard it right folks, I am working on screen printed one-of-a-kind pieces on all different kinds of materials. This first piece here is on leather, illustrated and printed by Spencer Hansen and the metal work and stitching is done by me. I will be creating more as time moves forward but this will have to be the first taste.

Carra Rose
Face Metal Design

You CRAFTY BASTARD you!

Hello all, as a unofficial member and new working partner of Team 8 Press I am proud to announce the first of many fall shows, Crafty Bastards Arts & Crafts Fair is this Sunday, September 28th from 10am-5pm at the Marie Reed Learning Center in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC. Check out the site if you have any questions and to see what other awesome artists are going to be there. It's gonna be great!! Hope to see you all there.

Carra Rose
Face Metal Design

Russ Gautier and Matt Deans Print!!

We promised you Horn would make a comeback, but don't worry. It's okay though!
Matt pitched in and we resurrected Russ from the dead to print this Team Eight classic, which they designed together as one of our first t-shirts way back in ot three. Check it out, it's our second shirt printed in the new t-shirt studio, but the first we were able to sneak any footage of. We'll be posting it on the site for sale soon, but in the mean time, check out the pics of these two doofs printing like they were born to it.

new comic up! @ rawngandy.com

are you ready for the webcomic thats sweeping the nation?

well strap on your funny goggles

and prepare up toezies for "i've wasted my life"

-rawn

ART

There's a lot of talk about 'art' these days.  What does it mean, what should it mean, how does it make me feel, does it drive people to kill...am I the only one who's just plain sick of it all?

We've been dealing with art for a long time, and it's about time that someone took a stand and said 'enough.'  

It's the 21st century, gangsters.  Do we still really need this stuff?  I can see how 600 years ago some cave folk thought it was pretty keen to scratch a crude drawing of a dog on the wall.  What a talking point that must have been.  "Everyone, come quick!  See what Skyler made on the wall!"

You know who wasn't too thrilled?  The other cave people that lived in that cave.  Suddenly they had all these strangers coming in and messing the place up.   And then right away all the other cave people were like, man I can do that.  Thus forever ruining a bunch of formerly pristine caves.

You want to know how long it took for the first name to be dropped after the first 'art' was made?  About a pico second.  These cave people were all like "yeah, Skyler and I were out clubbing stuff and he suddenly saw this tree and was like, I gotta etch that." 

And let's face it, things haven't changed that much.  Does  it really take a visionary to look at a tree and think that they should capture that in crayon?

If art is ever going to be good, it's time that we branch out.  Maybe start jiggling around with the human genome, make a dude with horns or something.  Now that would be neat.  Or maybe if someone could come up with a painting that inspired not awe or tears or whatever, but inspired someone to go out and build a car.  Not that I want to do that.  But let's get practical.

Barry Bruner Snarls

We just finished up Barry's new shirt and posted it in the store. It was the first one we've done in the new t-shirt studio and it turned out great!



Barry's also been very busy with the rest of his illustration. He recently moved back to Richmond and started cranking out the drawings. He has a show at Ghost Print Gallery for the month of September with a few of his fellow Richmond illustrators. He also keeps a current blog and he built and maintains his own website. Barry's quickly become a successful freelance artist and illustrator, recently doing work for The Deal Magazine, Plenty Magazine, Time Out Chicago, The Boston Globe, Richmond Magazine, and many others. Here's a few of his recent illustrations:

Dictators I


Dictators II


Japanese Pharmaceutical Companies invade the US market for The Deal Magazine


Javier Bardem for Inland Empire Weekly


MUGABE with Team Eight Press


Muqtada al-Sadr and his Madhi Army.