Celeritas is a coming

Celeritas @ SURU, Opening on July 12th,
The show will feature a star-studden lineup of artists exhibiting works inspired by motorcycle racing culture. Participants include: Barry McGee, Joe Hahn, Mike Shinoda, Mark Dean Veca, Audrey Kawasaki, Stash, Futura, James Jean, Jim Lee, Alex Pardee,
Jeff McMillan, Troy Lee, Jesse James, Usugrow, Nathan Cabrera, Dr. Romanelli and photographer Estevan Oriol.
Here's sneak preview of my helmet

SURU
7662 Melrose Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90046

Now This is Great!

Dirty Pilot, Collabs and a Smurf Orgy

Earlier this year, a online gallery called Dirty Pilot located in Massasschuettes was kind enough to have me there for a solo show titled "Zuben Rat Salad and Friends"
It's a cool spot and a great idea. Not too much overhead when you're your not paying rent or have a physical gallery store front. Dirty Pilot has all kinds of stuff from books, shirts to vinyl figures. Check them out.

Along with the show they released a limited edition print of 75, it's Zuben himself standing there all alone in the mountains with this creepy little skeleton of a dodo bird.

click here to buy

Here's the rest of the Rat Salad Show-












Next up, another Collaboration, i did with Pete Wentz and Travis McCoy. It was for a show titled "Without You I'm Just Me" A Charity Show hosted by Gallery 1988, A portion of the shows proceeds will benefit Invisible Children, this is a charity working to better the conditions in northern Uganda. So it was for a good cause, glad to be a part in this one.
you can here view the art for the show here



And finally, let's get to the meat of this blog post, Smurf Porn, Oh Yeah! Last month was the 2nd annual "Gag Me With A Toon" Group exhibition over at Meltdown Comics. It was curated by the gracious Steven Daily. This is a show dedicated to eighties cartoons, only the best, and you see all the greats come out of the woodworks for this one.
So, i was over at Joe Hahn's place, thinking of something to do for the show. We were sitting there just brain storming and then like a bolt of lightening, Bam! it hit us. A smurf orgy, a big canvas of the smurfs just going at it. So many smurfs, that when you you stand back from the piece it appears to be a pattern. We wanted to put Smurfette in there, but we did a little research on the smurfs. To our surprise, Gargamel had created Smurfette. Apparently the smurfs were doing just fine with out her.
We titled this one "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day, Oh Yeah, Where's Smurfette?"
here's a link to the show's art, click here

Album Art, Digital Album Covers and RVCA

There's a band out there called "Infected Mushroom", they're an Israeli psychedelic trance and electronic music duo. Apparently they're huge all over the world with little play in the states, their popularity here is growing i hear. I've been working with them to create an identity for the next album "The Legend of The Black Shawarma", I learned quite a bit about the band and their fans. I was commissioned to create an album cover for the band. They had a great idea for the cover, check this out- A Shawarma is a popular dish in the Middle East and North Africa, now there's also a Black Shawarma, i assume it's related. It is highly sought after by all the woodland creatures who travel near and far, as they line up to get a taste of this mystical sandwich, served to them by a creepy gnome and blue fairy that work out of a huge sequoia, I also did digital album artwork for the band's single "Smashing the Opponent"
and a band logo.
see here-






Next up, Two more bands. I did a digital album artwork for Fall Out Boy's single America's Suitehearts, it hit the itunes store last month as well as the infected mushroom single "Smashing the Opponent", check it out-



I did another cover for band named "Pleasure Device" here's that one is-



Finally, I've been working with RVCA for a couple of years now. They're a great company, definitely one of the only surf/skate companies in Orange County that really does outstanding stuff with art. Check them out if you haven't before, here's some new designs i did for them lately-

Mike Tyson, Pepto Dismal, and Kaiju Sea Monsters

Hey there, So next up is Mike Tyson, you know "Dynamite Kid" "Iron Mike Tyson", Undisputed Heavyweight Champion who was nearly invincible during his career of 50 Wins,
44 KO's and 6 losses. Not bad at all, when compared to Ali considered "the greatest ever" ended his career at 56 Wins 37 KO's and 5 losses.
The documentary titled "Tyson" was released in April nation wide and was praised as one of the better documentaries ever made on a professional boxer.
For the Films release, the Tyson team was doing all kinds of promoting, one of tasks was building him a website, the only website that the Champ endorses.
http://officialmiketyson.com/

I was asked to paint a portrait of Tyson for the front page of his site, portraying him during the height of his career, fully loaded with all the tattoos including the famous face tatt, here's what i did



Pepto Dismal Situations, Slamxhype is a site that covers ground breaking news from the 'Street Culture' world. They put on a show appropriately themed "Bailout"
The show has a success, it drew in tons of curious people from off the street, the show featured artists like Rob Abeyta Jr., Joe Hahn, Steven Daily, Ekundayo, Jon Dragonette, Anthony Lister, Myself, Misery, Andrew Pommier, and Butcher Block alongside the music of Sean Reveron and Shawn Mortensen

I composed these two pieces, i figured that when times are tough people tend to eat cheap. You can get a $8 salad at Whole Foods are 2 tacos for .99 at the Jack in the Box, or 2 cheeseburgers for a buck, i guess?
Fast food is definitely a staple in America's diet, and it's our death as well.




Last December i was in Miami attending Art Basel. It was quite the experience to say the least. I could say i was honestly arted out, and didn't want to see another painting for the the next week.
While i was there, i participated in a show at the Harold Golen Gallery called Kaiju Monster Invasion. Click here to check out what this show produced. When i was there i meet a man named Jim Levy, he bought my painting. But, more interesting than that is he has one of the larger collections of Kaiju Monsters on the east coast, and probably the U.S, check his collection out on dislay in Miami
Here's my piece from the exhibit, titled "Off Shore Sea Quarrel"

Recapping Suru, Star Wars and Morgan Spurlock

Oh man, where to start
There's been a whole lot going on here, so i'll fill you with all the news.
To start off with the latest, Liv and I just had our year anniversary in Palm Springs, Whoohoo for us, don't be jealous!
Liv is quite the correspondent and if you check out her blog she will fill you in on all that awesome stuff, click here

So let me bring you up to speed here-

Recapping the SURU show, here's a couple of pieces

Suru released a couple of shirt designs for the show, Hypebeast, Highsnobiety and Slamxhype were kind enough to covered it-

highsnobiety
slamxhype
hypebeast





Here's two more pieces to add to the Star Wars collection, and this is great news indeed, check this out, Morgan Spurlock bought these.

Slamxhype!

Hey guys,
I just got a new blog a slamxhype
i'll blogging there and here, but mostly there, but here too.

here's the link to the blog section

blogs

update!!!
i have a couple of designs that music skins picked up
check them out there-

music skins

Awesomeness! then Art News(still good stuff)

hey there,
So the last two weeks and weekends have been pretty cool,
the Show at Suru last weekend was great. The opening was a huge success. We had a lot of people show up and sold a good number of pieces.
It was all over the web
slamxhype
hypebeast
Juxtapoz and so on..
here's the link to the show if you want to see it- show me

There's some great shirts and prints available, so definitely check em out at the suru store

Later on this week, i'll be going to New York for a couple of days, which is exciting in itself. This company Redscout is holding a panel of guest speakers, and they're flying me out there to talk about what i do.
While i'm out there, i have a list of exhibits and various galleries to check out.

But if we can go back to this weekend, i had an oppurtunity to go see The songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno performed by David Byrne himself.
Wow!
But it gets better, we got to hang out in the hospitality lounge before and after the show and get this....... we got to meet David and hang out with him for a little bit.

Pete, Me, David, and Jake

We didn't think the night could get any better until we had Roscoe's late night, then we called it a night.

Okay, back the Art News!!!
another busy week

This Tuesday over Gallery 1988
A New Show Opens "Cover Band"
50 or so artists were to reinterpret album covers of The top 500 albums of all time according to Rolling Stone, so take it with a grain of salt here. one record cover album to every artist, we had to collaborate with the original album artwork, here's Kraftwerks's Trans Europe Express Album by me


Then on Friday up in San Francisco, Gallery 1988 is hosting a show called "Monster Art Rally"
It's a show that has custom enhanced vinyl, plush monster figurines and toys, so check them out if you can, should be a fun show indeed.

here's what i did-

from left to right: Mr. Scum, Mr. No Skin, Mr. Woodworm

well, that's it for now
over and out
jtown