Ever since the Lord of the Rings trilogy was released, I've referred to my adopted home town as "The Shire" (as opposed to Chi-Town) when talking to family and friends. It has recently come to my attention that there actually is a Shire in Bend, Oregon. If you've ever wanted to live like a hobbit, this is the place for you. What a weird world we live in!
I'm currently writing from my parents house in New York (home for the holidays). During my visit, my father shared with me some of his sketchbooks pages (he is the chief of social work at a VA hospital out here but has recently begun to start drawing). I was floored when he showed me his work and found the above page to be especially amazing and inspiring. Like father like son, the link between his artwork and mine couldn't be more obvious. Click on the above image to see a larger detail of this page from his sketchbook.
I'm still in shock after reading the news today about Michael Richard's racial pontification on stage at The Laugh Factory in Los Angeles. I guess that I am completely naive, but it absolutely blows my mind that in this day and age people can be so completely filled with hate and with bigotry. It makes me overwhelmingly sad about the state of race relations in this country and I know know that I'll be preoccupied with the following video for many days to come. Be forewarned, the following video clip is beyond upsetting: http://us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mode=1&pmmsid=1772645
I spent last friday at The Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design where I critiqued student work, gave a lecture and hung out with friend and fellow photographer, Sonja Thomsen. Milwaukee is a great town and it was nice to revisit and meet some new folks.
This past weekend, Brian and Matt and I headed down to The University of Indiana to give a lecture on our work and to meet with a number of students (both grad and under-grad). We saw a lot of great work, met a lot of great people and as always, we had a great time driving around together. We hope to book more lecture dates in the future, so let us know if you want us to come to your school (wink wink, nudge nudge).
I found this in our driveway the other day after a big rainstorm. Check out the two cans of High Life, This guy's a stud!
At 11:57 last night, my surveillance system caught this guy taking a piss on my garbage can. What's wrong with people???
