A Quiet Moment Amongst Friends

An Evening of Fun and Friends at WE Artspace

On Sunday night, a group of friends attended the closing of the "Paint By Numbers" show at WE Artspace in Oakland. Six of the pieces from the Reimagining Sasquatch post were selected for the show. 

Jake C (creator of the Squatchia Transit Map) admired the display. 

The show featured an interactive paint-by-numbers project and works from twenty-one artists based on the theme. Here are a few examples. (I forgot to write down the name and corresponding artist for each artwork. I think the piece in the upper right was called "Wack Jackals".) 

 

The evening featured a jam session by the band CLIPD BEAKS.

 

And an electronic jam by the band Ned.

The gallery dogs had to stay outside.

Local art fans, Eric, Emina, and Kevin, gave the show a big "thumbs up"!

Thanks, WE Artspace, for including the Sasquatch faces and for putting together a cool show. 

UPDATE: If you're in the Bay Area, you should check out their upcoming opening, "How Do I Look?", on August 9th (5-8pm). 

The Buddy System IV: A New Kind of Yoga

Here is the fourth installment of The Buddy System, the series where I send out the start of a drawing and ask friends to respond however they wish. 

For this assignment, I sent out a doodle of a floppy man:

The shape of the man reminded Seth L of the brightly colored spiders that crawled all over his body one night at a college party back in the 1990s. He may have eaten something bad that evening, I don't know. Seth said that despite their scary look, the spiders were actually pretty friendly. 

Like her submission for The Buddy System II, Morit G took a high-minded, expansive, approach to the assignment and created a beautiful, multi-layered, surrealist drawing. Here are some of the themes that may or may not be addressed in this piece: the passage of time; memories; aging; interconnectedness; family; nostalgia for old bathing suits; ghosts; competition; marriage; Pelé; county fairs; botany; living kites; human kites; and old-timey prison chain-gangs.  

The next submission has a decidedly cinematic feel to it. Anna U, my sister, thought the man was being pursued by a terrifying little yogi. The floppy man is straining to hold the door of an apartment closed while the little mystic concocts a spell to gain entrance. This one sends shivers down my spine. 

And, as always, the final submission comes from me. This piece represents the CORRECT interpretation of the drawing. 

In my version, an irrationally happy man crawls onto the roof of a stranger's car and refuses to get off despite the frantic pounding from inside. The driver and passenger took a look at the man's maniacal grin as he approached and are now afraid to get out of the car.

That's it! If you have your own ideas for how to finish the drawing, please download the image and send your version to aquietmoment@gmail.com. Late submissions are always accepted and they'll be added to the original post. 

UPDATE Saturday, July 25: René S, a photographer from Rotterdam, Netherlands, was following along over Twitter and decided to join in the fun. René incorporated the image of the man into two of his photographs. One shows a spectacular back-flip dive into a canal and the other shows a crowd of tourists marveling at the giant marshmallow man that is about to crush them. (Click the images to see larger versions.) 

Sotomayor Fever is Sweeping the Nation

Photograph, color film, 2009

Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor, March 19, 2009

Carl W, a regular contributor to this site, took the above photograph at a conference for lawyers at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California. The conference was held a full TWO MONTHS before Obama appointed the Honorable Sonia Sotomayor to be a Supreme Court Justice. No one had a clue. Carl thought he was taking a ubiquitous snapshot of his pal, a young bankruptcy lawyer, when really he was capturing a piece of American history!

I spent the entire day listening to the judicial confirmation hearings on NPR and now my head hurts a little bit. Sotomayor was very impressive. She is an incredibly effective debater and public speaker, always calm and to the point. It's somewhat unfortunate that she is going to be confirmed easily and then sent into the musty Supreme Court Cave to spend the rest of her life in seclusion. 

You can see many more of Carl's photographs on his Flickr homepage.

UPDATE: If major news outlets are interested in purchasing this image, they should talk to Carl. 

Wood Talk with Nick Shuminsky: A Free Energy Web Gem

Short film, original score, digital video, color, 1:21 minutes, 2009

My friend Nick S is in the rock band, Free Energy. He and the other dudes in the band created this video to teach people how to properly dispose of old Christmas trees. Gather some friends, chop up some wood, and kick back by a homemade campfire. I love how these guys think. 

You can learn more about Free Energy on their website.

I Want To Throw Up and Kill Something: The Real Adventures of Brittny and Kelsee

Found note, 8 1/2 x 11 inches, 2009

Last month my friend Jason W emailed me the text of a note his friend, Thomas M, found in a used book at the Portland bookstore where he works. I contacted Thomas and he kindly sent the original note.  

Jason alerted me to the note to settle a debate that had raged around a previous post in which two people discuss a "Fuck The World" tattoo. Even though the handwriting in the tattoo note was a little girlie, I assumed it was written by boys because girls would never use the word "dude" when talking to other girls. Jason thought otherwise and he was able to track down incontrovertible evidence that girls refer to each other as dude, just like boys. Well played, dude! 

Besides settling the debate, the letter from Brittny to Kelsee also stands on its own as a real life situational comedy. I was inspired to create a comic using the dialogue and characters from the letter. I don't know about you, but I think Brittny needs to chill out and give Ben another shot.

Comic, 6 x 6 inches, ink on paper, 2009

Laurence Fishburne Joins the Cast of CSI

Fan art, MS Paint, 470 x 470 pixels, 200

My friend Kevin R in Michigan sent in some fan art inspired by Laurence Fishburne joining the cast of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. It's hard to believe, but this entire piece was created using MS Paint. Kevin expertly captured the actor's facial structure (despite taking a small short cut on the eyes). The juxtaposition of the face with real-life tools from a forensics lab was a brilliant decision. What could have been just a man, is now a man working in a scientific field. 

You may remember Fishburne as Cowboy Curtis on Pee-Wee's Playhouse or as the friendly wizard in the Matrix trilogy. On CSI, he will be playing the part of Professor Langston.

UPDATE: Jesus! I just learned that Fishburne joined the cast of CSI in the fall of 2008. This isn't news! And it's Laurence Fishburne, not Lawrence Fishborne. C'mon, Kevin. How embarrassing!

Introducing QuietMoment.org: A Nonprofit Organization For Friends

Here ye, here ye!

A Quiet Moment Amongst Friends has changed its web address to QuietMoment.org. Because "dot com" was already purchased, I had to convince the government that we are actually a charitable organization. It would be great if everyone could play along so I don't get arrested. You can start by sending donations or signing up for an internship.  

All of the old links will continue to work under the new name, and you'll still be able to access quietmoment.typepad.com. The new name is less of a mouthful and it will hopefully make it easier for people to find this place.

This site is currently ranked third when you Google "Quiet Moment". It's stuck behind a spa in Venice, Florida and a spiritual internet radio station. C'mon, we can beat those guys, easy. 

In The News:

1. I've updated the header to reflect the new web address. This is only temporary and I'll be rolling out a new, prettier header soon. Don't worry, this is still A Quiet Moment Amongst Friends, a quiet space for friends, and friends of friends, to leave their artwork, regardless of quality (as long as it is nicer looking than this troll I drew in crayon at dinner a month ago).

2. The Sasquatch Face post was such a tremendous success that it's been pulled out of the internet and turned into an actual work of art in an art gallery. Six of the Sasquatch pieces are part of a group show at We Art Space in Oakland based on the theme, "Paint by Numbers". If you are in the Bay Area, you can check it out, in the flesh, from July 2 through July 26: 

Paint By Numbers

We Art Space

768 40th Street

Oakland, CA

July 2 and July 26 (other times by appointment)

3. I'll be in New York for most of the next week, so it is going to be really slow around here. Last time I was in New York, I got the idea for the Taft Mascot. Good stuff may come out of this!

4. I've been taking a figure drawing class with nude models. I'm going to start working gratuitous nudity into my regular blog posts to help with ratings. 

To start things off, here are two blind contour drawings that I did during the first two classes. Blind contour means you don't look at your paper when you draw and you don't lift your pencil off the paper.

Fal-core: Send in Videos For a Mobile Video Van

My friend, and frequent contributor to this site, Peter F, is seeking video submissions for a series of art events taking place around the Bay Area in a theater that folds out of his customized Ford Falcon Van. He's created this mobile art space over the last year. You can read more about the event and also check out some of his other art work at his website http://peterfoucault.wordpress.com/. 

This tricked out Fal-core art van reminds me of the A-Team when they had to defeat drug dealers or hippies and they would spend an entire day in the junk yard welding homemade weapons to the side of vans, tractors, and dune buggies. The difference here is that Peter isn't going into battle against dirty local artists and weirdos, he's using whatever resources he has at his disposal to entertain them.

Wait a second, now that I think about it, what if Peter is working for the Oakland police and this is actually a paddy wagon in disguise? I don't trust this.