I have stumbled upon a wonderful gimmick with this series, and I’m going to push it as far as possible, God-dammit.

I should mention that I worked on these in various new spots around DC, many of which were lovely. I went to the French joint Bistro Bistro in Dupont Circle to drink a $2.50 glass of wine during the tail end of their happy hour. After half an hour, the bartender poured me a second glass for free. You seem to be enjoying our characters, she told me, since I’d been in close proximity to one of their odder old regulars who seemed to be a bit on the colorful side. Anyway, I hope I can go back there soon and get a proper meal.

I heard it’s considered bad form to write about all the things you’re applying to because then you’re stuck blogging with your tail between your legs when you don’t get accepted; but God-dammit, I spent the last two weeks working on a grant and a show application, and I want to kvetch about how exhausting it was.  And there’s another deadline July 23! Good God. On the plus side, I’ve always been the sort of person who likes carry all of the groceries to the door at once, rather than break it up into shorter, lighter trips. Might as well cram all of the Artist Statements / Proposals / JPEG burning into a reduced timeframe, and then get on with the real art-making.

On the plus side, I found time to start the Conversation Series (pictured), which I’ve been mulling over for awhile. And it looks better than how I imagined it would. I worked on the first batch on a pleasant Sunday afternoon in the Portrait Gallery atrium, listening to Harry Potter and two tourists discussing the atrocious cost of their cafe brownie. I’d say, “good times” but honestly, that doesn’t even begin to describe how glorious an afternoon it was.

This weekend, while the city was buzzing with World Cup fever and Gay Pride, I was installing the second-largest piece of art I’ve ever created* at the Convention Center. A few snapshots below–higher-quality pictures coming soon.

*The largest piece of art was created in grad school in 2005, and involved a projector and a motion detector. In case you were curious.

Hello 2010! In honor of fresh starts and all that I have updated my drawings page and created a much more elegant image gallery. So please check it out if you want to see what I’ve been up to (along with my coaster series, of course, which is going nicely).

I forgot to mention that I saw the Tim Burton exhibition at the MoMa in New York during Christmas week. It was packed, which made it difficult to linger over his work (including the cookie-making robot from Edward Scissorhands(!) but it was certainly the most fun I’d had in a museum in awhile. The last exhibition I saw that was so squashed was Edward Hopper at the National Gallery a few years back, where I learned that it was very difficult to fully appreciate paintings depicting the day-to-day loneliness of man if you’re surrounded by swarms of DC tourists. It’s true what they say, kids–context is everything.

When I was in school I used some cheap crappy gouache for an art project and swore the stuff off until now. Still getting the hang of the medium, but so far I’m a fan.

My “Other Drawings” section has been updated with my most recent work, a good chunk of which was done in bars or restaurants around DC. I’ve decided that I do my best drawing when I’m in public places; studio settings always seemed very isolating, and I like being able to sit at a table with an appropriate beverage and eavesdrop.

While I was cleaning out my old apartment, I found a box of high quality paper cut into squares, which lent itself nicely to a new series of drawings (most of which was done on the Metro). A few highlights below: