Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Good Night!

Thanks to everyone for such a great Sketching with Santa at the Palace of Wonders! The jokes were bad, the trivia hard, the models hot and the sketching plentiful! Devonshire Cream not only did us the honor of performing, but she is a top notch photographer to boot...Check out some of her photos from last nights event:

Santa, of course...

Gigi Holliday making all of the other Christmas trees green with envy...

And Devonshire Cream backstage (she cant really take photos of herself onstage, can she?)

If you have any more photos to pass along, please don't hesitate to get in touch! Come to think of it, if you sketched last night, and have a scan of a sketch you are particularly proud of, send that along too!

SKETCHING WITH SANTA NEXT WEDNESDAY! and willful ignorance...

NEXT WEDNESDAY!
Sketching with Santa at the Palace of Wonders! How could you miss the opportunity to:

A) Sketch beautiful women WHILST drinking beer
B) Have a private audience with SANTA six months before anyone else!
C) SAVE CHRISTMAS!

ARTISTS! SANTA NEEDS YOUR HELP! Snickelfritz, the "naughty" gift designing elf has taken ill, and Santa needs some fresh sexy designs for this holiday season. For inspiration, Santa has brought you two fresh burlesque performers to sketch. Bring your sketchpad, your sick little mind...and COME SAVE CHRISTMAS!
Christmas in July drink specials all night long! Hey, no artists materials that are too wet or messy. Leave the dirty stuff to us!

If you really need a FB invite, you can go here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=136698756364178

To be honest, this Sketching with Santa gig has been a major component of my fever dreams during my recent bout of swine flu (turns out it was strep)...I would lay in bed, sweating through the sheets, imagining that I was stuck in a chimney, and that the gremlins were coming to get me!!!
Needless to say, I haven't been working on very much while I was sick. But what meager offerings I have are worthy of a bit of discussion. First, I started working on a new drawing that was going to be a preparatory drawing for a larger piece.

Bat out of Hell study
Pastel on Prepared Paper 14"x11"

I had the idea of making a real chaotic hell scene (the fever dreams again) where there were devils flying biplanes inside a cavern coated with suffering souls. So, I thought that one way of getting some movement into the piece was to have the planes follow a "flight path" through the cavern, with the foreground plane as a framing device for the rest of the scene. Unfortunately, the pastels are far too clunky for me to get the level of detail on such a small piece of paper. So this remains a study for a larger picture...

The other piece is really an experiment. I had been getting the notion that perhaps my work was losing some of its spontaneity and life. So, I decided to go back to some of my roots. That is, when I started making "art" with a purpose, in late high school, I would make things with a certain wonkyness. Really it was an attempt to convey a sense of aggression and expression to the mark making because I was riding high on all of the abstract expressionist art history I was absorbing...plus it felt good to stab at the canvas, and make bold marks. In the intervening years I dropped this method of mark making in favor of a tighter style (which is probably a consequence of feeling that I needed to prove that I could draw and paint more than I needed to prove that I could, er, emote) So, recently, I got the notion in my head that I should take a whack at trying to recapture that same feeling in my work now. I began working on a full sheet of 24"x36" BFK in pastel, directly from a still life I hastily set up (the skull with the fez is my "go to" still life setup...its cliche, even for me, but it dispenses with the "meaning" of the objects in the still life so I can get right down to business) and I began to attack the paper in the old way, without regard for proportion or draftsmanship.

Still Life with Kraken
Pastel on Paper 36"x 24"

In the end, I don't really know what to make of these results. I enjoy the directness of the process (I knocked this out in an hour and a half) and I even like the "willful ignorance" of the application of pigment...but there is, something about its lack of sincerity despite the fact that I was trying to be very sincere! I particularly like the passage with the bottle...its just enough to give you the idea that it is a clear bottle, while letting the viewer fill in the blanks...Expressionists and impressionists had results like these, but they were supposedly working from a framework of theory that gave their work a reason to look the way it did. I don't have any theory to fall back on (well, conscious theory) and yet wouldn't this somehow be a more "pure" expression of my mental state? Seeing as I freed my mind completely and went solely with "what feels right"?

Anyway, I'd be interested in what you think...does this mode of "expressionism" say something to you? Should I embrace the wonkyness? Am I barking up the wrong tree entirely?

I had swine flu...and lived!

That's right, I had a mean ole case of the swine flu* that laid me up for the better part of the week. So, sadly all I have to report on is the film project that was using my backdrop...I was able to visit the set of the finale sequence. You can see my work in the middle of the photo (I'm told that it will look much larger on camera)


The other thing I should remind everyone about is going to see Carrie Potter at the New Moon Prom during the fringe festival. It got some good press from the Going Out Gurus...you can get tickets here!

*Jared did not actually get a diagnosis of swine flu, it was just so horrible, that he assumes it was...

THRILLIST DC PROFILES ARTBYJARED

Wow, I really didn't see this coming...I did a phone interview in March, and promptly forgot about it (I was a bit busy with Yuri's Night at the time, you know...)

I've taken the liberty to cut and paste the article below, but if you would like to visit the source (Thrillist DC) you can find it HERE.

Jared Davis Art

Former highbrow artist monkeys around

Critical acclaim is great, but at some point, you want your art to be admired by people on your own level -- sure, the Emmys, Oscars, and Grammys were great for Jeff Foxworthy, but eventually he just needed to touch those 5th graders. Now making art his friends can actually understand, sort of: Jared Davis.

Formerly a contemplative abstract expressionist, Davis started cranking out playfully lowbrow acrylics -- generally centered on daredevil monkeys, tiki culture, and sci-fi -- after realizing that he wanted to paint for his friends and not "some Swedish guy in a black-turtle neck", prompting a mid-career style shift, and a lifetime ban from Ikea. For no particular reason, many recent works focus on primate daredevil "Fearless" and his goading counterpart "Floyd", including the latter shooting the former out of a circus cannon, a rollerskating Fearless strapped to a rocket, Jackass-style, as well as about to engage a naked woman in a boxing ring in "Sweet Science", although there's no homage to the sweetest science, i.e., the chemical engineering responsible for Fun Dip. Similarly unexplainable randomness includes sci-fi inspired joints like his newest, "Genius and a Dandy", with a well-dressed computer-monitor robot taking tea with an 8-track player, and tiki-tributes like a dancing Polynesian statue, and a depiction of a stern-faced, blue-glowing drink mug painted on black velvet, guaranteed to give you that little boy smile aesthetically approving grin.
Because much like a sci-fi primate, his creativity won't be bound, Jared's also got a slew of uncategorizable pieces, with the standout being a massive oil of a pouncing cat titled "White Tiger Attacking Roy", proving that he may be crazy, but not like a Fox.

Aside from that amazing piece of investigative journalism, I also finished a commission for a film that is shooting in this area. I cant really tell you more than it involves cheerleading and features one of the main actors in three men and a baby...below you can see the backdrop they commissioned...

SKETCHING WITH SANTA ANNOUNCED! LOTERIA ON THE 7th!

Last week I showed you the flyer for Sketching with Santa at the Palace of Wonders (July 28th) with some incorrect information...but this week I can show you the flyer with the correct, new and improved information! I realize that you will be bombarded with different requests to come to this event, from Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, CNN...so, I am giving you loyal readers of BTT the exclusive "first glimpse"...so MARK YOUR CALENDARS!

ARTISTS! SANTA NEEDS YOUR HELP! Snickelfritz, the "naughty" gift designing elf has taken ill, and Santa needs some fresh sexy designs for this holiday season. For inspiration, Santa has brought you two fresh burlesque performers to sketch. Bring your sketchpad, your sick little mind...and COME SAVE CHRISTMAS!
Christmas in July drink specials all night long! Hey, no artists materials that are too wet or messy. Leave the dirty stuff to us!

The other show that you should be looking at for the Palace of Wonders is Loteria De Amor (July 7th)...I have submitted the design for the Diablito Card, and will be represented alongside 53 of DC's best artists!

Loteria is the Mexican version of bingo and instead of being played with letters and numbers it’s played with pictures. For Loteria de Amor we’ve asked 54 celbutantes from the DC/Baltimore art world to either do their take on a traditional Loteria image or to come up with an image of their own invention. Among the local artists contributing images are: Tim Tate (el Corazon), Victoria F. Gaitán (la Sirena) and Philippa Hughes (la Surfista).

In between games, the Metro area’s biggest burlesque and vaudeville stars will perform acts based on the Loteria images. Loteria de Amor Numero Uno will feature Malibu, Mistress of Fire, Baltimore’s Boylesque sensation, Paco Fish (www.pacofish.net), and the star of DC’s Gurly Show, Coco Monroe (www.myspace.com/misscocomonroe).