Originally published at Gibberings. You can comment here or there.

Odalisques, originally uploaded by vebelfetzer.

40 x 48"
acrylic on canvas

A joint Sweatshop venture with Vol Hydrogen.

Tags: artwork, not my artwork, paintings, sweatshop

Originally published at Gibberings. You can comment here or there.

We painted on the inverse of a really shitty painting I scored from Freecycle. We couldn’t paint on the front because of the acrylic already there.

So we flipped it and used the existing painting for some warmups.

Did I mention the original painting was god-awful. Here it is after some improvements.

Finally getting down to the real shit. When all else fails, I poll the audience for suggestions. When that fails, I poll my dad. “Paint the Creature in the rubber swimming cap and the bathing suit the girl wears in the movie,” he says. “Those horrible bathing suits you could never get them out of,” he adds darkly. Dad hated the 50s.

It’s the best idea he’s ever had.

Vol and I put on a good show. It becomes hideously cold in my apartment. Commence funny hats, a stately Sweatshop tradition. We have had about four pots of tea.

Progress. People are tipping and we’re overjoyed.

Eventually we hit a wall and order pizza. SVU is put on the feed and people start to fall off. By the time we’re watching All Creatures Great and Small, Season 3, there are only two viewers left. At 2am the pizza finally arrives. I give the delivery man a nice tip, anyway.

(not pictured)
We eat pizza with the painting turned towards the wall. An hour later, bellies distended with Pizza Man goods, we flip it back over. It’s done. We gravely shake hands, and discuss plans for another one, soon. This may show in LA in a group show, in the meantime.

Final photos will be posted later. I’m destroyed.

Tags: artwork, not my artwork, paintings, sweatshop

Originally published at Gibberings. You can comment here or there.

Sorry about forgetting to post this until TODAY, but we have a big SWEATSHOP tonight:

SIAMESE SWEATSHOP: Tag Team with Special Guest Artist Vol Hydrogen
Date: Friday, November 13, 2009
Time: 5:00pm – 8:00pm PST
Location: http://www.justin.tv/toxoplasm/

Vol Hydrogen is an upcoming surrealist designer and illustrator from the SF Bay Area. With a solid background in traditional skills like anatomy, clothing and character design, and concept art, she joins SWEATSHOP slavedriver EG Gauger for a few hours of two-headed horror.

Vol and I will be drawing/painting on a giant canvas that will then be cut up into jigsaw pieces, and sold individually. You should watch the entire process live, tonight, or you may miss out on snapping up the pieces as they go on sale.

Tags: artwork, not my artwork, paintings, sweatshop

Originally published at Gibberings. You can comment here or there.

Dante Gabriel Rosetti, “Beata Beatrix”

Some fun facts about this painting:

1. The model is Lizzie Siddal, the same girl who posed for John Edward Millais’ famous painting of Ophelia.

2. Siddal was Rosetti’s longtime something-or-other before they finally got married. The nature of their relationship is a topic of scholarly debate. It is assumed that they did not have a sexual relationship, as Rosetti already had his Whores and probably preferred that Siddal remain his Madonna. She also did not get pregnant prior to her marriage, although I find it hard to believe that anyone living in civilization, even in the faux innocence of the Victorian age, did not know rudimentary methods of foiling conception.

3. Most importantly, Siddal was a talented artist in her own right. She is academically considered to be Rosetti’s copycat. In truth, they worked together on numerous compositions for which he alone received credit.

4. After a lifetime of struggling to be recognized as an artist and illustrator, and constantly being turned away from jobs, education, and exhibitions due to her unfortunate sex, she was prescribed and became addicted to laudanum (a liquid opiate tincture popular during the era of “hysterics”).

5. Rosetti finally married her, after waffling about it for years, when it seemed she was on the verge of death. She miscarried once, then overdosed sometime later. Whether it was a suicide or an accident is now impossible to discover. Suicides were routinely obfuscated to assure the deceased of a resting place in holy ground, and though there were rumors of a note, it would certainly have been destroyed.

6. This painting, depicting her moment of overdose, was done after she had already died. The strange anatomy and junked-out facial expression are testament to this. The red dove holding the poppy flower is a direct reference to the peace brought about by opium. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was big on crap like that.

Tags: artwork, not my artwork, paintings

Originally published at Gibberings. You can comment here or there.

D+G Vector and Drawing by ~lee25 on deviantART.

Tags: artwork, not my artwork

Originally published at Gibberings. You can comment here or there.

Mad Cow War Pony: $.99, originally uploaded by vebelfetzer.

Untitled
Acrylic on unstretched canvas
approx. 36″ x 84″

A composite of a collaborative painting completed this afternoon in Dean’s quiet, chalk-white studio apartment in Berlin. It would, honestly, make more sense to stay here, than to go home on the 20th. I’d be cradled in the creche of legal and illegal expats from all over the world, forced to live without jobs, forced into bohemia, scrabbling for purchase, young and chic and effervescent. It’s almost irresistible, and I wonder daily about the realism of refunding a plane ticket for a deposit on one of these tall, brass-fitted, chalk-white apartments. It’s just that I left all my stuff at home. I like my stuff.

Tags: artwork, berlin, not my artwork, paintings

Originally published at Gibberings. You can comment here or there.

Friends, Countrymen;

In a few days I will be retracing the path of thousands of ancient conastogas, puttering up Shasta and down Grant’s, charring and grimacing under the Oregon blaze, just to get to you.

It’s very rare that I show my art publicly. After last time, when an angry mob showed up early with torches and pitchforks and ate all the cubical cheese, I had really lost hope in the Seattle art scene. I tried showing down here in the Bay Area, where I now reside, but had to take down early due to hippies protesting a yeti that had climbed one of the campus trees.

It is for this reason that I would be terribly obliged if only you’d find some way to drop in at either one of the art shows I’m launching this weekend.

Anachrotechnofetishism - artifacts by pioneers of american steampunk

Long before the age of the internet, and well before the cold efficiency of the assembly line, existed fantastic and terrible machines, run on hope, sweat, and steam. It was a time in which form and function lived in sin, and everyman was a revolutionary.

These are 13 American artists united by broad geography and narrow aesthetic.

Marrying narrative and nostalgia to design and technology, they imagine the triumphs of the past overriding the failures of the present to create from the ruins and detritus a dazzling future-perfect.

Starring me and twelve other retropostapocalypticians, including Molly Porkshanks and Jake von Slatt, this show will feature insane amounts of designer teas and chocolates, a full set of my fine art prints, and a half-dozen original oil paintings that I have never shown in public, including Shine, Rustbutton Brass, the City, Afterglow, Twilight in the Roachfields (What I Did On My Summer Vacation), and most ridiculous of all, the Vacuum Traffic Controller: a 40 x 66″ collossus that I hope will dominate the room with his deep, slightly furrowed gaze.

Featuring Datamancer, David S. Dowling, Eliza Gauger, Jake von Slatt, Libby Bulloff, Magpie Killjoy, missmonster, Molly “Porkshanks” Friedrich, Molly Mitchell, Quentin Ziplash, Rachel “Ratchet” Olson, Steven Archer, Suzanne Rachel Forbes

…and the Lonely Bastard
The second show is a solo venture, and will launch on Saturday the 13th. This is a much more low-key affair, and I’m hoping my friends can show up and say hello before I have to tear ass back down to the Yay. The flagship painting, an original oil on a 24 x 24″ circular board, is the Cardiographer: dark, slick, and glowing, a portrait of a ghost-muse spinning a pulse out from ectoplasm. Co-stars include brand new (as of yesterday) 12 x 12″ Flee, a silvered landscape with robot on the lam; the ever-popular Bat Smax, an extremely adorable collaboration with my partner in rape-and-pillage, Jhonen Vasquez; the complete set of original sketches for the Bee Commission (monsters, demons, and vespid whores); and a full host of fine art prints, including many that won’t be shown at the steampunk show because they simply are not steampunk. And of course, refreshments will be served. Which is really the only reason to show up to an art opening in the first place.

No need to RSVP, I’ll just be happy to see you. And did I forget to mention? Free stickers for everyone, pirated directly from the US Post Office!

PS: if any Seattle folk have some rusty chain lying around, I’d like to borrow it.

Tags: artwork, demons, etsy, not my artwork, paintings, seattle, sketches, space, steampunk, the bee commission, unhallowed metropolis

Originally published at Gibberings. You can comment here or there.

Tags: berkeley, not my artwork, photography, videos