My latest film incorporates a new miniature set, a recording studio, which I'm realizing seems to borrow (in spirit) from the color palette of Stanley Kubrick's creepy red bathroom in The Shining. Eagle-eyed fans of The Duel may notice the grey file cabinet from its hospital scene, which will be repurposed for this new work with a coat of flamingo paint. Stay tuned for more mini updates as this room comes together!
art
Empty Skies // official poster
What a stimulating challenge to design a film poster for another filmmaker's vision! Many thanks to directors Wenting Deng Fisher & Luke Fisher for their guidance and faith in my abilities. The sumptuously shot and heartbreaking short, Empty Skies, coming soon!
Feathers
Not falling asleep by your usual bedtime is a bit like missing your bus home when it's really late at night. All you can do is wait until you're tired again. By that time, opportunities for sleep (much like the buses) only come about an hour or so apart. That is, if they're still running at all. So you just have to lie there and wait until the feeling takes you again. Perhaps you try to busy your mind, tricking it into thinking it's more tired than it really is: "Draw some feathers," you command. "Now open Photoshop." And you do. And still, you wait. Because you already missed your bus.
"Mommie Dearest" Criterion Collection concept art
Learn to love yourself / Before loving someone else
Last year, I began compiling a sticky note on my desktop - a list of ideas for drawings that I've been meaning to complete. The above, "Learn to love yourself before loving someone else," is my first crack at the list. More to come, as I keep chipping away.
Portrait of Gustav Mahler
Designing artwork for the USC Thornton School of Music affords me many opportunities to re-work classic portraits of equally classical composers. Gustav Mahler, featured above, was a late-Romantic composer whose works are still strikingly modern by today's standards. In service of this, I re-interpreted a profile etching of Mahler by portraitist Emil Orlik in the style of the great Milton Glaser, similar to his Bob Dylan portrait in the 1970s.
2018 Bird City Comedy Festival
Since its inception in 2016, The Bird City Comedy Festival in Phoenix, Arizona has blossomed into a premiere destination for some of the best voices in comedy, improv storytelling & sketch to stretch their wings in the Valley of the Sun. This year, founder and friend Genevieve Rice has trusted me to brand her event, as per our little friend above us. Be on the look-out this spring for apparel and merchandise, as I will undoubtedly by updating this blog with photos of comedians as ersatz fashion models slaying this graphic tee.
"Everytime" by Boy Pablo
I've been experimenting with making cut-and-paste collages from my own illustrations, scrambling them in order to find new shapes or meanings. Music usually keeps me company while I do this, and one of the most delightful songs to do so last year was Boy Pablo's "Everytime." The music video is a delight, sun-dappled friends playing together on a dock in Norway. As the guitars swell and ring, you can almost feel the brisk of the afternoon by the water and the joy shared by all the musicians. Unexpected and effervescent, I highly recommend giving it a listen.
Face study with green waves
Ticonderoga
Last night I spilled some watercolor and inadvertently created a new state named "Ticonderoga," after the No. 2 Ticonderoga-brand pencil that rested against my desktop lamp. It's a brave new world, and its robust fishing economy is generously fed by three lakes that lap against its magenta shores: Lake Eugene to the north, and Lakes Dixon and Avery, which hug its southern border. Its capital, Moto City, is famous for its wild-caught Cadmium sandwiches, which can be enjoyed along the boardwalks during the Moto Music Festival come mid-November. Cooled by the balmy winds sweeping off Lake Avery at autumn's end, its boardwalks can be heard clattering with the shoes of college kids, some hand in hand, considering the wide expanse of ocean that rolls into the horizon. Last year when Aimee Mann played, the sound of her guitar seemed to skip across the surface of the water like a polished stone, similar to the one Casey, a student home from Cape Cobra, smoothed in her left hand. "u home for txgiving?" texted Brian, her (ex) co-worker from the office supply store she worked at freshman year before she transferred schools. She put her phone back in her pocket. Talking to Brian was like pulling on a loose thread, not unlike the one that swung from the back of her olive green sweater. She knew better than to reply, not wanting for handfuls of loose yarn and quick goodbyes in the morning of his studio apartment. Probably the same one he had since the last time she saw him. "I Can't Help You Anymore" began to play down the pier. Looks like Aimee was invited back this year. This song always reminded her of closing the office supply store late at night after her boss had left, when she could play whatever she wanted and sing as loud as she possibly could. Some nights she would scream and try to shake the stacks of 28 lb. carbon white like leaves. Her pocket vibrated. Probably Brian. Again. As the band continued to play, Casey turned to face the water and rubbed the stone in her left hand, warming it up, waiting for the right moment to let it go. If it wasn't for her mother trying to reach her, she'd throw her phone instead, and wait for it to skip or sink.
New sign
Piano #2
Sometimes, time should escape you.
Blue & Blonde with Thousands of Pink Dots
Control Room
Thomas Demand is known for making photographs of three-dimensional models that look like real images of rooms and other spaces. Art critic Michael Kimmelman writes of his work: "the reconstructions were meant to be close to, but never perfectly realistic, so that the gap between truth and fiction would always subtly show."
Special thanks to my friend Alexandra for sharing his work with me on one of our computers at work when it wasn't being used as a cash register.
I've just found my new Internet fascination for the next few weeks.
Rozalina Burkova
"Road Trip" by Rozalina Burkova
Spilled Milk: Issue Five
Happy New Week
Now that the holiday detritus has finally settled after the slow rain of confetti that was December, the first week of January has come like a great broom to sweep it all to the side to make room for new work to be done in this new year of ours.
One such new piece of work is the image above. I was fortunate to be asked by Vidiots Foundation of Santa Monica to create their end-of-the-year postcard as a way of thanking their donors to their successful Indiegogo campaign. Initiated to raise funds for their efforts to promote the cinematic arts through preservation, education and community engagement through public screenings, I felt a strong connection to their mission. I was raised on VHS, and the memories I have of watching tapes with my family still warms my heart when I think about it.
I normally don't celebrate the New Year. I didn't really feel the need for it this time around, added to fact that the construct of time seems more and more arbitrary to me the older I get. Or maybe I'm just grumpy because I have a little bit of a cold right now. But staring at this mirrorball VHS tape suspended above a sherbet sunset in colored pencil, I find myself reflecting on 2016, and how thankful I was to have family & friends to get my through it. On Christmas Eve, my mom, sister, brother-in-law & I all watched Scrooged. And although it wasn't on VHS like last time, this time, we were together.
As we head into this new year of ours, and if I may offer one piece of unsolicited advice that hopefully won't sound too cloying, it's this: Focus on creating as much happiness as you can for yourself and those you love. Don't base your idea happiness or success on someone else's life. That's their journey, sacred to only them. You'll never follow the same path they do, and you'll never end up being them in the end anyway. Most importantly, they'll never be you. There will never be another you, so be the best version of you that you can be. If you're not where you want to be, then start moving and keep it up. Each step forward counts, regardless of the size.
Happy new year.
Desktop Background of the Month
For every month to come in 2017, I will be releasing a "Desktop Background of the Month," an original piece of art to splash across your desktop or laptop computer if you so choose. An aperitief to this new endeavor is the image you see above. I was in a "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" kind-of-a-mood, but with a larger bristle. And less people.
Click on the link above in the navigation tab to download yours today!
"Memory" by Amelia Chen
Written & Directed by Amelia Chen http://www.ameliachen.net/