WOOT SHIRT: SPRING

Derby.

INTERVIEW: BESTLOSERS.COM

I was interviewed by BestLosers.com, a website that tracks Shirt.woot activity.

INTERVIEW

WOOT SHIRT: HOW DO THEY WORK?

How Wack-a-Mole works.

WOOT SHIRT: EARTH DAY

A re-imagining of The Lorax by Dr. Seuss:

WOOT SHIRT: CLASSIC LIT MASHUP

Noah's Ark meets giant squid from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea:
3rd place/766 votes - PRINTED!! :D

The Tell-Tale Heart of Darkness:
9th place/442 votes

I was really happy with both of these. My first time in the fog (top nine) and both made it in, and my first printing!

WOOT SHIRT: CLASSIC COMICS STYLE

Derby.

This design was awarded an Honorable Mention and Best Loser Award.

DHouse87 nominated me for the Best Loser, stating:

"SERIOUSLY! All of the veteran woot artists have commented on this shirt, not to mention the fact that it's perfectly on style and the artist followed the theme. I've been following this artist since his entry on shirt.woot over a month ago and he's had some stellar designs that are consistently of high quality."

WOOT SHIRT: THE LETTER S

WOOT SHIRT: MADNESS

My third shirt.woot derby.

For the first one I began with the strange flower and pretty much scribbled mindlessly over it, thinking about frustration. The whale murdering the giant squid was inspired by playing Endless Ocean 2 for the Wii, and thinking about how animals kill each other but we don't see that as "madness", it is part of the natural order and we assume non-human animals are morally neutral.

WOOT SHIRT: BAND NAMES

My second shirt.woot entry. Challenge was based on band names.

WOOT SHIRT: RUB FOR LUCK

My first attempt at designing a t-shirt for shirt.woot!

The weekly theme was "luck". I thought about how people rub things for luck, like the Budai (Fat Buddha) belly and rabbits' feet. And I thought it would be cute on a shirt, and would invite people to come up and rub you.

FROG

My mom is a teacher and she needed this for her class.

MFA SHOW

For my MFA thesis show, I designed a calendar that explores same-sex affection throughout history.

This is what the pieces looked like in the gallery. As you can see they were very large (60" tall), and the information was featured below the image. I had to rearrange the compositions in order to sell the calendar through DeviantArt's print service, which uses a rectangular format rather than a square:

I chose the calendar format for several reasons, not least of which is that the calendar is one of the most ubiquitous art forms on the planet. In contrast, LGBT people are often cast as the abnormal, subversive or abject "Other", even (or especially) in academic "queer theory" discourse. This work stands to correct that, inasmuch as homosexuality is a normal variation of human sexuality, and gay people have always existed and contributed to society. At the same time, this work intentionally over-corrects and almost takes on the form of hero worship, in its focus on great historical figures, and compositions and poses that echo those of conventional romantic images found in romance novels, movie posters and storybook fairy tales.

All of these depictions are based on real people (with the possible exception of David and Jonathan who may have been legendary). Most of these historical figures are widely accepted to have been homosexual or bisexual. Some of them, such as Saints Sergius and Bacchus, are known for their unusual closeness, but scholars disagree on whether or not they were romantically involved. History isn't an exact science, and all too often truths are hidden or rewritten after the fact by people who wish to erase gay people from history.

This project wasn't about proving without a doubt whether or not a certain historical figure was gay; but rather exploring same-sex affection when enough evidence existed to at least consider it a reasonable possibility. Some scholars are quick to dismiss the love between men like David and Jonathan as merely "platonic", but ask yourself, if the love between a man and woman were described with as much passion and endearment, would anyone doubt that they may have been romantically involved?

I invite you to ponder these issues, as well as appreciate the depth and breadth of same-sex affection among human beings. Homosexuality has existed in all human cultures throughout time; and men who love men have stood among those who have made the greatest contributions to human civilization.

This is an unused image that didn't make it into the final project. The story here was of Kukai, the legendary monk who supposedly brought homosexuality to Japan:

CARNIVAL RIDES

I love carnival rides and I've always wanted to use them in art. Here I recreated some using Illustrator.

I shelved this project to work on my MFA show but I might return to it.

3D MODELING AND ANIMATION

This was my final project for a course I took on Autodesk Maya. I was reading a lot about biological evolution at the time, and the influence is obvious.

Static work from this class:

MARCH MADNESS

An ad poster I made for a video game store I was working at. It gave me a chance to reuse a retro video game font I had created for a school project. The font was based on the video game Rygar; I faithfully recreated it using a glyph editing software, and ended up with a complete font. I had also created fonts based on Final Fantasy, Castlevania II and The Legend of Zelda.

ENKIDUDE LOGO

A variation of my current personal logo. The design is based on the character Enkidu, from my favorite myth, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

I'M AN AFRICAN APE AND SO ARE YOU

A bit of graphic design I did for a digital printmaking class.

I was watching a lot of on-line lectures about biology, and I was amused at one in which Richard Dawkins told someone else "I'm an African ape", referring to human taxonomy.

SELF PORTRAIT

A self portrait for professional use. This was a digital photograph that I altered in very subtle ways using Photoshop. The most dramatic change was that I had not shaved this day. I digitally removed the hair on my neck and cleaned up my beard. There are other changes that are not detectable, which of course is the point!

MARRIAGE IN THE BIBLE

I was annoyed that the opponents of marriage equality often claim "marriage has always been between one man and one woman". Of course this isn't true. Marriage has evolved over time, has differed across cultures, and conversely, many cultures have tolerated or formalized same-sex unions to various degrees. It isn't even true in the context of the Bible. The Christian Bible depicts several types of marriage arrangements, and none of them resemble modern marriage. This information was taken from religioustolerance.org, which thoroughly delves into social issues from all angles, and is an indispensable resource for those interested in any issue relating to religion.

EDIT: This is getting more attention right now, and now I'm getting some truly dumb hate mail reprimanding me (I am an adult, people, not a child), because, they claim, marriage customs had changed by the time the New Testament was written, and the New Testament is what's important.

Now, forget for a second that that's only one interpretation. Yes, plenty of Christians have not just tossed out the whole Old Testament like it doesn't matter, and there are rather serious theological problems that arise when you attempt to do that: namely, Jesus becomes pointless since he was supposed to fulfill Old Testament prophecies and redeem humans for our "original sin", and you just tossed those things out as well, so now he's just a guy saying stuff; and your god Yawheh, rather than an eternal being, looks like a petty deity who changes his mind about everything once in a while on some PRETTY important moral issues. Slavery? Child marriage? Animal sacrifice? Stoning gays to death? Oh, those things are totally fine... up to a certain point in history! Then I shall decree that it is no longer so! Even though I already let a bunch of people and animals get hurt by those things for centuries. Um... what??).

Not to mention when we are talking about the Biblical world we are really only talking about a very specific handful of people and cultures the Bible is focused on; and the rest of the world had thousands of other cultures, and they had their own marriage customs, and there are thousands of religions on this planet other than Christianity; and in America we live in a diverse, *secular* nation that guarantees religious freedom...

Forget all that. Never mind how utterly tiny these people's worldview is. They are mad at me because, they say, marriage changed... ***CHANGED***.

Changed. It changed.

Way. To. Miss. The. Point.

MOUTH

MARIO AND YOSHI

THEY FIGHT

This piece was a commentary on the inherent tension between the Abrahamic religions and gay civil rights. I addressed the issue in an irreverent and humorous way.

Digital illustration, shown in Third Gear graduate art review, 7th Floor Gallery, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY

This piece was in a group show titled, simply, 2D, at the Project Lodge in Madison. It is an illustration that dramatizes the scientific method and its superiority to irrational methods of understanding the world.

Absolute Certainty (digital painting, 16 x 20)

Unlike mathematics and logic, the natural sciences build theories around facts and evidence; they cannot and do not attempt to prove assertions with 100% accuracy. Hence, "absolute certainty" hovers above both towers and beyond the scope of the natural sciences.

TINGLE GETS A FAERIE

I created this fan art in appreciation of one of my favorite blogs. The character is from the popular Legend of Zelda series of video games.

Tingle Gets a Faerie (20 x 16 digital painting, 2008)

The blog in question published the piece, which you can see here.

THIS IS NOT PAINTING

I was asked to participate in this show by a fellow grad student, Paul Baker Prindle. He organized the event and planned it to take place in the (then unoccupied) UW-Madison Sterling Hall physics building. The pieces featured images mined from my experiences as a gay white male growing up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin.

Horned One (20 x 16 digital painting, 2008)

Evolution (20 x 16 digital painting, 2008)

Trinity - Left (16 x 16 digital painting, 2008)

Trinity - Center (16 x 16 digital painting, 2008)

Trinity - Right (16 x 16 digital painting, 2008)

Totem (16 x 20 digital painting, 2008)

*Features partial list of non-human animals known to exhibit homosexual behavior

Caryatid (12 x 16 digital painting, 2008)