The New World

- it is a rare occurrence in which I receive comped copies of my work from companies. And an even rarer occurrence in which I am happy with the out come. John over at Type Records sent these my way the other day. There is something about seeing my work printed nicely on something tangible like a 12" record that really makes me want to keep pushing harder. I never get the same feeling when I see something I have done printed in a magazine or something along those lines.

- John also had asked if I would be able to re-design the cover for an album he is re-releasing. The original fit the album so well, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to hit the same key as whomever did the original cover.

I knew I wanted to go with a landscape, but something that would fit the mood and the title of the album. Originally I had thought I wanted to do some sort of muted desert landscape, but that fell flat on its face. But I then realized that this was my opportunity to do a incredibly items Icelandic landscape...Glaciers and lichen and all. It had been sometime since I had done a landscape (or finished one for that matter), but I think it ended up pretty successful in the end. If I could spend the rest of my life doing covers for avant garde ambient albums, I would do so.

- Since Rachel and I have moved to Missouri, we find ourselves at home a lot of the time. When the most exciting place to have a nice dinner is applebee's, and when the closest thing to friends we can find are drunks or cocaine addicts...we tend to just not go out. But because of this, we have been renting a lot of movies, which has been a blessing in disguise for my artistic slump. We have watched a lot of crap, but also a lot of really nice movies. Most recently we watched "Down In The Valley" and "The New World".

I wish I could somehow combine the themes, ideas and visuals out of these two movies into the way I work (or the way I live, really). Or hell, I would give anything just to be able to draw the way that The New World looks.

- I have been doing a lot of t-shirt style designs...so hopefully with that, my new love of screen captures, and some very large pinecones I bought the other day, I will be able to make a significant change in something. Somewhere, something has got to change.