My wife and I welcomed our baby girl, Susanna, on Thursday, August 7, 2008, at 2:09 am. She was 9lbs 1oz and 21.5in long. Both Mama and baby are doing fabulously!

Thanks to all of you who have written to congratulate us– I may or may not be able to get back to you all individually, but know that we hear you, and we appreciate your support!

Much love,
David

Teh awesoem radio show, This American Life, posted a t-shirt contest a few weeks ago, and last night the muse visited, so I drew up this entry. See it on cream as well, below.

Back to basics comic meme

Draw a ten panel comic about what you were doing ten years ago. Put pen straight to paper - no pencil, no computer, no planning, no starting again if you make a mistake. Simply draw, scan, publish. Tag some people who you’d like to see do the meme too. Oh and if you want to do it even if you haven’t been tagged you are most welcome!

So, here’s me 10 years ago:

(Click for larger/legible version)

If you’re listening, I tag John, Adam, Elio, and Meg to do their version. And don’t feel the need to wait to be tagged (I wasn’t after all.) Anyone else going to bring it?

(via BB)

I was pleasantly surprised this afternoon to find a yard sign I designed used as an example on the Walker Art Center’s blog. The sign is for a project here in the Twin Cities to get some citizen voices heard during the Republican National Convention in St. Paul this year. I haven’t lived in St. Paul for very long, but even I know that this is a Democratic town (the Minnesota Democratic party is called the DFL for Democrat Farm Labor, and St. Paul is historically a strong labor town)– it’s no wonder they’re having trouble finding volunteers to work at the convention.

I’m not sure what will happen when the dude runs into the giant, but I’m thinking either it will be like that Indian (from India) story of the six blind men who run into an elephant, and one thinks it is like a tree, another thinks an elephant is like a wall, another thinks of a snake, etc., or it will end is horror and fear and lots of shouting. My money is on the latter.

For Illustration Friday

This is just a quick note to my brothers (and sisters, real and in solidarity) out there who loved Legos growing up in the 80’s. There is a tantalizing sequence of Lego sets starting around the one-third mark of the movie– beginning with the space sets and moving through the castle and pirate sets. That era pretty much covers my childhood obsession with Legos.

Pictured above is (one of?) the first space sets we had around the house, from which the coveted “LL928″ brick arrived. My brothers and I would always find a place of prominence for the “license plate” on the space ships we built. The back of the ship, when you built the set from the instructions, opened to release a small moon buggy. There are other gems and triggers for the memory in the photo gallery as well. I can smell the musty basement and feel the rug burns on my knuckles from swooping our creations around.

Nostalgia is such an insidious elixir! I will not buy more Legos until after my daughter (due any day now) is born!

(at Gizmodo, via BoingBoing)

The inimitable Frank Chimero has done it again! Frank decided that this Wednesday and all Wednesdays forward will be known as Webless Wednesdays, where we all unplug for a day and share our stories of limitless productivity on Thursday. I think I’ll join him– won’t you?

(via Coudal)

It’s been a while, and I’m slipping this one in just before the deadline, but here is my contribution to Illustration Friday for April 18th: Primitive.

The grates on the street are air vents for the subway tunnels. Whenever a train goes by, the pressure wave of air in front of the train shoots up through the grates and inflates the sculpture. It’s a brilliant and creative use of otherwise lost energy. I wish I had thought of it! (of course, the Twin Cities don’t have subways, so…)

This stuff immediately made me think of the work of my friend Ethan Murrow. Ethan was another Studio Art major in my class at Carleton, and it was always amazing to see what was going on in his corner of the studio. The first time I met him, he was carrying this huge canvas back into the building, and it was this gorgeous, raw landscape painting with straw and detritus clinging to the still-wet oil paint. He had an attachment to land and how humans interact with it, and this theme carried through his graduate work at UNC. I had never seen such work from my contemporaries, and I still think he is one of the best artists, formally and conceptually, that I know personally.

Ethan Murrow, “Off of Gaspé, ready to dive for the elusive whale”, graphite on paper 60″ x 96″, 2007.

Since that day, Ethan’s work has evolved and changed and developed into these huge graphite drawings on paper. They still hold onto that landscape aesthetic, at least formally offering humans interacting with the land. But now they also involve these brilliant convoluted stories of tragic experimenters, people whose only goal is to succeed, and who most often do anything but.

Installation view of “The Freshwater Narwhal Hoax” at Winston Wachter, Seattle, WA spring 2007

I won’t try to retell it because Ethan really does a much better job himself. He was recently interviewed for the Huffington Post regarding his current show called “Dust Mining” at Obsolete in Venice, California. I still haven’t gotten to see Ethan’s more recent work in-person, so if you are in LA, make sure you go see it for me and report back!

P.S. He doesn’t talk about it much, but Ethan is the grandson of renowned reporter Edward R. Murrow. I think I didn’t know that until several years after I met him. Ethan’s personal and artistic integrity is truly a tribute to his grandfather’s legacy.