Potato Doves

There's a few prints up this week.

Had Thanksgiving over at Dokebi Bar. My friend Brian cut open this potato to reveal what appears to be two tater doves in air pocket form. I find this way cooler than any random Virgin Mary's out there and was happy to be a witness... Not to make God angry by worshiping (or auctioning) any false idols.
We ate them.
-esao

-Prints coming up.

-This Thursday, December 11, I'll be putting my print store back up with new stuff.

-I will have a mailing list set up in the next day or two.

-Am currently responding to neglected emails....I know I know and I'm sorry.

-Flyer I did.

-esao

-Vertigo

click image for a close up...will open in a new window.
This is my second cover for House of Mystery. No computer work this time, just a painting on wood.

My friend Ryan has a cute one minute video about fear that he's entered in a contest over at www.amctv.com. Click HERE to see it and vote.
-esao

-Halloween

Dodging lions and waisting time...

"thirty" 24"x24" oil on wood

I'm headed over to Rome for a show this Friday at Dorothy Circus Gallery who I'll be showing along side with my good pal Tara Mcpherson and the super rad Travis Louie


click on the flyer for more info and some additional images.

In a world of Hipster Zombies and Sexy Vampire Maids I did a poster for my friends at Dokebi.

This was a nice change of pace to do some straight up illustration work using an ink drawing scanned and computer colored.

Ps. If you live in Rome, please come to the opening and say hi, i don't know anybody.
-esao

-Dear Science

Soybeans 5th birthday


The Tv On The Radio guys are touring around and I did some simple 2 color shirts for them.

The title of their new Album is Dear Science so I drew up this fish.
I have no idea what color schemes they used, these's were what I gave them.
Here's another one.


I've officially realized I am not a blogger. For no reason spending 15 minutes resizing some photos and typing some text takes me ages.

My September was spent like this...

courtesy of Tom
esao.

-Stress Balls

I got behind on posts...

In a group show at Last Rites Gallery. Opening Sept 6th, 7-11pm.
551 W. 33rd St. NYC.

Here is the icky piece that I have in it.

"Brood" 16"x16" oil on wood.

I'm going to be in Portland, Oregon for a while visiting my pals Farel Dalrymple and Zachary Baldus and also to take time to vegetate, do some sketchbooking, observe foliage, and do some apartment hunting. I'll be back in NYC for the opening.

Also my friend's opened a vintage clothing store in Brooklyn and I did a sign up for them.

Its a toony version of Ana Karina in that dance scene from Jean-Luc Godard's "Band of Outsiders"

Dolly G's Vintage
320 Graham Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
esao.

-Shop is back.

5 new prints and whats left over from before.
esao.

-Scary Stuff

DC Comics recently brought back the title House of Mystery which started back in the 1950's. Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges are the writers for it. I did a cover for issue 5 and here is the sketch.



Oil on wood 20"x30". The painting came out pretty dark and needed to make it a bit more readable.
I had to convince myself that using the computer to make additions/corrections were perfectly ok. What is published is the final piece, not the actual painting...
So here it is with some color/contrast voodoo.

Its my first cover in the comic cover world and its really intimidating following up issues done by Sam Weber and with the writers who do Fables, featuring James Jean's covers.

Big-Ass shoes to fill.


A cat-bat thing.

Other scary news.
I noticed I have a crease in my earlobe. Went to the doctor but he didn't really care too much about it as my other vitals seemed ok.
If you click HERE or HERE or do any other research on earlobe creases. You'll see why I'm suddenly working on being a health freak.
esao.

-July Show

I have a spread in the upcoming issue #8 of Hi-Fructose Magazine.

(this issue here with Camille Rose Garcia on the cover)

To celebrate the 3rd anniversary of this wonderful magazine, they are putting on a group show at Copro Nason Gallery in Santa Monica, CA to premiere the issue. Saturday, July 12. I have a new little piece in it.
esao.

-Voyeurism Please

Saw this strange tree on the West Side Highway, I think its natural because even up to the tips of the branches had eye scars.


All I've been doing is working in my new sketchbook the past few weeks and not dealing with anything so I thought I'd share a few pages. Its also like a diary(thats why the scan's aren't huge and too readable)

A doodle of a cast I bought at Evolution years ago with an eye mask.


The speech bubbles say it all. Drawn while in Seattle.


Emo ramblings and a sticker Fuco gave me.


Birthday sketch of a painting I'm just about done with.


Finger painting with some pen work.


Coffee shop patio by my house and friend Rebek drawn from memory.


Sleeping Soybean, Dokebi bar, and plans for my future.
I'm back to doing work and will be catching up on e-mails.
-esao.

-Moderation

Remember that Lie I said in my first blog post about posting things every week? The past several weeks I've been wanting to redesign my site, post new work, new projects, put the store back up, and reinvent my web presence all over again in one big post. Obviously not happening as planned.

Did a back drop for Circa Survive's current tour. Here it is in action via someone's Flickr.


Its a previous painting I did which you can see in the painting section. I screwed around in Photoshop and built the whole left side by cutting and pasting bits of the house for a more centered composition.
Like so.

Here's a desktop version so you can point out my weak Photoshop skills.

Realizing that consistency is the best approach to a ding dang blog, I will be posting more yet not so lengthy entries.
RIP George Carlin.
esao.

-I'm Back.

Opening May 9th at Roq la Rue Gallery in Seattle, WA.
Two person show with myself and the beautiful works of Fuco Ueda.
Lots of previously unseen new stuff, I'll share these two.

"Virile Influenza" 18"x24" oil on wood.


Detail.

And here's another one from the show.

"Seaqueen" 20"x24" oil on wood.


Sorry, no detail on the fire crotch.

The Paypal thing finally got resolved last week. Got a credit card and bought my first couch to sit and reflect upon. I feel all grown up now. Thanks. I'll have my store back up with some new stuff after I get back from Seattle.

Moving on.....
This is so great. When I was living in Arizona I met Andrew Gosselin who shot this video. I'm 16-17 years old in it. The other guy actually skating at the end of the clip is Mike Kearny. For that small group of teenagers that ever bought a "Handboard"(its an upscale version of a fingerboard) Its origins began in my livingroom.

1995

Here's the history of it.
I used to toss tv remotes in my hand to mimic skateboard tricks while sitting around. Guess I was 15. Then I took a Craypa box, put aluminum wire to bend up the sides and placed griptape on it. A few days later I made the first prototype with cardboard scaled down in centimeters as opposed to inches with cloths hanger wire slid into the corrugation to keep its form. I used a Bic pen, rubber bands, truck bushings and skate bearings taped together as the trucks and wheels.
From this me and my friend Erik Ellington started making them together and gradually modified them until they evolved into a really durable and fun toy to waste time on rainy days.

A silly photo of us as teens. (sorry Erik)


So years later I had the opportunity to make a plastic one in a 3d design class at SVA with the generous help from my teacher Jimmy DiResta. Erik being prominent in the skateboard industry had the right connections to eventually get it on the shelves of toy stores, though I think they are hard to find nowadays.
I miss playing with them.

Here's the show info. If interested contact Kirsten at
kirsten(at)roqlarue(dot)com
Roq la Rue Gallery
2312 2nd Ave.
Seattle, WA 98121
206-374-8977

Esao Andrews and Fuco Ueda
Show opens Friday May 9th 6-9pm
runs through June 7th.

See you there.

Oh yeah, one of my favorite artists Tom Herpich has a regularly updated blog. Awesome!
-esao

-Being American

Yeah, I haven't been updating. Bigger things to deal with as of late. If you use PayPal and are of the bohemian type that doesn't own credit cards, but just uses a bank account with debit. Heed my tale.

I've been using PayPal for years. Two months ago I received a message from PayPal that my account was chosen for safety measures that I verify my Social Security Number. Easy enough, I was born here and pay taxes every year.

Several weeks of faxing and phone calling and nobody being able to tell me why my SSN couldn't not be verified, eventually it became understandable...

The catch is, they exclusively use the credit bureau Experian to verify SSN's and not the Social Security Administration. Being a short-sighted Luddite, I've never owned a credit card and just like to pay for things I can afford so I don't get pressured into debt. Because I have no credit history, I can not verify my SSN and the only way to talk to someone from Experian is if I order a credit report, which I can not because I don't have a credit history. A conundrum.

The animation below show's the progress I've been making the past two months.

Fig.1 My right leg which stands for PayPal's Resolution Center.
Fig.2 My left leg represents Experian, TransUnion, Equafax, SS Admin etc..
Fig.3 Symbolizes the typical bureaucratic fashion I've been going through to prove that my Social Security Number is indeed real even though I don't use a credit card.

At this point, my account has been frozen, and is pending permanent deletion with five figures in it.
It seems to be out of PayPal's control and according to complaints on www.consumeraffairs.com, Experian pretty much doesn't handle problems well either. I'm still waiting for a response for them to verify my information they requested....Its troublesome because I have no control over this.

A sympathetic operator at Equifax(another credit bureau) told me that I should go to some bank and get a 'secured' credit card. With no way around it, I walked into Washington Mutual, and arranged for my first credit card. So when it arrives next week, I'm going to purchase some groceries to christen my credit record into existence (I mean when I pay the balance at the end of the month.) Then I will have the opportunity to patriotically join the ranks of the millions of proud Americans that cherish the one thing we all hold dearly: Credit debt. At least that is what I'm hoping will happen.

I know, I know: Its about time I started building credit anyways. But I don't think its right for PayPal to bully someone into it the credit system when they themselves do not offer loans etc..their business is just charging service fee's for making safe internet transactions. Doesn't seem legal or fair to me.

Unfortunately I underestimated how strangely un-resolvable this would be. With the majority of my entire money earnings being held ransom for months for no good reason, nor being able to make any further online income, my savings is now depleted enough so I can't pay my taxes in full, along with anything else. No new income + holding hostage my current money + mounting penalties, late fee's, maybe I could lose my apt and everything else if this keeps up. By the time Experian decides to resolve my case, I'll probably have acquired enough debt to HAVE to use a credit card till I can catch up again.

Thanks PayPal.

I'll put some art stuff up soon. I'm too irritated right now.
esao.

-Transitions.

Last week I lost my DSL service and haven't had internet until now. You get what you pay for I suppose. Now that its back in the form of broadband with what appears to be around a billion TV channels. I guess its going to be a lot harder to find time to continue this blog with the time-consuming demands of watching cable television.

I had this idea of a well with shoes hanging from where the bucket would be and doodled it, then lost it. Just found it under a pile of papers just a moment ago. There's something nice about its dramatic guillotine-like stature.

Losing the initial doodle left a lot more room for re-interpretation when I revisited the idea. I added the owner of the shoes and the well just became a well and nothing more. Though the two sketches are similar in content and composition. I might come back later to do a portrait of a well based closely on the first sketch. No shoes though. Maybe a blade, maybe my old DSL modem, maybe a bucket full of all the diapers and discarded cigar tobacco that accumulates in my building's stairwell every day. I dunno.

Also, with no internet I was listening to Phillip Pullman's Dark Materials audio books again and can say that listening to them had an effect on the mood of the final piece.

"Untitled" 20"x24" oil on wood.
Ok, enough with this time wasting. I gotta go. "Big Momma's House 2" is on.
-esao.

-Inspired Procrastination pt.2

Everyone knows what pipe cleaners are. I went to two hardware store and all I was shown was sandpaper, coiled pipe snakes, and something that looked like a bbq grill brush. When I told them its the thin braided wires covered in fuzz that kids have adopted to make craft projects, they had no idea. Same with the Pharmacy and 99¢ store. No luck at the pipe/bong shop either, they weren't open on a Tuesday at noon, natch.

Necessity is the mother of invention as they say. I wanted to make a birthday gift while I was spending my day waiting for USPS and with no pipe cleaners I came up with this...

The postman didn't even show up that day. The next day they came so the prints are shipped and those that bought them should be receiving them any day now. As for foreign orders, they are also shipped.

I apologize for any brown spots on envelopes sent out this week. I didn't realize what happened till it was too late.

Paper: friend and foe.

Also, friends Tom Prior, John Peters, and Ian Baguskas have a really top notch exhibition of photographs at Crane Arts in Philadelphia. If you live there, go see it. They are wonderful to see blown up.

I'm not really sure how many people actually read the stuff that doesn't have to do with my paintings, but having a blog to post other stuff is becoming fun for me. Tomer once mentioned the computer as 'The Great Indoors'.
Its true.
-esao.

-Going Postal.

I am genuinely thankful for the response to the new prints I put up a week and a half ago. Thanks to everyone for there support, I'm doing my best, and am eager to get them out of my studio area.

Mission accomplished...sort of.

It's many days after New Years. There was a resolution I had for 2008. It was to get back in touch with people from my past and keep up with those in the present, I've had a real hard time writing or calling back people in recent years. All it takes is a moment to put the effort in. It might be living in NYC so long where there's so many people around, everything is convenient, expensive and fast paced. Friends come and go. It makes it easy to become self-involved and easy to put off the commitments towards others to the point of routine. Maybe I've always been like this or I've have recently grown this irrational shell towards people. I've had a few friends respond negatively to my lack of communication and rightly feel like shitballs. 2008 is the time to make amends and contact old friends and family.

Cheers to nostalgia.

I found some old comic strips in a photo album I did when I was 14 years old.
Remember those Safari Cards that your parents had when you were a kid? I still have a thousand of them. Looking at the first panel I know I used one of those cards for reference for this one below.


Here's another one done the same week thats just as light hearted.
The date says 12/17/92.
Notice the generic "comic hero hand" pose in the last panel.
-esao

-Post Show Post

6 new prints are up in the store. yay!
7 new paintings from my recent show are in the painting section, though a few have been shown earlier on this blog.

The Show at Jonathan Levine Gallery went great. Thanks for everyone that came.
Its February 14th day of Love and other obligated hoopla.


I did a quick sketch while working on the computer.

After I started painting it, it seemed unfinished so I added the kids you see below. note: I used red Saral Transfer paper to trace the drawing to the painting above.

A few shrubs in the foreground and some tightening up...

"Sweet Wilderness" 16"x19" oil on wood.
-Esao