I am gigantic.

A dinosaur skeleton

buried in soft soil.

artifacts, 2010.

perfect artifacts, broken artifacts, and crude artifacts. iowa's got a rich history.

eagle scout.

1. When I saw this handsome bird I pulled over and was delighted to see a lot of eagle activity by the Des Moines River.

2. some nice in flight action.

3. A little blurry but fuckin' majestic.

4. An immature bald eagle (in back) and an adult eagle stand on chunks of ice. I feel like there should be penguins...although there was a pelican swimming around.

friday haiku time

it snowed two inches
shoveling's not my forte
it'll turn to ice.

Peter Miller Gallery, represent.

Caleb Weintrab

Rumspringer, Humdinger.
The Leisure Class...off wall, and Out on a Limb.

Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago.

Look this guy up. His work is decadent.

sorry for grossing you out.

I can't believe I haven't posted this photograph yet. I took it about a year ago. Its a dead deer with a dead possum inside the dead deer's abdominal cavity. Just like a tur-duck-en! How did it get there?

Three Guesses

1. The possum was eating from the deer carcass when, suddenly, the carcass was hit by a drunk driver...instantly killing the possum while giving him a free dead deer coffin.

2. The possum was eating intestines and died of old age.

3. A deer ate a possum for some reason and died when the possum tried to tear its way out. Just like in Aliens.

Isn't nature beautiful?

Chicago!

Bridgeport, Chicago. If you take a photo of this church all of the locals call you a tourist. So I guess I'm a tourist.Power of Selection III, Western Exhibitions Gallery. Chicago, IL. Curated by Ryan Travis Christan. http://www.westernexhibitions.com/

The Mexican fine Arts Museum. Pilsen, Chicago. Virginia and I got lucky, it was the Day of the Dead exhibit, many fine offrendas for us to admire.

Chinatown, Chicago. These fish scared me. They were horrifying.

i like this drawing.

8 X 10, archival pen on bristol

woodblock.

Pronghorn. 4 color reduction woodcut. 2007

adopt a jarbaby.

The Natural History Museum (in Lawrence, KS) figured out an interesting way to make some money... an adopt a specimen program! Just think, I could have adopted this creepy jar baby. This thing gives me nightmares. He appears to be smiling.

hotels.

We got super drunk in Lawrence, Kansas. I'm a semi-responsible drunk and figured it wasn't a good idea to drive my beat-ass Honda around town. The closest hotel was called the Eldridge. Here's the fancy website

http://www.eldridgehotel.com/.

It was pretty awesome even though I spent most of the night throwing up into a really nice toilet. When we stayed in Missouri we were frugal. I even got to do my hotel trick! Here it is...



1. Cheap hotels usually have cheap, framed art to hide stains. Try taking the art off the wall. If the
frame comes off the wall...you're in business.


2. Using a common Sharpie, make a fantastic drawing. I made a triceratops.

3. Place the frame back on the wall. You've made a SECRET masterpiece.

I do this at almost every hotel I stay at but not the Eldridge, that place was fancy enough to know that people like me do shit like this...their frames were screwed onto their immaculatly whitewalls.

KANSAS!

holy hell, what a blur of a trip. can't tell you about it yet but here's a fun tidbit, I'm pretty sure I stopped someone from burning down a garage!

Going to Kansas.

Old girl, Honda, hit her 200,000 mile mark a few weeks ago. I was on my way to Peoria. Today, she'll have a new milestone in her car-life. She's about to go to Kansas! Time to get an oil change!

I've never been to Kansas. I was in Kansas City, Missouri (good barbecue?)...I could have easily scooted over to Kansas and said,

"Hey, Kansas." quickly followed by,

"See ya, Kansas!"

In short, I'm excited about checking another item off my bucket list. Morgan Freeman would be proud. And did anyone else notice how fuckin' dusty my car is? This photograph is embarrassing.

a trip to Chicago.

1. A dapper brick wall.

2. This graffiti is positive!

a quickie.

quick bird poem.


When I was a younger kid
The age of twenty three,
I’d throw some seeds on piles of snow
And birds would sing to me.

Their colors popped on white, white ground
and Cardinals looked blood red.
I watched some blue jays fight for food
To get their bellies fed.

Hateball.

covered in fur.

I'm not sure if I just had an epiphany...lemme explain.

I've had trouble painting since leaving graduate school. I haven't stopped making art. I've sketched prolifically and have made about eight paintings. Six of those paintings made their way to the fire pit. They sucked balls.

The reason and epiphany? I was trying to make work that looked like my last body of work and I don't think I can (or need to) recreate what I did for my thesis show. The only two paintings I've liked are the ones that can't relate to my last body of work.

Which lead me to the conclusion, its time to make some new shit.

the things i find are growing.

monsters!

My dog says "Hi"

"hello!"

big ol' catfish.

Study for a linoleum relief print. 2010

4-color suicide reduction woodblock print! 2007.

puff duck.

This duck has a better hairdo the most people I know.

bucks and does.

Ringer. 2006

portrait of a trophy buck, 2006

The best part about driving is trying not to hit deer. Around 2006 I became facinated with bucks and does. I never wanted to kill anything but these paintings are violent. I must have been angry back then.

Hot Foot Quiniela

hotfoot quiniela triple encore. 2006

The show at the Morpho Gallery went well. I got to see friends, buy some art, meet some new people, and drink beer at a spooky bar called BOBBI'S. Bobbi gave me a free beer before the show, she said I looked high strung. I liked that.

http://www.morphogallery.com/ check out the webby if you get bored.

Bandages and Patches.

Bandages and Patches, 2006


Matt: Member of Team Underpants (travel squad) since 2005.

I-80 Olfactory Bovine.

i-80 Olfactory Bovine. 2006.


I-80 always smelled like warm cow shit. We spent a lot of time on that road.

Series: I was for Awhile

Snap the Stings, Sucker. 2006

My friend, Grant, inspired me to look back at old work. Maybe I can gather some insight into why I'm having trouble painting.

I made this one during my hobo days of 2007. All I did was travel, crash on couches, and see the sights. Its from a series of paintings called, "I was for Awhile." Snap the Strings, Sucker is the first in a series of paintings about closely knit friends and the importence of travel.

I spent my "growing up" years in Peoria, IL. This piece is a tiny painted icon for a city that I've grown out of but is still deeply appreciated. Peoria...its been called a hole that hard to climb out of.

the painting was a BUST!

I'm dead in the water, boys. The painting is torn up and in the garbage can. Sorry guys, these things happen. At least it felt good to destroy something. I'm going to keep on trying until I get it...in the meantime you can check out this link from a show I was in a couple weeks ago.

http://vimeo.com/15250725

group show and confessional

Their Botched Migration. 2009. A piece featured in upcoming show.


I'd like to vent some frustruation. Painting is hard.

Pictures coming soon. In the meantime, check out

http://www.morphogallery.com/futureevents.htm

I'm in a three man show with David Sisk and Ian Sherwin. It opens on October 9th, 5-9pm. If you live in the greater Chicagoland area, stop by and we'll shake hands in a formal fashion.

goodbye summer birds.

a detailed ball of fish.

The Catfish ate the Shad. I ate the Catfish. Circles.

UPDATE! I figured out the tooth mystery.

http://www.ansp.org/museum/jefferson/otherFossils/equus.php

Thank goodness for the power of the interweb.

Also, the other tooth, the one I said was a normal horse tooth...that one is a fossil as well. YIKES!

Tooth Mystery!

On the left you'll see a horse tooth, it was found in a creek and it fell out of a dead horse's mouth at some point this century...

The tooth on the right... I don't know what kind of animal head it fell out of and it's bothering me. The molar is a behemoth at two inches across and two inches top to bottom. I think its from the Pleistocene.

I found the mystery molar in the same rocky creek Jimmy found the horse tooth.

white pelicans in iowa.

The white pelicans i photographed (der.) on a rock hunting excursion in Chillicothe, Iowa.
Half of a spear I found on the trip. Its about three inches long and was buried in mud. Made by the original natives of Iowa many, many years ago.

Mummichuggles is my hamster. She loves hostess snacks. But I don't let her fill her cheek-pouches. Obesity is already an epidemic.

Catfish ball!