CUT-OUTS FROM THE VAULT

Below are a few other miniature cut-outs that I’ve produced in the past. The first one is “BUST”, which was inspired by an incident I witnessed from my apartment window when I was in my mid-twenties. Although I originally designed and drew these characters over ten years ago, I still like their energy, and think, once the Temptations diorama is finished, I’ll redraw them and design a backdrop. Incidentally, all of these, including the Temptations diorama, will be on display at the Scott Eder Gallery in New York City, among other 2-D work, in January for the HOTWIRE #3 show. I’ll have more details about that soon.

I have several cut-out designs from around the time I produced the scene above: Others include two drinking buddies fighting in a back alley, Frank Sinatra, an old man (Retiree) working at a Union 76, a growling dog, on and on. In fact, two of those earlier designs – “Man Practicing Tai-Chi” and “Crazy Dude” – were revamped and included in the “American Standard Minature Cut-Out Collectible Series” of Abandoned Cars. Originally, the idea was to produce these as life-size lawn ornaments. I didn’t occur to me to make them as miniatures until relatively recently. Nevertheless, the designs for them have accumulated over the years. Although I like them as miniatures, I still want to see them all some day as life-size depictions, even the dioramas. I don’t see why they can’t exist as both. Below is a more recent one, about six years old: A bum I saw sleeping outside a bodega near where I lived in Crown Heights, Brooklyn:

Here’s a woman with her child I saw on an Upper West Side (around 105th St.) street corner:

Below is a busker named Ken, who I met in Geneva and was one of my buddy Jesse’s friends:

Here’s a young Chuck Berry. This is one of the miniature cut-outs from Abandoned Cars. You can still see the old Chuck Berry perform at a bar called Blueberry Hill (roughly once a month) very near where I live now in St Louis:

These are also fun to group together, as well as stand on their own:

JASON HAYWOOD CD COVER

This was one of those great freelance jobs that comes along once in awhile. Jason contacted me directly, after reading Abandoned Cars, and asked if I’d be interested in illustrating and designing his new upcoming CD. Jason’s a great Canadian singer/songwriter who’s music would be considered American Roots music, I guess – by that I mean it’s very steeped in traditional country music, without any of the psuedo-country elements that seem to fall under the category of “contemporary country music”. Jason and I also share a similar interest in exploring the Great American Mythological Drama, each in our own way. The best way to describe it is to give you a sample of Jason’s songs: go to his website at www.jasonhaywood.com or check out his last album on Itunes or at http://www.haysalerecords.com/store/store.php

This was the first time a client specifically asked that I use a character from one of my graphic stories: In this case, the freight hopper (i.e.:Me, at the age of twenty-four) in the SPIRIT trilogy. After getting to know his music, I quickly became a fan, and the rest of the project went well enough to establish the makings of a friendship between us. I highly encourage you to check out Jason’s new album, “A Thousand Miles Since Yesterday”. It’s very solid.

ST LOUIS INT’L FILM FEST 2009

Continuing with the theme of 1950’s B sci-fi movies first introduced earlier in the summer with the St Louis Filmmakers Showcase, here the UFO-like movie camera lands in presumably a field covered in snow. Meanwhile, some locals investigate matters. I couldn’t help breaking from the 50’s genre in one way: The boy wearing the Darth Vader mask. I couldn’t help myself. I guess he’s kind of a portrait of the artist at the age of seven. And the guy standing next to the little boy looks a lot like my grandpa Bert, who did everything he could to help me construct and engineer a time machine, but it never really worked very well.

So now that these commercial projects are completed, I can finally get back to comics….and thank God for that.

BEST OF ST LOUIS, “ARTS” REVISITED

Here’s the revised version of Arts & Entertainment. The art director decided – quite rightly – that the borders and frames of this piece needed to be more consistent with the other illustrations in the series. Hence the new hand-drawn typography and banner. I decided to leave the rest of the illustration frameless to emphasize the “vastness of space”, etc. I hope this’ll be the last time I upload a picture in this series. The love affair is over; the feeling’s gone. C’est la vie. Ooo-wa…ooo-wa…

BEST OF ST LOUIS, “BARS & CLUBS” REVISITED

Think you already saw a Bars & Clubs illustration for the series? You’re right: It was Santa Claus getting a knee in the gut in the parking lot of a strip club. The client decided to use that for a different purpose, so I had to come up with a revised illustration. This new idea came to me in a dream, actually. Anyway, this is the last in the series.

BEST OF ST LOUIS, “GOODS & SERVICES”

The client decided to go with colorized section seperators for this eight section project. All of the previous illustrations in this series are now in color, as well. The influence for this image came from, yet again, an old Dick Tracy newspaper daily form the 1930’s.

BEST OF ST LOUIS, “SPORTS & RECREATION”

Another in the Best of St Louis section pieces, SPORTS & RECREATION introduces Bad-Ass Burning Baby to the series. Burning Baby finds his origins in a poster I produced in collaboration with my friend Derek for a Halloween show being put on by a band called Dark Star Orchestra – a Grateful Dead cover band – in 2003. I thought that, for the Best of St Louis series, it would be interesting to pit the Burning Baby against a Kangaroo in some sort of boxing match – a sideshow event quite popular in the classic days of the traveling carnival. It seemed a great venue to show the full capacity of Burning baby’s menacing nature. To emphasize that point, I placed him in the famous pose first struck by Muhammad Ali over the body of a felled Sonny Liston in 1965. Below is the original Halloween poster in which Burning Baby made his debut:

I liked the menacing quality of the baby’s expression so much that I decided to include an echo of it in one of my absurdity posters (see the “absurdity projects” section of my website, jackienoname.com, for more details). See below:

Here’s a picture of some of the absurdity posters in their final state: Pasted to a wall somewhere, in multiples. I couldn’t find a photo of a grouping that included the PLEASE DON’T CRY baby. I remember pasting some down in New Orleans a few years ago, but I can’t find the pictures I took.

By the way, we have copies of this poster available. Let me know if you’re interested: They are $20 a piece.

Although Burning Baby has a traceable history, Kickapoo Kangaroo has not. Nor will he ever, most likely, be making another appearance anywhere else.

ABSURDITY POSTERS, etc.

While I was searching for the PLEASE DON’T CRY absurdity poster, I stumbled across aonther one that I never put into production, and had, in fact, forgotten all about. So I decided to post it, for old time’s sake.

And, speaking of absurdity projects, below is a picture of myself with one of my lawn ornaments, MAN PRACTICING TAI-CHI. This picture was taken on Nantucket Island, I believe, in around 1959 0r 60. It was taken by my ex-wife Grace, who, as it turned out, never really loved me.

BEST OF ST LOUIS, “FOOD & DRINK”

Another in the Best of St Louis series. Here we find Cap’n Clown in a different kind of scenerio.

BEST OF ST LOUIS, “BARS & CLUBS”

This illustration came to me while I was watching the Royal Tenenbaums: The a scene in which Pagota stabs Royal with a pen knife and calls him a son-of-a-bitch. It seemed natural to me that a similar scene might perhaps take place in the parking lot of an East St Louis strip joint at dawn. I thought a stabbing would be a little brutal, though, so I went with a knee in the gut. I once saw three men dressed as Santa Claus hanging out together at a place called Pop’s, right next to the OZ. They were smoking cigarettes over drinks in the wee morning hours, and the scene was very strange, especially to the soundtrack of a band called Two-Dick Bob. And it was in the middle of the summer. At any rate, that’s why I chose Santa Claus as the victim of the beating shown above. I would’ve depicted the whole scene in the parking lot of Pop’s, but the parking lot outside of Pop’s isn’t as barren as the one outsize OZ. This turned out to be the most depressing scene I’ve ever illustrated.