The second edition of the Cloudy Collection is now available! This newest set includes art from Vera Brosgol, S.Britt, Elio, Vincent Stall, Scott Campbell, Bwana Spoons, and me, David Huyck (my print pictured below).
Get yourself a set for just $35 with free shipping to the US and Canada.
Hey, check it out– we’re doing an Earth Day promotion at the Cloudy Collection: $10 will be donated to the Nature Conservancy for each print set sold tomorrow, April 22nd, 2009. That’s in addition to the $250 we are already sending them!
It’s been several months in the making, but I have finally launched my latest project: the Cloudy Collection!
A little while back I had the notion that I wanted to make some letterpress prints with my college friend, Harold Kyle, of Boxcar Press. Then I was also thinking that I know a lot of artists who I’d love to make art with. The two great tastes tasted great together, and the Cloudy Collection was forged in a flaming furnace of fiery, um, flames. Or on a big fat Heidelberg, really.
Prints are on sale now! There’s all kinds of other exciting information about the project on the site, so please take a look.
The happiest of New Year’s to everyone!
The past year was rough on a lot of the country and a lot of the world, but I can’t help but be optimistic. Besides the long-awaited departure of a certain someone with the initials GWB, and the corresponding arrival of Mr. BHO, the extended and expanding Huyck clan had a good year.
In March my older brother made me an uncle. In August my younger brother got married to an awesome woman. And two days before that wedding, my amazing wife gave birth to our pride and joy, Susanna Elnora Huyck, who weighed in at 9lbs 1oz, and 21.5in long! All my photos and videos of her are on Flickr. Susanna has been a constant source of hilarity, joy, and drool, and without even attempting to avoid cliché, she has changed our lives.
It was a great year for drawing things and making stuff, too. Thanks to all who hired me, or invited me to participate in a show, or just brought their kids over so I could draw coloring book pages for them. I count myself lucky to have such wonderful clients!
And of course there is the relocation to Idaho (see above illustration.) We are very excited to be in our new home in Moscow, ID, and I will begin teaching in two weeks in the art department of Washington State University in Pullman, just across the state line from here.
And speaking of the above illustration, if you like the card, please download the PDF and print it out!
Thanks to you, 2008!
And welcome, 2009! We expect great things!
- DH.
Just a brief note to link to an article on the Craft Magazine blog that talks about the San Francisco Plush You! show. Look for the mention of “a magical mask.”
I almost forgot to post about this mask I made for the San Francisco Plush You! venue, double punch. And what better day to post a mask than All Hallow’s Eve? See more in this Flickr set, including in-progress shots.
Now go eat some candy!
This in-store Halloween decoration project for a national chain of stores was super-fun to work on. I sat in at Imagehaus and under the creative direction of Jay Miller, I created “Ween the Candy Fiend”, who lurks in the candy aisle, ready to share has last piece of candy with you. Ultimately, the client went with one of the other designer’s “safer” directions, but I still loved the project, and I had a great time at Imagehaus.
See more in this Flickr set.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
It’s that time of year again: the fourth annual Plush You! show at Schmancy in Seattle opens Friday October 10! The opening runs from 5-9pm and will be up for a month. BONUS: This year, there will also be a San Francisco venue as well! WOW! I have sent different work for each place, but the work I did for Seattle is up on my Flickr page.
I have not stayed in the habit of regularly making plush toys out-of-season, but every time Plush You! rolls around, I have a great time playing with my big boxes of random felt and fabrics that I have collected. I use it as an opportunity to try out an idea, or as an outlet for something that has been on my mind. This year, I wanted to make wearable things, so I created a set of three Cryptid Crowns: Nessie, Sasquatch, and Yeti.
I also designed some labels for the crowns. I think I almost have as much fun designing and making the labels as I do making the actual plushies!
P.S. I just posted a set of haikus to the blog of Adam Rex, children’s author and illustrator extraordinaire. The poems I wrote seem to have a familiar theme…
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
Related to this earlier post, the sign I (quickly) made for the My Yard Our Message project was in the top 50, and thus has been dubbed a “winner!” (look for “DH.” about two-thirds down that first page) It looks like you can buy this and other yard signs for about $15 each through the site. Cheers!
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.
I really should be working, but I need a break for myself. I just saw Claire Robertson’s version of this meme and I thought it would make a good break/distraction:
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?
No, not a factory made out of Legos (aw, shoot.) Yes, the factory where Legos are made (yay!)
(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.
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)
It’s like getting chocolate in my peanut butter! This American Life + Chris Ware =
(via Coudal)
This little bear (kind of looks like a dog to me) has appeared on the streets of New York. Until now I’d only seen photos, and I loved the idea, but now, seeing it on video, I love it even more. The ferocity of the beast is enhanced by its tremulous stance when the air pressure is too strong.
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…)
It turns out I still have a lot of information bouncing around my head regarding children’s book publishing.
Yesterday I was reading through some tweets, and Amy Crehore had posted some links to the work of Richard Selesnick and Nicholas Kahn (also here.)
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.