original gouache and acrylic on wood
A few more progress shots of two pieces for my solo show…
I ‘m in love with the colors.
Category Archives: my artsy stuff
work in progress….
for an upcoming solo show.
I love seeing other artist’s progress shots, so thought I might share one of my own!
BIG MEATY NEWS
STEAK window display @ Williams Sonoma, featuring “The Cook and The Butcher”
At the close of last year, I alluded to a major collaboration with a big time company in my newsletter. I had to keep quiet for the time being, but now I can finally announce that I illustrated a cookbook…..
.
.
.
.
…….for Williams-freaking-Sonoma!!
The Cook and The Butcher is a meat cookbook (obviously) written by Brigit Brinns with FAQs answered by Tom Moylan, of the Meat Hook in Brooklyn. It is helpfully broken into chapters by animal – cow, pig, veal, and lamb – and then further into recipes for each primal cut for each animal. At the beginning of each chapter, you’ll see a badass charcoal butchery diagram illustration by me.
The publisher, Weldon Owen, contacted me back in September last year after stumbling across my work on Etsy. I was floored, to say the least. I love Williams Sonoma and it was quite an honor to have my art in one of their cookbooks.
Weldon Owen commissioned new charcoal drawings from me, based on the popular charcoal diagrams available in my shop. I think the printing came out so saturated and crisp, and the folks at Weldon Owen were awesome to work with (and even purchased the original commissioned artworks to decorate their office!)
The Cook and The Butcher is only available at Williams Sonoma for the time being, but if you want my name in the book, you’ll have to wait for the wider release in September (preorder on Amazon).*
Hooray for being able to add “cookbook illustrator” to my burgeoning art resume!!
* There was a snafu in the initial printing, where my credit line was accidentally omitted. It will most definitely be in the larger wider release of the book, however!!!
drywell + food banks. totally obvious partnership
dave eggers’s brilliant drawing, via serial optimistAs most folks know, I am an attorney. (I knooooow, right?). While much has been made in the press* of the fact that I gave up a “government attorney” position to be an artist, I haven’t really discussed what that job was.
I was an Asylum Officer, which meant I spent my days interviewing foreign nationals who were applying for asylum here in the United States. It was, as you might imagine, an intense job. It required me to listen to unbelievably atrocious stories of persecution and violence, but on the up side, I was able to help hundreds of people escape their countries and possibly death.
From the get go, my decision to go to law school was motivated by a desire to help others and enter into a public service career. My decision to quit my job (which was unsustainable for oh so many reasons) and then become an artist has been amazing and fulfilling in many ways, but I have felt that some sort of public interest activities have been lacking in my life.
Given that, I am SO excited and proud to announce that starting this year, I’ll be donating 10% of the sale price from each of my “Meat My City” map posters to a local food bank in the corresponding city!!!!
One of the major goals for Drywell Art this year is to expand the line of neighborhood posters, so I’m hoping that lots of money gets donated, nationwide. I’ll donate on a quarterly basis, and share the donations here on the blog.
Right now I have three city maps and I’m proud to announce the corresponding food banks for each one:
San Francisco: All donations will go to the San Francisco Food Bank, where every $1 donated allows them to distribute $6 worth of food! So, buying a SF is for Carnivores posters means that $2.50 of your purchase price will transform into $15 of food for the needy in SF. nice, right?
Brooklyn: All donations will go to St. John’s Bread and Life, located in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Their innovative digital food pantry was recently featured in the NY Times.
Seattle: For now, all donations will go to Northwest Harvest, which is an umbrella organization for all of Washington food donation programs. Over 93% of their budget goes to food distribution, and for 67 cents, they can feed a family of three a nutritious meal. (If any Seattlites have a rec for a local Seattle food bank in need of some monies, let me know!)
Meat eaters for the greater good!!!
* By press I of course mostly mean Thrillist and the SF Chronicle. I can use the term “press” right? I don’t sound like an a-hole?
happy turkey day!
hand turkey butchery original illustration
Just wanted to stop in and wish everyone a happy thanksgiving!
I’m busy busy busy prepping for the holidays, and am reflecting on how unbelievably thankful I am to be able to do be creative every day. Thanks to everyone who has supported me by brainstorming, saying kind words, or buying my art and bringing it to your home. It means a lot. A lot of awesome.
To express this gratitude (and because I was raised to have an acute appreciate of a sale) I decided to have a little Black Friday to Cyber Monday sale in my shop.
Just enter the code “SEASONSMEATINGS” to get 20% everything in the shop. Nice, right?
AND, I just spent some serious time getting a newsletter set up. Check out my winter newsletter here to get up to date on all the new goodies I’m making for the holidays, and details on my four (!!!!) holiday shows). If you’d like to receive these newsletters in the future, just sign up in the nifty little widget on the right sidebar of this page.
the whole world loves meat
Just wanted to pop in to announce that now I’m shipping all of my art in the shop to US, Canada, and the EU. Spreading the love. I can ship to other locales as well, so just contact me if you’re in Fiji and just can’ t live without a Blocky print.
i was so afraid of the beard that i forgot to blog
Insanity over here folks! October was an epic-ly awesome month of travel, fun and socializing (East Coast wedding, reunion with high school pals in TX, Oktoberfest, an amazing beach wedding weekend involving s’mores, masks, and beer drinking in the ocean, and yeah, some World Series celebrating). Which means there wasn’t quite as much work being done as I’d like. So November has been dubbed “Nofunvember” in out house. At least no non-arty fun!!
Why the lock down? Well, Drywell Art will be in FOUR, yes FOUR craft shows this December.* And holy crap, they are going to be awesome. So I’m a busy bee right now, developing new arty goodness, taking over every available space in our tiny one bedroom apartment, and avoiding being buried under a sea of supplies.
The goal is to have some festive holiday cards, a full line of “Meat My City” posters (like the “San Francisco is for Carnivores” one), some fab originals, and some new tshirts. Another goal is to be posting some little glimpses into the insanity that is a holiday season for art folks on the craft circuit. I’m getting pretty excited!
*Want to know the line up?? Well, they are all in San Francisco
Thursday, December 2nd :: Handcrafted Holidays at Hotel Rex (late afternoon to evening)
Thursday, December 8th :: IndieMart at the California Academy of Sciences (evening)
Saturday and Sunday, December 10th and 11th :: Bazaar Bizarre at Fort Mason. (all day)
Saturday and Sunday, December 18th and 19th :: Renegade Holiday at the Concourse in Golden Gate Park. (all day)
San Francisco… we have T-shirts!
So I had a night of fussy unsuccessful sleeping, worried about my hair-brained scheme to screen print 40 t shirts 36 hours before selling them.
So at 7 this morning, I got up, got my act together, and by 8am, I had this.
Success!! I tested a few shirts that I got at Goodwill and they came out amazing! A quick heat set with an iron, then a wash and dry, and they were awesome! I’m super psyched. And ready to print 40 of them tomorrow. 🙂 I just need to figure out how to register the shirts correctly, so I print in the same place on each shirt. But I think I can figure that out easily enough.
They will be available at Indie Mart on Sunday, with any leftovers going up in the shop.
Indie Mart. BOOM.
It’s that time again! I’m furiously and happily working on some new goodies for this Sunday’s Indie Mart. There will be new prints, a new poster, and good god I hope some Tshirts.
If you’re in the city, stop on by and say hi. Oh, and get some ridiculously good tater tots too.
Sunday, September 19
12-6pm, with an AFTERPARTY (!) 6 to 8pm
Thee Parkside, 17th and Wisconsin
$3 to enter.
People like me?
In MORE good news, last week my little art self was nominated as one of the best local San Francisco Etsy shops, by 7×7 Magazine.
I’m pretty blown away that I was nominated at all, since I only had my first sale in February of this year! Plus there is some awesome competition.
The winner will be featured in November’s issue of 7×7 Magazine. So if you’re so inclined, you can check out the voting page and vote for Drywell. You can vote once a day until this Thursday, September 9th. And you could…. uh… tell your friends?
