RAW Artist show = Contest!

Hey all.  So I'm in charge of selling 20 tickets to the art extravaganza that's coming up on Thursday, February 16th.  I'll be showing some new paintings, selling some ties, and generally hanging out at 103 Harriet which is the main single floor of 1015 (you know, the big nightclub where the Handmade Ho Down was?)

ANYWAY, so I need to sell these tickets by Sunday at midnight (PST), and since I feel a little bit weird asking you to pay to come see my art (granted, there's gonna be music and DJ's and dancing and tons of great paintings and photographs and body painting and other stuff), I've decided that I want to make it worth your while ON TOP of just checking out a really cool event.

So.  I'm holding a raffle for everyone who buys a $10 ticket.  Note: buying ahead of time not only qualifies you for the contest, but also saves you $5 if you decide later to buy at the door.  Hell, you don't even have to go to the event (although I'd love to see you) if you don't want to.  If you want, you can also donate your spot back to me and I can offer it to people who would want to go but can't afford it.  Whatever, anyway, here's the deets.

1.  Buy your ticket to the event HERE by Sunday, February 11th by 11:59pm, PST. Make sure my name is in the drop-down field that says "Support your artist."

2.  Email me your receipt, or a screencap of your check out page, whatever.  Basically prove to me you bought a ticket within the time frame.  You can send proof over to: risk [at] rickkitagawa.com

3.  I'll enter your name into a raffle for one of the following prizes:

•  A copy of "The Journal of Dr. Marcus Igiatu," a book that I wrote, illustrated, bound by hand, and hand-silkscreened.  There are only about 8 of these, and I usually sell them for around $400.
• A 28+ color silkscreen print titled "Bullies" that has three monster children looking creepy.
• "Hydra" painting from the Bestiarum vocabulum show last march, a big-ass painting of snake-tacular proportions
• A custom printed tie for you.  You can see all the designs and tie colors at http://www.monkeyandseal.com/ties.html
• 3 "Fantasies Shattered" prints.
• 3 "Sad Panda" prints.
• 9 "Jackalope" prints
• And if none of the previously created work interests you, I'm also offering to create a digital illustration of whatever you want.  You basically get to be the art director, and I'm your illustrator and I'll print you a 9"x12" copy.  

4.  If you notice, there are 20 different items up for raffle, and I need to sell 20 tickets, so as long as you crazy rabid fans out there don't buy ten tickets each, the chance of winning something is pretty high. 

5.  Also, the way I'm running the raffle is that the 1st person picked gets their choice of prizes.  I know in contests sometimes I personally want 3rd place rather than 1st or 2nd, so this way being the first picked person gets their top choice.

Cool.  That's it.  I'll do the drawing on Friday the 17th, and will notify winners via email.

Thanks everyone!  So go buy your ticket(s) NOW!  Oh yeah, if you want to see some shots of the prizes:

 page excerpts from the book

 "Bullies" the big-ass silkscreen print

 The Jackalope print

 The Sad Panda print

Hydra painting

"Fantasies Shattered" print

We Out Here - live printing!

Hey all you sexy people - if you want this awesome shirt (or this on a print), head on over to Big Umbrella Studios tonight from 7-11pm (or while supplies last).  The Lords of Print will be showing at the San Francisco: We Out Here photography show going on at the gallery.  We'll be printing these badboys on some nice fawn Stonehenge paper or on some nice American Apparel shirts in grey.  

Did I  mention I"ll be printing this AS YOU WATCH, so you can ask me all the questions you ever wanted about screenprinting while I do it in front of your lovely face.

PS  - Prints will go for the ridiculously low price of $5 each (signed and numbered in an edition to boot!), and shirts will go for $15!!  Can you seriously believe these prices?  Honestly, I'm kinda embarrassed our shit is going for so cheap, but the boss man speaketh.  Take advantage while you can before this shizzle sells out!

Big Umbrella Studios

906 1/2 Divisadero ST (x McAllister)

SF, CA 94115

Big Umbrella Gallery Presents:
----------------We Out Here!!------------------------
6|10|11 - 7|08|11
A group photographic exhibition celebrating life in the city through the eyes of a diverse mix of San Francisco and Bay Area photographers . Answered through photographs- the artists will answer the question of what motivates, inspires, and keeps them in searc...h of capturing and documenting life through the photographic process. Curated by Raymond Sanchez & Charlie Mirador

-An opening reception is scheduled for Friday June 10th.
Live music and entertainment to be announced-sliding scale donation @ bar for those 21+over.

Exhibiting artists:
Jeremy Conant http://jeremyconant.com/
Amanda Boe http://www.amandaboe.com/525776/Info#1378773/AMANDA-BOE
Thomas Hawk http://thomashawk.com/
Andrea Sonnenberg http://teenwitchart.blogspot.com/http://www.juxtapoz.com/Current/from-erotica-remixes-by-teen-witch
Chris Atwood
Ashley Taylor http://4blankwalls.com/
Michael Rosen http://www.sfbg.com/sexsf/2011/04/29/thirty-years-radical-sex-seen-michael-rosen
Blake Cole http://www.fecalface.com/POTD/2008/08/http://www.flickr.com/photos/blakescole/
Matt Nasal http://bigumbrellastudios.com/artist/matt-na-sal
Charlie Mirador http://35mmirador.blogspot.com/http://www.flickr.com/people/35mmirador/
Kelly Long http://kellyelphotography.info/
An opening reception is scheduled for Friday June 10th.

http://bigumbrellastudios.com/

09/04/10

This is the image that you can print on your own t-shirt/paper at the workshop I'm teaching TODAY, from 3:30-4:45 at the SF Zine Fest!  Come on out and enjoy!  9th and Lincoln at the SF County Fair Building!  Also, stop by the Monkey + Seal table and say hi!  We'll be there 11-6 today and tomorrow!

5/28/10

To be perfectly honest, I did not make this today, as I was working all day and was at the Spring Show last night.  However, this page was created via silkscreen in 5 runs and is part of my semester-long book arts project.  It was juried into the Spring Show for Book Arts, so yay!

PS - Yes, I did reference actual pig penises for the boar dick part.

5/27/10

So I just couldn't bear to have a plain old standard black cap n gown at graduation yesterday, so I busted out the silkscreen and got my embossing powder and get busy.  Yosh!

Guh..progress on my life and photos of new art

Tired, but good.

NaNoWriMo - Going poorly. I think to complete this I'm going to have to do about 40,000 words in a day or so. I don't think I can possibly type that fast even if I wanted to.

Handmade Ho Down - The specter that haunts my life. Going super cool, but shit, we need more volunteers and more publicity.

Personal website - I finally got some photos taken (but there still needs to be some photoshop action to color correct, etc.) of my art work, but I gotta crop, resize, and redesign the site. Ug.

Graduation - Gotta schedule a portfolio meeting with the director. Should probably get a portfolio ready to do so.

Silkscreen - Book project coming along swimmingly. Another maybe 30 or so hours and it'll be done-done. Still gotta design the poster, map, and box. Sigh.

Quick Studies - Still flushing out the direction I want to move stylistically. We'll see.

The rest of my life is Eve, work, eating, and sleeping. Egads.

Unedited photos of new(er) work below.

New prints are up/congrats Eve!

Above are the thumbnails for the piece below, titled "Bullies." Tons of crappy compositional studies, then some character development to get the right look. There's 2 more pages of character studies, but they are even more lame than these, so I'll spare you. Anyway, the finish is a 27-run (even though you can't tell) Edition Varie' of 5. I think I ended up only spending ~45 hours on this one.

Finish: "Bullies" 30" x 19.5" 27-color serigraph on Rives BFK.



This lovely 1-color print, inspired by the old-skool Dave Chappelle Rick James skit (I can't believe that was like 3+ years ago!) . Anyway, fornicate your couch with this print and buy it today!
Here's a 3-color serigraph, cleverly titled as "Squid." I'm still not sure if I like doing one giant print with a massive number of runs, or many smaller prints with fewer colors. I guess I have to sort that out before I start silkscreen 2 next semester. Anyway, the squid is on sale here.

So Eve's parents were up over the weekend, and we played some Settler of Catan, cooked, and checked out Eve's illustration and puppet which made it into the Spring Show. Her puppet won an Honorable Mention (which is sort of interesting, as there was a 1st place for puppets, but no 2nd or 3rd place to be found...) . Anyway, it was nice to see the future in-laws again and congrats to everyone who got something into the show!
Eve's stopmotion puppet (it can move!), about 1'x4'. Note the fancy ribbon in front! Woot!

Woot Vermont and Iowa!

In case you haven't heard, Iowa and Vermont are making California look like old-timey jackasses by LEGALIZING GAY MARRIAGE! Fuck YES!

Anyhoo, in spite of the awesome frickin' amazing news that has me jumping around my apartment, on my butty Jess' blog, I found a poster...apparently I'm a bit lost.


Anyhoo, so I finished a series of Wanted posters for the crypids the Chupacabra, the Jersey Devil, and the Mothman for my screenprinting class. 19 runs with 3 emulsion wash-outs = 47 hours of time in the silkscreen studio.

So I'm now taking Silkscreen 2 next semester, and I think I may have found my little niche. I've tried fighting the fact that I'm a fine artist, and a fine artist printmaker at that, but alas, what are you gonna do?

Anyway, for anyone that's interested (and I doubt that's very many people), my class schedule for next Fall looks like this:
-Illustration 3
-Silkscreen 2
-Mixed Media Drawing and Painting
-Fine Art Portfolio and Professional Practices.

Uber. Also, the Bad Date Zine Issue 2 is nearly ready to go to press, and I'm currently working on finally getting my own personal website up and running. Huzzah! Now, off to work on my next 2 silkscreen projects...