New York Report...

I'm back from a great, but too quick, trip to New York City. I saw lots of great things, ate lots of great vegan food, and got to walk around that beautiful city holding hands with my best girl, Mona.

On the first day I was on my own, and I spent it by going to see some art. I met up with my friend, Scott Teplin, at the Adam Baumgold Gallery to see an exhibit of Chris Ware's comic pages for the Acme Novelty Library #16. The Ware show was awesome... it was interesting to go through the show and see how much his thought process and story-structure changes from the drawing phase to the final printed version... I'm also surprised to see that his style is allowing some imperfections now and then... a little bit of broken lines and brush strokes are being allowed in his perfect drawings that I think will be nice when he fully allows it... but at this point it almost seems like a distracting mistake or carelessness, becase he still seems hesitant to let go and allow some human touch into his line-quality... I say DO IT!!! Let go!!! Let me see your dirty lines Mr. Ware!

I had a delicious, but expensive, vegan lunch at Candle Cafe 79.

Anyway... the Ware show was great... but even greater was the Van Gogh Drawing show at the Met! My god!!! SOOOOO GOOOOOOOOOD! made me wanna cry. But before I broke down bawling at the site of Vincent's beautiful little lines and circles, I ran into my friends, Pat, Chad, Dan and Monty from L.A. who were also vacationing in NYC for the week. They probably saved me from an embarassing, tearful moment among the droves of tourists wandering through the show.

I tried to go to the Odilon Redon show and the Pettibon show while there, but I just didn't have enough time...

As I mentioned last week, I went to the city for the book release party of American Illustration 24. The party was fun, but unfortunately I didn't know anyone, and there wasn't really much of a way to know who anyone was. At some point a nice girl named Anika took pity on my lonely state and introduced herself. She then introduced me to her boyfriend Jacob Magraw who is also in the AI24 book and a fellow illustrator/painter in L.A. I hung out with them for a bit, but the bar-tenders poured my drinks a bit too strong and I probably made a fool of myself.

At the party, they were projecting the images on the walls. They went by pretty fast, but I did manage to get a picture of my paintings projected behind the sea of people. I'm really glad I went to the party, but I'm disapointed by my lack of ability to meet anyone while there- flashbacks of Junior High School dance parties where I was always a wallflower. I did meet a few nice people there, though.

The book looks great, and I'm really happy to see my paintings in it. I received three pages (pictured below)- two of them are full pages of my artwork! There is a lot of other interesting art in the book, but I haven't had time to really go through it and pick out my favorites. It should be available for purchase on the website soon.


Mona arrived and we got to spend all day saturday wandering around the city together. We had a delicious vegan brunch at a little cafe (can't remember the name) in the East Village. We went shopping in SoHo at the vegan shoestore Moo Shoos and some other stores around town. We had another amazing vegan, Korean meal at Franchia for dinner.

We did our one tourist duty and went to the Empire State Building. We had no idea that it's turned into a Disneyland style attraction where you have an endless maze of lines, gift shops and photo booths to trap you into spending tons of money. As they parade you through the labrynthine line, at one point they unexpectedly stop you in front of a cardboard cutout of the building and take your picture. We didn't really know what was going on, and the picture came out kinda hilarious, so we had to buy it.

We finally made it to the top. The weather was perfect and we had a beautiful view of the whole city (see picture at beginning of post). After that we trekked down to Greenwich village in hopes of finding a cool bar to hang out in, but it seems that the area has been overrun with touristy crappy restaurants and sportsbars. So, instead we went back to the East Village for some yummy vegan dessert and wine at Counter. I wish we had had more time there, because we really love that city, but it was good to get back home again. Hopefully I'll have another reason to go back soon.