Bonjour from inside of the holiday echo chamber, from which I wanted to post a short notice with December updates. If you live in Northeastern Pennsylvania and want to hang out, get at me, I usually get extremely bored around 10pm. If you don’t live here but might want to email with me for a day or two, my email address is still tom//at//dogchirp//com.

Work Work = I will work for you anywhere in the United States or abroad, get in touch if you have a full time salaried job.

Fun Work = I painted/embroidered two big clothing patches this month but forgot to photograph one of them (the other is above). I started brainstorming a new video yesterday that I may or may not decide to start working on next week, if for no other reason than to goof around animating and playing with the new Flash, which I haven’t used on any personal projects yet. I am in the middle stage of putting together a critical mass of text that I am going to edit into whatever I wind up using for January 15 application deadlines; this work will likely wind up abridged across Test Patterns #3 or No Such Thing as News #3, unless someone else winds up wanting to deal with it. I have a giant pile of sketches that are going to get scanned and may or may not appear on this blog, as well as in those aforementioned print projects, and I have a design for a painting that I’m hoping to do the week after christmas.

Schedule = Planning on going to Philly this weekend, but not totally sure what the deal with that will be, then back home. Will likely be around New England for New Years, and then hopefully moving soon after that pending work options.

Last week I was in New York. I stayed with Christi some nights and Leah others. I got to hang out with Kathryn, Aaron, Julio and Jeff, and I ran into Sarah. I rode my bike all over. I did some work with Emily and Corey and I had a great lunch with Dan. I got lost in the rain while I rode to Max’s house, where I watched Futurama and ate a burger. I ate delicious sweet potato quasadillas, but I didn’t sleep too well.

Arson in the new development

Patrick and Scout

I’m not numbering this one because I feel like the cycle of my leaving camp -> going to VSC -> trying to work there -> getting home and being like “????” is over. Now I have a whole new set of things to be like “????” about (strange fires in Providence, moving to New York very soon, new total life stupidity/fugues that weren’t visible or predictable when this past numbered set began in September), so once things stabilize enough that I have an okay idea of where I’ll be from week to week, I’ll restart the numbered entry system on a schedule again.

The short “Lately” recap —>New York = I got to hang out with Emily, babysit Pearl, rode over the Williamsburg bridge for the first time, played dominoes and ate burritos and watched Ruthless People with Leah, dinner/bar with Katie and Alex, meteor shower thing with camp team, wrote a lot of emails.

In Boston = I went to the Stairwell team’s show at BU, talked to Ben, watched the new Bond, ate Redbone’s, sushi and Girardelli squares, almost played Earthopoly with Sus, drove home with Patrick super late.

Home so far = Haven’t been in the basement yet, but today nearly finished a long-outstanding painting, did the firstish round of mailouts re: darcone triangle to stores, slept a ton, played chess in real life once, played chess on the computer a lot of times.

Current plan = Back in New York by next weekend. This morning I am going to the craft store with my dad for a black friday sale. More substantial update or whatever soon.

Ultimate slow/fast week. I’ll post my good Obama being president joke later. As of right now, it sure looks like I’m moving to New York. If you have a job lead for me, get in touch.

Let the eternal record of my blog reflect that there was a time when Sierra and Zelda and I went to the Lincoln Inn in Essex Vermont, where Sierra showed me how to box step while grizzled country/rockabilly dudes played hard and whiskey sweaty, and middle aged guys with tucked in shirts and blonde girlfriends much taller whisked briskly around the floor. I ate a burger and we talked about 2nd Life and whether Barack Obama puts his hand on his heart when he pledges allegience for the entire night. Zelda said, “George, this is Melinda.” “I’m Tom,” I said. “I’m Rachel,” she said. Later, I walked around the mountain in Johnson, the sun set black-eye blue on the mountains, and we trekked past lit trailers, through the mud of vinegar and shit-smelling cow pastures, and back down across the dilapidated bridge. At a bonfire I took off my sweaters and sat in my tshirt with dry lips and the rims of my glasses getting hot. The smoke blew up and high away from stacked palettes to fierce orange black, and beyond the streetlights on School Ave was the silver sky. On Saturday morning Leah and I left and we stopped at Father’s Restaurant, where I ate delicious fried fish and mixed berry pie in Norman Rockwell desolate green interior/gray deathmask belltoll drizzle outside, old couple sitting in another booth and not talking, and I chewed with the full, terrible awareness that I am not going to drive back up I-89 for a long time.

Now I’m in Brooklyn, where it looks like I’ll live. I watched Hackers with Cory, went for drinks with Katie and Alex, ate burgers and played dominos with Julio and his totally good men’s group, partied with Allen, Kathryn and that extended team, went to Dinner Group where I talked to Justin bald and bearded about the trains and had a staring contest with Alfe and team, and pursued employment and made burritos and yucked it up with Leah almost full time since we got here. I’ve moved my car at least four or five times. In all, it’s been such a fun and fast-moving time that I got over feeling disappointed and insane by the time I had even officially heard the status of my work in Vermont.

They’re hard steps out of the gray area and they ring out loud across many months. BOOM here’s the job I wind up with, BOOM here’s the house I live in, BOOM, it’s 2009, where am I, who am I, what am I doing, BOOM, life sucks, but amazingly, resiliently, it still somehow rules way more.

Past life

I added the Black Dove paintings to the site. Otherwise this is a boring blog marking time entry if there ever was one. Here’s what’s up.

Since last time: In Philly I went to Halloween and saw best band ANGELDUST, went to the World Series riot on Broad Street and saw many stupid and hilarious things, hung out in the dirt at FDR and near the oil cans, and saw cops disperse a crowd that gathered to watch a six story pinata get destroyed by a wrecking ball (actually true).

Where I am: I’m home now. Tomorrow I’m voting and then driving to VSC, where I’ll be until Saturday, and then heading to New York indefinitely with the next schedule consideration of any kind being Monday of Thanksgiving weekend, when my brother gets home, and thus the latest I plan to.

What I’m working on: A new blog, a complete overhaul of the Ospreys web documentation in which I plan to upload, catalogue, and explain everything I have pertaining to the band, and more ambiently (i.e. probably not much until next week), on Test Patterns #3 and my fake catalog with Bocksel. I’m also knee deep in mailout hell, the tormented place on earth where I have to organize and send out all of my Darcone-related packages to everywhere for eternity, while meanwhile I can’t find my stapler anywhere. I’m reading Toni Morrison “Jazz”.

I feel like I need to note before I close that I’m a little sick at being back on square one re: putting in serious hours writing, but that I don’t think I’m making excuses when I say that the total upheaval and temporariness of everything in my life has made it all but impossible to set specific times and places to go and make work. May I read this in January in Vermont and immediately turn to make what I need to.

Giant pinata

Some dog looking at Mikey

For the moment, this was an acceptable way to park

Totaled SEPTA stop, smashed out Robinson, riot cops

Technically this has been true since 2005, but you can now do it in considerably less steps. There’s now a paypal store on this website right here.

Darcone Triangle

Black dove paintings

There is No Such Thing as News #2

Okay so the obvious major work update is that I finished all three projects I said I was going to finish for the thing on Saturday. Below are more camera phone pics from the black dove paintings, a project that consumed me pretty much completely for about seven full days. I’m going to do scans of them and put them in the parent directory when I get back to West Pittston.

The weather has been miserable and I have been in the zone. I left the house maybe five or six times the whole time I’ve been here in Philly, otherwise I’ve been working. I got to hang out with Davey and Brian Morsberger at Davey’s house for World Series Game 5, and then I got to ride my bike back to Grays Ferry in the horrendous freezing rain once the game was called.

When I was at VSC Todd told me that in the winter the snow rolls off the Schultz sculpture studio roof in a clean incline out and over the bonfire spot, burying it seven or eight feet under, and that an intrepid sculpture resident will often take up the task each month of digging out a path and a circle. The bonfire, he said, surrounded by a tall bank of snow, then gets burned as high as possible. I’m excited to go back up there next week and am hoping x 1000 that the prospect of my employment there is resolved by the time I leave.

Current projects = General website upkeep/bugfixing/indexhibit play (not 100% satisfied with the provisional setup I got to a working point last month, and my dad reports weirdness on PCs with IE), super overdue job of putting together a paypal store for all of my stuff, Fake Catalogue with Jon Bocksel, hopefully this group paintings thing with J Roc if I can get her to come down to the Grays Ferry spot, and finally resuming serious like top-priority work on the naked indian project. Web junk and hopefully at least a few things for Jon will be done by the time I go to VSC next week, we’ll see after that.

Current schedule = Here until Sunday, home until Tuesday, VSC until the 8th/9th, New York until maybe the 15th, back home indefinitely re: my employment status developing or not.

This is just a note in case I want to elaborate more next time or whenever -

Floors I’ve Slept On 6/8-10/8

The Provisional.
Domain pod.
Art Barn.
Tinderbox.
Maverick 2-4.
Wolf Kahn #1
Wolf Kahn #2
Church Studios 2-1.
Parents’ dining room.
Mike’s living room.
Mike’s office.

Okay and here are photos from black dove:

On top of the normal leftovers from old times, I’m going to have the long-awaited second edition of my fake newspaper There is No Such Thing as News, screenprinted Darcone Triangle books (care of the truly excellent Mark Price), and ten copies of the all-pages-unique art book project I’ve been working on for the last two weeks. Each one of those is a folder that contains five paintings on vellum and an accompanying text. I’ll post pics of all three next Tuesday.

If you’re interested in getting any of these, Darcone Triangle is $5, the art books are $50, and the newspaper, normally $1, is free with either. Just send me an email - tom//dogchirp.com. Thanks!

Kites INC 2006

The biggest update is that after like six years off I listen to dance music again!

Short news this time around =

I am in Gray House Philadelphia working on a pair of projects for Saturday’s <a href=”http://www.215festival.com”>215 Festival</a>. One is a two-sided 8.5×11 - the three-years-coming sequel to my fake newspaper, “There Is No Such Thing as News” that compiles the normal inside jokes and bullshit in a disposable three column format - while the other is way more involved. I decided to do a five page comic in an edition of 10 where every page is completely done by hand. Each page is 5×7 and fully watercolored and inked. I’m stoked on the results so far and am about 60% done. <a href=”http://www.markpriceisafactory.com”>Mark Price</a> is going to have Darcone Triangle printed by Friday so I’ll have that too.

We played Ospreys swoop maybe four times since I’ve been here. Jams have been excursions into new territory for sure. It’s fun and weird to rejoin after long periods of doing our own things into the old duo format and find as ever that there’s still so much ground left to cover. I’m hoping we get to play out before I leave but if not at least we’re recording.

I’ve been sleeping in my sleeping bag upstairs in the office. In the morning, Pumpkin comes up and licks my face. For the first few days Molly my favorite dog alive has been here too, and she was coming up and getting in my area too. Some mornings they’d both lay back down with me for an hour, one on each side. The bum deal is that I’ve been having horrendous stress nightmares (camp failure, haunted house, empty labyrinthine farm, overgrown everything), but I can only hope that has as much to do with all that’s on the actual up that I’m spending so much energy on as all that’s up in the air that I’m so actually worried about.

Mike and Allen and Justin and I went to the Y the other night and looked at the Tropicana Juice train as it rolled on by. Before that, Mike and I went to South Philly and looked at trash trains. $1 covers a lot of ground. Men’s Group. Sorry for being vague about this, because it’s really no big deal, but you don’t know who with how much time is googling what about whom.

Current plans are to stay here until Halloween because I am extremely stoked to see top five Philly band ever ANGELDUST, who so succinctly and horrendously conjure everything I love and hate about this place in the most perfect sweaty baby’s fist full of drugs and razorblades imaginable/possible.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Then I’m going home, vote, go to Vermont, and then either head to Salt Lake or lurk in the northeast for a while. As ever I’m open to suggestions.

The current schedule is to update this every Tuesday with what I’m currently working on, where I am, and possibly a story about a thing that happened.

The above is from a collaboration I did with Loren Erdritch at VSC; she put down the color and I riffed on it. I did two others with her that came alright, and I gave her two color plates that she’s going to do the ink for. Similarly I did two pieces with Leah Wolff, and there are maybe two or three more pending. In all of them I put down one color layer and then she did the second. The two done ones are here:

I mentioned the hanging diamonds thing last month, made from scraps from my work exchange job in the office upstairs; in a similar vein was my drawing game Alpha Symbolia, which I did on thick paper plates that were the cropped edges of the invitations the development office printed out to send to the center’s donors for the big Tibetan flags art show last month. The principle was to see how far I could get without spending more than a few seconds on a given small drawing, with “no repeats or hesitations,” and with the entire body meant to appear as a single unit. That’s below.

I’m doing a table at the 215 Festival on the 25th where I’ll have like every zine I’ve ever made, hopefully the Darcone Triangle books that Mark Price is printing for us, a new Philly junk/joke book, and an old school “doing it the hard way”-style painting/ink book in a mega small edition where I am just going to make five or ten completely original copies and that’s going to be it.

While I’m in town I’m going to Don Simon’s thing at City Hall and me and Jenn Rockwell will be drawing. Me and my Men’s Group will be up to our typical no-good/not-much. I feel like I should reiterate that anyone who wants to collaborate should get started on something and then get it to me with directions.

Alpha Symbolia

The dust blows forward and the dust blows back

I’m in West Pittston, I’m in my parents’ basement.

Trying to relate everything that happens day after day is like drinking, where you can drink a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth drink, a tenth, a twelfth, but then you begin to throw up, and you can’t relate anymore, and you can’t possibly explain what the hell you’ve been doing, or how you’ve got to where you are. I ate a giant meatball sub and watched some dudes eat cinnamon and laughed a ton. I trespassed in a hundred buildings. I watched Simon & Simon, got out of bed to build puzzles and play boggle, drank so much fucking whiskey, had work group, painted, drew, wrote, finished things.

I drove eight gray hours down from Johnson. I talked to Susy, I talked to Cassie, Patrick, everyone. I have a provisional studio setup in my dad’s gardening room. I’m painting, I’m writing, I’m sending out mail, I’m having very rich dreams.

I redesigned dogchirp.com while I was in Church Studio and posted a lot of stuff on there. The plan is to keep posting my blah blah blah projects on here and to post my more finished crap there in the official archive.

The next few days are pregnant with things to get done, pregnant like Sigourney Weaver in Alien, where I’m trying to keep all of the things I have to get done from exploding out of my guts and making a huge mess everywhere. More as I do them. I’ll be in New York on Friday or Saturday; holler if you want to hang out.

My time in Vermont was a massive success. I don’t want to write specifically about things I’m working on as a result for fear of jinxing them. More as the arrows start to come down.