Lots of news and not too much time to cover it in, so here goes...
Rudy and I are headed to New York City very early in the morning to have some fun and meet Stephanie W. and her fiance Kevin. We've been running around like mad for the past few days finishing all the little last minute chores and tasks that any vacation brings with it. If I owe you an e-mail or something else, I apologize and promise I will take care of everything when I return and am back in action, which should be Monday morning, August 1st. Also, when we return I will doubtlessly have new digital photos, new Holga photos, new daily drawings, and some interesting stories.
Speaking of daily drawings, rest assured I have been dutifully keeping up on the plan. I just haven't had much computer time lately, so scanning them inand adding them to the gallery has taken a back seat. I promise to add them all when I return, so there should be 6 or 7 new ones. You'll have so much new stuff to look at!
In spite of all the busy-ness, I did manage to finish another piece in the 'strange satellites' series and get it scanned in and viewable. It is called Ubas Makina, the Grape Thunderbolt Satellite and you can see it in the art section by clicking on the very last little purple thumbnail. I showed it to my friends Dara Naraghi, Steve Black, and Tom Williams at our meeting tonight and they had a lot of very helpful and honest critique for me, but as always I would really like to know what the rest of you think as well. I am experimenting a lot with acrylic paint and mixing different types of media, and while I feel some of it is successful I know that I have an awful lot to learn, so please don't hesitate to
e-mail me and let me know what you think, positive or negative.
Much to my surprise, Rudy made me a mix CD for the first time in years. It was fantastic, but I would expect nothing less of her. You can check out the cover she made and her playlist at the top of the music section.
Last, extra special thanks to my friends Aaron Fitzwater for all the CDs he let me borrow for the road and Angela K.
for hooking me up with the raw material necessary for future artwork. I'll see you both soon.
Okay, I'm very tired so all that might have come out a bit muddled. I hope you can make some sense out of it, and I hope you'll check out the new satellite.
Off to bed, and then New York. See ya!
Matt K.
MATT KISH PRESENTED WITH COMICS MOST PRESTIGIOUS PRIZE, THE EISNER AWARD...
...WHILE WAITING FOR THE ACTUAL WINNER, SEAN McKEEVER, TO JOIN HIM IN THE PICTURE...
...AND MATT'S LOVING, SUPPORTIVE WIFE LAUGHS AND LAUGHS AT THE ANTICS...
...AND FRIEND STANG ANNOUNCES HIS DISPLEASURE, FLIPS EVERYONE OFF, AND DRIVES AWAY IN A HUFF.
Seriously, though, congratulations again to my pal Sean McKeever on his Eisner win, and many thanks for letting me goof around with the award. It was a blast!
Matt K.
I mowed the lawn yesterday (yes, where we live is really THAT suburban) and I listened much more closely to this CD I've had for a little while. It's called "Keep It In the Family" and it's a live DJ mix from Roger Yamaha. According to the liner notes it is a "100% live recording of roger yamaha guaranteed one take, no edits, no bullshit recorded at rock city, new york, march 2003." Here's the cover--
--and it is just absolutely phenomenal. The first few listens didn't really make much of an impression on me so I shelved it for awhile, but after digging into it much more deeply I just can't believe how great it is. This cat really knows how to dig in the crates. Check out the track list--
01. MORE WORDS / BUSY SIGNAL REMIX (PREFUSE 73 REMIX) by the isolationist / daedelus
02. SYNSOUND-RAWK LOCK by gender fix
03. PEACE SELLS by megadeth
04. BREAKDOWN (RAVE INSTRUMENTAL MIX) & EMERGE (NAUGHTY'S ZUGABE) & BEATS FROM HORNY MARTIAN BREAKS by luke & fischerspooner & butchwax
05. HAVE I HAD SEX? / IF YOU BELIEVE IN HAVING SEX / SEX 4 DAZE (KING'S HIGHWAY CLUB BREAK) by armand van helden / 2 live crew / lake eerie
06. PROBLEMES D'AMOUR (AH OU AH VERSION) by alexander robotnick
07. PHANTOMS OF THE BASS by ernie ranglin
08. JAPANES BOY by aneka
09. DON'T YOU THINK IT'S TIME? (TRANSFORMERS MIX BY MASTERS AT WORK) by fascination
10. RIDE ON THE RHYTHM (KENLOU RHYTHM MIX) by "little" louie & marc anthony
11. SWEETSMOKE by mr. scruff
12. HAZARDOUS by godfather don
13. BROOKLYN QUEENS (U.K. POWER MIX) by 3rd bass
14. GOT TO KEEP ON (WHAT'S A REMIX? REMIX) by the cookie crew
15. MONEY RUNNER by quincy jones
16. OWN UP TIME by the small faces
17. QUALITY CONTROL by jurassic 5
18. SUPER GUDER BREAKS VOL. 3 by mr. guder
19. STRONG STYLE (INSTRUMENTAL) by go forcemen
20. BLIND MAN (INSTRUMENTAL) & WATCH MY MOVES (A CAPPELLA) by cut chemist and medaphoar & dooley o
21. ROLL CALL by diversion tactics
22. OUTREACH 5 by mr. dibbs
23. CROSS COUNTRY (MONK'S EDIT) & STREETS OF HIMACHAL PRADESH by archie whitewater & up, bustle and out
24. SALSA SCRATCH by rob swift featuring rob james and dj melo-d
25. SING SING SING by tempo 70
26. MOVIN' MY FEET TO THE BOOGALOO BEAT by the sunny side of the street
27. PINA & SAGA OF RESISTANCE (MIXED BY THEO PARRISH) by metro area & sun ra
28. JOY PART 2 by moodymann
29. GOT MYSELF TOGETHER by the bucketheads
30. TIGHTEN UP 2 by elevator man
31. GRAND PIANO by the mixmaster
32. FREESTYLE by dj prince ice
33. ME by alex stark
34. HOLD ME, TOUCH ME (BLACK STROBE INSTRUMENTAL) by. w.i.t.
35. ALWAYS AND FOREVER by the space cowboy
36. FALCON by the rah band
(SPECIAL NOTE ON THE TRACK LIST ABOVE--Songs separated by a slash are actually 2 or more songs played sequentially. Songs joined by an ampersand are 2 or more songs blended or played simultaneously.)
I picked it up from Brooklyn's own Turntable Lab, fine purveyors of more great music, art, and books then you could possibly imagine, but it was a while ago so they might not have it any more. Anyway, I urge you to check out their online store, and if you don't see any Roger Yamaha but you crave a listen then just give me an e-mail and we'll figure something out.
Two more daily drawings up on the daily drawings page. The one for July 22 is actually this character named "the Skull Kid" who was always meant to be the star of his own comic. He has a friend named Beef Gravy and the whole thing is really more atmospheric and emotional than plot-driven, but I still want to do it.
Now I'm off to go touch Sean McKeever's Eisner. Ewww....
Matt K.
Alright, the very first daily update. I promise to make sure that if I put something up here every day or so that it will be interesting and important and not just some junk that I slap up here to make sure I'm staying on schedule. No one should be THAT self-involved.
My friend Zack F. made a very strange short silent film called "The Light" that you can see at his web site here. It is definitely worth checking out. I really don't know how to describe it, and knowing Zack I'm sure there is more to it all then I think. Plus he has a deliciously wicked sense of
humor so I have a feeling that the joke may be on the viewer.
In other 'friend' news, my compadre Aaron Fitzwater has simultaneously found yet another way to embarrass me and posted the second in a series of video game guessing games. He digs out these incredibly obscure screenshots of old 8 bit games and you have to guess what it is and e-mail him. It could all be maddeningly frustrating, except that he rewards the winner by making them an incredibly cool collage, some of which he has posted on his own site. I've tried collages, and it generally turns out to be a sticky and disorganized mess for me, but somehow Aaron pulls it off with grace and finesse and always ends up with an amazing piece of art. He sickens me, and he won't teach me his secrets. Someday I'll get him...
I did indeed do a daily drawing today, but it won't be posted until tomorrow, when I post both new ones. I will definitely keep doing the drawings every day, but sometimes I may post them in batches of 2 or 3 depending on the time I have. So if you're hankering for a new daily drawing then check back tomorrow at about 6 p.m. and there will be 2 brand new ones for you.
My dorky friend Sean McKeever actually won an Eisner Award out at the San Diego Comic Convention just a week ago. He won for "Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition," which always seemed vaguely insulting to me, but hey, it's an Eisner. The most exciting thing about this, beyond the fact that I can now endlessly torment him by calling him my friend the Eisner Award Winning Writer Sean McKeever, is that I will actually get
to see it and touch it and hold it and have my picture taken with it and pretend I won it tomorrow night. I'll make sure I post the pics. I'll probably look ludicrous, but that's pretty essential, I think.
Finally, a special shout out to Kyle Wallace, Aaron Fitzwater, Stephanie W., and Brett "Boogie Down" Montgomery, all of whom took the time to
check out my site redesign right away and let me know what they thought. I really truly appreciate it...well, all of it except maybe that punk Brett...and I hope I can keep you all interested for the long haul.
Enough of this. I'm done for today. See you tomorrow.
Matt K.
One more time!
As you have probably noticed, I redesigned the site yet again. I guess I could go on and on about why, but it might be kind of dull to you. This time, though, the redesign was primarily to fix some of the things in the architecture and navigation of the site that I just wasn't too keen on. And since I was doing that, I just couldn't resist changing the visual design as well, but that was primarily to reflect some of what I have become more interested in artistically in the last month or so. Much of that influence comes from the amazing stuff that Stephanie W. has been sharing with me as well as the letters my friend Angela has written me.
There is other exciting new stuff added too. First, I've finished another piece in the 'strange satellites' series. It's called Sucrerie No. 20, the Taffy Satellite and you can see it in the art section. I took down the old sketchbook section because most of the sketches were pretty old. I replaced it with a daily drawing section and I am going to add a sketch or a drawing or a collage or a doodle or something visual every single day. I definitely got this idea straight from the Partyka web site here. Thanks again to Stephanie for sharing it with me. This daily drawing thing is going to be really good for me because it will keep me thinking visually and keep me drawing every day. I hope that after a while I can see some sort of growth and evolution to my drawing, but we'll see. Keep your fingers crossed, but take a look every day because there will always be something new. Another new thing is the music page so I can share some of the mixes and playlists friends have made for me or that I've made for them, and hopefully this will inspire you to trade some mixes with me. Take a look! Finally, I added some much older "Spudd 64" pages to the
books section so peek in and tell me what you think. You can e-mail me through that section or through the new and improved contact page.
I took down the links section, but I might think of a way to add it back in later. It depends. If there was anything there that you are missing, send me an e-mail and let me know and I'll try to hook you up again.
Now that my summer class is over, I am going to be be working much harder at drawing. I will also be updating this section every day or two, sort of like a blog (although I kind of hate that word and the self-involvement that it seems to connote). But hey, Stang said he would check my site every day if I did it, and anything to please him, right?
So, friends, the most important thing is that there will now be something new on this site almost every single day. I hope you find it an interesting place to be, and that you check in often. Most importantly, please let me know what you think of the site--the new stuff in particular. Does it work well? Did you notice any errors, misspellings, or flaws? What do you think of the new art? Is the music section pretentious? Should I really be adding something to the news every day? Are you tired of me mentioning your name? Am I really that self-important?
See you tomorrow.
Matt K.
There's gonna be a bunch of new stuff up on the website tomorrow morning. It's mostly new art, but there will be some other surprises, and I think you'll like it quite a bit. I had wanted to put it all up today, but my day is turning out to be much busier than I thought it would be, and I want to make sure I wrap this all up the right way. So if you're reading this, make sure you check back again tomorrow at about noon to see the news. This means you too, Brett.
Matt K.
FINALLY, NEW ART! I've finished the first in a new series of drawings and added it to the art section so take a look and let me know what you think. And I really mean that, so even if you think it's not a very successful piece, or if you think it completely sucks, or if you have any kind of critique whatsoever I really truly want to know. If you want to go right to the new piece, it is the last little thumbnail on the lower right. I'm trying to do several things with this new series of drawings--to work faster, to work without using rulers or any kind of mechanical aids, to force myself to really develop my drawing skills unaided, and to work with color more skillfully. The inks I'm using are rather translucent and difficult to manipulate, so I hope to get better control of the materials as I proceed through this series. The drawings are all 'satellites' because for some reason I can never seem to draw without a theme. I've already got 9 of them roughed out in thumbnails, and I began the second piece today, although I am filling it with so much detail I seem to be defeating my goal of learning to work faster. We'll see how it all goes. I think I will probably end up trading them or giving them to friends, so let me know if you are interested as I post more pieces, although my dear friend Angela K. gets first dibs because I've owed her a drawing for a very long time and I want to make sure she gets something special and wonderful.
In other news, I have posted 5 new images in the Holga photo gallery which I quite like. I love that camera! And Angela, I thought of you and our conversation in the empty Mexican restaurant about photography and what it means to me, and in an odd way you, now.
There are also lots of cool new links (some of which are from Rudy), and a few new secret leaves for the intrepid searcher.
Finally, Kyle, your mix CDs are almost done and will be in the mail by Tuesday. I hope you like 'em!
I think that's all for now. See ya!
Matt K.