Its not often that you get the chance to do something that you love, and help out a friend at the same time. Luckily, art lends itself well to both criteria.

I attended my buddy Brett’s wedding recently, and was tasked with drawing caricatures of everyone. He’s an awesome dude, and got hitched to a really cool girl named Minda (hey guys!), so there’s no way I would have said no.

Its a funny thing about caricatures. I’ve been doing them for ten years now, and they always hit me the same way: Just a few hours before I draw, I dread the hell out of it. Not because I get nervous or anything (trust me, 10 years of people in your grill while you draw cures you of that), but for some kind of crazy fear of fun new shit. Then I go and start drawing, and immediately I’m in the zone and having an awesome time. I get to hear all the awesome rhetoric of the people around me, and afterward I’m genuinely happy. And tired. Its kind of like going on a date, if that makes sense.

Anyway, the wedding rocked. The pic above of me drawing was done by a fellow AiP grad named Amanda Wilson, who generously let me use her photo for this post. Go check her work out. Now.

And that’s my spew of words for today. Congrats Brett and Minda!

_Rob

There are some kick ass signs in Pittsburgh…

… signs that define our city, both socially as well as economically. Many of them tell stories of our past, and some even point to events yet to pass. Many also can serve the starving artist, as iconic images of reference. Luckily, you don’t have to go out and chronicle them all yourself. They’ve all been painstakingly laid out for you already by a group called The Pittsburgh Signs Project.

The Pittsburgh Signs Project has also just put out a book, Pittsburgh Signs Project: 250 Signs of Western Pennsylvania. The book is filled with some amazing full color photos taken from area artists, and is definitely a coffee table gem if there ever was one. The book is listed at $29.99, but you can find it on amazon here for just over 20 bucks.

On top of that, they have a facebook group, and here are a few links to some sweet flickr feeds on signage of the Burgh:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47211597@N00/sets/72157614779435468/
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=pittsburgh%20signs&w=47211597%40N00

All in all, I was very taken aback and impressed with such an undertaking. I now have new respect for the signage of the Burgh.

_Rob

It takes a lot to shake me up.

That being said, I was left in a very Micheal J. Fox-esque state after my visit to The Warhol yesterday. I went with a few friends to catch The Vader Project before it left the burgh. The project was quite amazing, but that’s not the story I’m telling here.

So we started from the top floor of the museum, electing to catch what we came to see last. Alarmingly, however, it was what I saw on the top floor that blew my mind. The Exhibition on display happened to be The End: Analyzing Art in Troubled Times. The show featured many artists, all depicting their individual renditions of what they deem to be art in foreboding economic times. I was actually pretty excited to see the results.

One of the very first works we came to was The 7 Deadly Sins, by Lukas Maximilian Hüller. Seven insanely well constructed, and ultimately disturbing, panoramic scenes floated before us. Based on The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things by Hieronymus Bosch, Each panorama depicted an extremely elaborate, Rocky Horror type view of its subject. Great care had evidently been taken to set up these complicated, macabre scenes. I was impressed, but moreover, I was shaken up.

Anyways, I’ll leave it up to you, the reader to decide your own take on these. Be warned, some parts are extremely graphic.

1. pride
2. lust
3. wrath
4. sloth
5. avarice
6. gluttony
7. envy

You can see a list of Hüller’s work here.

_Rob

A while back my roommates and I decided to put together our own Entourage poster. I called up an amazing photographer I know, Amy Tronolone, and she helped us out.

On the left is the original, and the right is us. I’m the one in the middle (yes, I did have hair at one point in my life).