August 18, 1990-21 I started writing this post, and then realized that I had to stop writing it and get a beer, as it was rapidly turning into a lengthy affair. Alex Cormack was born almost a decade before the fall of the Berlin Wall; he acquired his first ream of post-it notes at age nine and promptly drew - on the bottom right corner of it - his first animation: a stick figure watching a ball fall way too slowly from the sky before watching it bounce with extremely unconvincing squash and stretch physics off of a nonexistent floor. It was genius. Thankfully, little Alex was unaware of the fact that this marvel of persistence-of-vision that he was experiencing in real life for the first time had already been mastered by a seemingly endless network of forces bent on its eventual destruction as a traditional art form, and chose to pursue it as a passion and, eventually, a career anyway. About twenty years later, Andrew Jerz was drunk somewhere in Waltham, Massachusetts. He was screaming and throwing empty beer bottles at a television screen that was playing "Sox In Two" on NESN, and he was too inebriated to realize that his raucous wailing could in no way affect the outcome of the game - not even through some sort of cosmically massive butterfly effect attributed to the magnitude of his drunken ranting about Jason Varitek's dissonant switch-hitting statistics somehow influencing the winds in Kenmore Square, ultimately driving a Josh Reddick walk-off-home-run over the Green Monster, and through the windshield of a vehicle on the nearby Massachusetts Turnpike, ultimately killing a location-scouting Martin Scorsese once and for all. It was at this juncture that Alex Cormack became vividly aware of the danger that said hurling of projectiles implied for his two beloved cats, Danger and Destruction. He intervened, "Hey, ahhh...Andy?! You ahhh...got any art projects goin' on? I might have somethin' for you if you...you know," an unopened and comparatively massive Budweiser wizzed by Alex Cormack's head (which he adroitely dodged), "...you know...if you've got nothin' else goin on at the moment..." And so, the result of the absolutely demonic triumvirate...or duoviramonopuellamate...of Andrew, Alex, and Enrica of Red Stylo Media was born...along with about FIFTY EIGHT OTHER GREAT ARTISTS AND WRITERS. Everybody, your command? BUY$BUYBUY$BB$UY$BUY$BUY$$$$BU$Y$ $UHY$B$U$YB$UYBUYBUY$B$BUY$BUY$ -Andrew!   New Bastardizations of Classic American Literature

May 23, 1990-21 This is a painting of Tara. Tara was born in a rest stop called the "New Jersey Welcome Center" along some twisting highway above a river of beautiful, cascading rapids and tiny waterfalls somewhere approximately one hundred miles south of Albany, NY in a place that I wouldn't quite call Pennsylvania, definitely wouldn't call New York, and most certainly would never ever refer to as New Jersey. Enjoy! Also, keep your eyes open for future posts! I'm currently working on a series of paintings involving a chick with a handgun and a sickle who kills demons in hell. Yah. You're going to want to see these when they're done. Big time. -Andrew!   New "Real Art"

April 10, 1990-21 Well, after a long hiatus composed mostly of of tax-debt, long-distance-walking, avid support of the US postal service, and numerous encounters with various, nefarious individuals: wickedrudeart.com is back up...or, rather, its new incarnation, andrewjerz.com. It's been a long, hard year of utilizing blogs to post new work, but I will still be maintaining the blog at andrewjerz.blogspot.com for purposes of, well...I thought that I would never say this...web 2.0 marketing. Yes, it's a slimy, disgusting topic, but it's the world we live in - long devoid of human interaction, personal relationships, robotlessness, and J.C. Leyendeckarfulness. Well, that's progress, I suppose! So, if you haven't been following the blog - which I'm sure many of you haven't - there's a new maelstrom of artwork for you to feast your hungry peepers upon. Instead of contructing a series of eleborately re-posted news articles for this page of the site, I'm just going to post highlights from my artistic endeavors of the last year - and if you truly wish to view their chronological progression, you can just...view the back-issues of the blog. Don't forget to uh...like...or...follow...or...retweet it...or whatever people do with blogs these days. So here it is, the art! -Andrew!   New Illustrations   New "Real Art"

March 9, 1990-20 In between sessions of writing the Great American Novel, I have actually been able to squeeze in some painting. Expect God Damn You, William B. Falkner: the unauthorized autobiography of Andrew J. Jerz to hit bookstore shelves free-flyers-and-stuff piles in coffee shops everywhere in Boston some time next month. In other news, this us...landscape painting?...will be appearing in Boston's Weekly Dig tomorrow (March 9th). -Andrew!   02134

January 26, 1990-20 DEAR CAMBRIDGE, MA: You are the worst city in the entire Union - even below Baltimore, Maryland; Gary, Indiana; or East St. Louis, Illinois. You owe me sixty dollars and a fracking apology for cutting the lock off of my bike while I was at work (a lock that was so expensive [$59.95 at Bicycle Bill's on North Harvard Street in Allston, MA {a neighborhood of Boston}] due to the fact that my old bike with a much cheaper lock had been stolen from - you guessed it - Central Square in Cambridge only months before this incident) and attempting to dispose of the legitimately parked vehicle (that, by the way, had NOT been sitting there "overnight for days" as was claimed, so much as it was parked there during, um, the WORK DAY as you would assume would be so common for bicycles to be parked during in an area such as Harvard Square), and I will not rest until everybody in The United States of America knows that you are the lousiest excuse for a "city" (a city that is, in actuality, nothing but a boring, poorly planned, and expensive theme park for Eurotrash and douchebags from Wellesley) in the entire country. I am not a student, I am not a tourist, and I am most certainly not one of the "crust punks" on vacation from Newton or possibly Cohasset that you allow to infest your streets day in and day out. I am a normal guy that lives in Boston, works in your city (a city that, unfortunately, caters to these aforementioned, horrible varieties of lowlife), and I try to be good to the environment and my personal health by riding to work every day rather than driving: ideas that you, as a self-proclaimed "liberal mecca" champion, right? And how do you thank me for attempting to live, spread and propogate these sorts of ideas that are supposedly so important to you? Good one, Cambridge. Not bad. I hope you perish in a molasses flood. I would also like to clarify that this is not directed at the two The Works employees that I spoke to with regard to this situation. You guys were reasonable, actually pretty nice, apologetic about the sawed-off lock, and I know it's not your fault. -Andrew! PS) And now, a picture about riding a bike in Syracuse, NY (a city that I actually like, as opposed to Cambridge, MA:   I Guess I Liked Syracuse For Some Reason

January War on Scientology Day, 1990-20 In the year of our Lord, two-thousand and nine, there was a man and his name was Andrew. While living in Syracuse, a place in which he owned no motor vehicle, his only reliable forms of transportation were his feet - weary of late night transambulation below, above, and upon the streets of the city that he called his home (most likely in a drunken, yet receptive and curious nature [for you see, Andrew loved to explore unfamiliar places, and Downtown Syracuse - in this day and age - can be reckoned to a patchwork quilt of strange and intriguing neighborhoods, skywalks, vacant factories, inexplicable fields of mugwart, project housing, abandoned skyscrapers, and upside-down traffic lights]) - and his beloved bicycle (of which no further explaination is required beyond the fact that it had formerly been pink with a stepthrough frame that could accomodate hoopskirts worn by fashionable ladies, was spraypainted blue and yellow, and was the only thing that connected Andrew to his late, Polish grandfather (who had given the bicycle, as a gift, to his Irish mother [who had, in turn, given it to Andrew knowning all too well the weary state of his tired clodhoppers and drunken ratfinkery]). And so, in the quiet of the night the now blue bicycle sat silent in the gently falling, lake-effect snow of East Syracuse. It sat in peace, neatly chained to a tree in the parking lot behind Andrew's apartment (a parking lot that was shared by several buildings that were mostly inhabited by a very particular type of person). You see, Andrew lived in a neighborhood of douchebags. The homes here were once probably the mansions of salt barons - which was something you could be a hundred years ago - or pimps, or creditors, or bookies, or...something. All equally despicable. After years of disrepair at the hands of less-than-reputable crowds of scoundrels and drunken, ginger-faced, rock-and-potato-hucking Irishmen, the dwellings are but one shallow rainstorm from sliding down the muddy, barren hillside (it is believed by ecologists that nothing will ever grow on this hill again, not necessarily due to the pissing, polluting, and foot-trafficking, but due to the generalized iniquity and soullessness of the population...some kind of inadvertently conjured shaman curse born of magic long forgotten, but still very much alive and working), into the parking lot, tipping end-over-end before splitting and splintering into fragments individual timbers. The nails that once held these places together had long since been ripped out of the walls and floorboards to be sold as scrap iron so that the occupants could acquire hard drugs and probably malt liquor. The man living with Andrew's name was Fast Eddie, who lived a life of comfortable corpulence amidst the squalor, along with three other roommates: Mike, Morgan, and Marco...but oh, that's another story entirely. I've gone and gotten myself sidetracked! Let's get back on topic. These homes were now filled with frat-boy-esque shells of human beings whose souls had long been replaced with an immeasurable quantity of most likely beer and definitely cocaine; if you've ever seen a drunk coke-addict from New Jersey or Long Island try to park a car, you know where this story is going. To shorten this account, I will simply tell you that, late one night (most likely after three in the morning, as this was during a time that Andrew worked late as the art director for a local newspaper) one of these horrible cunts felt it necessary to utterly destroy the back wheel of Andrew's one and only prized posession, and to make no measure of apology. And so, Andrew needed a bicycle wheel, and thirty dollars was not something he had to spare. It was in this regard that Andrew enlisted the help of his friend and associate Jonathan B. Faulkner. Yes. That was actually his name. You can see for yourself at jbfaulkner.blogspot.com, his artist's blog, or possibly meet him by going to one of the shows of his friend Christopher's extremely excellent band. But this is neither here nor there. What was important was that Faulkner had a penchant for dumpster diving, garbage day scrapping, and seemingly constant (possibly pathological) acquisition of curiously useful things. Faulkner, like Andrew, was a scrappy, squirrelly type with hands quicker than the sharpest eyes, the most accute hearing, and the snarkiest wit (and I would challenge anybody that professes to posess the superlative in all of these catagories simultaneously to challenge the man to a Battle of Practicality, most likely fought on the grounds of an abandoned Massachusetts State School and involving several triathalon-transcending challenges including the use and maintenance of motorized vehicles, construction of elaborate weapons, operation of heavy machinery under influence of heavy drugs, and compassless navigation), and he made a damn good cup of coffee. He had numerous friends in bizarre underworld circles, and if he, himself, did not posess a 23x1.375 bicycle wheel with a five-speed gearset, he at least would have known somebody that did. And, much as Andrew had predicted, he knew exactly the person to acquire such a thing from. And so, Andrew and his close assosciate Fast Eddie found themselves walking up the back staircase of the Spark Art building in Syracuse, USA. Faulkner was leading them, floating up the staircase whilst hugging the handrail, moving slowly and cautiously. To the untrained eye, it would have been apparent that Faulkner was attempting to ambush a rogue Siberian Tiger escaped from the Syracuse zoo. He was not. He was listening for Matthew. The problem with trying to contact Matthew is that you do not get a hold of him. He gets a hold of you. Andrew was oblivious to this fact, and couldn't understand the need for Faulkner's precaution. Andrew had no frame of reference for who, or possibly what, this Matthew entity might be. But he trusted Faulkner, and followed close behind him in a similar manner. Spark Art Space across from the Fayette Street Projects in Syracuse was and is an art gallery that also houses some thirty slowmoving, running-water-neglecting, bearded folk. The doors are never locked, and nobody ever breaks in. On the rare occasion that somebody does decide to break in and attempt to steal something, they are only met with this immensly disappointing fact that these people own nothing of apparent value to steal despite massive quantities of marijuana and possibly illegally smuggled varieties of tea from the Middle East (acquired without paying a single cent in tariffs) that may or may not posess mildly halucinogenic properties of which these folk are always under the influence of. The apiring thief, then, is additionally overwhelmed by these strange folks' reaction to what should normally be perceived as threat or danger (this "reaction" usually involves the invitation from the resident to the fledgeling mischief-maker to come inside and have a mug of what appears to be a coffee cup of mud with chunks of celery and a sprig of asparagus sticking out the top of it. The thief usually departs, scarred for life and questioning the decisions he has made, while the residents of Spark Art Space remain happy, complacent, and oblivious to the fact that anything threatening has even come close to approaching their space of living. And here now, somewhere in the midst of the third flight of the back staircase at Spark Art Space, Jonathan B. Faulkner stopped in his tracks and held a finger to his lips. The dissonant tones of a pan flute wafted gently down the stairs from above.    "That," Faulkner held a single finger in the air and cracked a relieved and optimistic smile, "is the sound of Matthew." When we finished our ascent, we found Matthew in the middle of the hallway blowing into the pipes of his pan flute. He invited us into his apartment for tea and insisted that we play music with him, which mostly involved the banging of spoons against scissors and the harmonizing of Faulkner's harmonica (that he carried with him at all times). Matthew growled and chanted incoherent incantations that may or may not have been Kaballa curses along to our music while he prepared several cups of an extremely questionable tea that nobody except for him wanted to drink. As Andrew and Fast Eddie stared with dismay into the cups of what was most likely cow's blood with a cinammon stick garnish, Andrew explained his quest for a bicycle wheel to Matthew, who nodded in understanding.    "I think I can do something for you," Matthew realized, "I can take you to the Free Store. Free what? Free You. Freezer freegot freegot freegot friggot freegot! To the last time back from first time back with now now back now back now BACK now!" by now Matthew was on his feet and dancing - in a circle - to a beat that he was creating around one of the pillars in his home. Matthew's apartment was full of things but it wasn't full of stuff. In fact, it was becoming more and more obvious to Andrew that something was very different about the way that things were set up in this place. Realizing that it was going to be a while, Andrew rose to his feet and took his tea into the kitchen. Attempting to turn on a lamp, he realized that the lightbulb of the lamp was, in fact, a tennis ball. Wires snaked in and out of the walls and things buzzed. There was the buzzing of bees and there was the buzzing of flies and there was the buzzing of refrigerators and none of it was bad buzzing but it was not ok to Andrew, and now things seemed darker. The pillar in Matthew's living room was not so much a pillar as it was, actually, a delicately intertwined network of electronic devices that lacked obvious form, obviously pieces of what were once hundreds of machines, now reappropriated as some kind of central processing unit to replace the brain that Matthew had long since relieved of its command within his Skull. There was something else inside this man's head now, and it was most likely a smaller, electronic creature that fed off of the tiny synaptic energy pulses given off by whatever grey matter might have been left within the man's skull. It was at this moment - the one when Andrew found a proper light switch in the kitchen, illuminated the room, and looked to the ceiling to realize that quarter inch cables were growing out of the cracks in the plaster ceiling as if they were some kind of degenerate mold sprouting from the grout between the tiles of a poorly maintained bathroom - that Matthew snapped out of his trance and loped around the corner into the kitchen. Now he had the machines around him and their wires were part of him, and they were talking to Andrew as much as Matthew was,    "I'll take you to the free store now." Andrew and Fast Eddie walked several feet further in front of Matthew and Faulkner, who were far behind, gliding down the stairwell at ethereal pace - silent and magical - most likely having a very detailed discussion regarding the rare old times.    "What a fucking nutcase," Andrew offered    Fast Eddie was flabberghasted, "Oh god! Thank god! I thought you understood what was happening in there! I thought it made sense to you! I thought I was the only sane one left! And now we're going to the Free Store? What could that be? It could be anything it could be a transcendent philosophy or it could be one of those machines! Did you see the machines?"    "I saw the machines. They were everywhere."    "There better not be any at the Free Store, whatever it is, I don't know how much more of that creepy crawly wire shit I can take." The free store ended up being the basement of what was probably one of the projects across the street, accessed through some forgotton passageway in the basement of Spark Art Space that would, upon future visits by Andrew, lead respectable females to call out "no, no, no, let's not go down there, let's just go." But it had everything. In the Free Store, you could purchase anything from a painting of a Soviet dictator, to a rather sizeable shelf full of various varieties of televisions, to curiously fashionable clothing, to abstract concepts such as "SPACE" (that is to say, in the Free Store, there is a large back room that Matthew was intent that Andrew and Ed could "live in if we could find a way to get electricity down there"). The Free Store had no power; it was entirely flashlight-navigated. And just when it seemed as though the entire store had been scavenged; when there was nothing left; when everything including the room full of free Space had been picked over in the attempt to find a 23x1.375 bicycle wheel with five gears in its cassette; when Andrew had decided that he had spent enough time in the dingy basement listening to the hiphop aspirations of a machine-controlled schitzophrenic: Matthew came from the shadows in the corner with a bicycle wheel. On the tire the measurements read, clearly, "23x1.375," and the gear rachetted beautifully with the sound of five gears on a freewheel. And that is when Andrew learned that nothing in life is free in this world. If you want free women, you have to hang out with frat boys. If you want free music, you have to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous open mic nights at the local bar. If you want free beer, you have to hang out with somebody like Fast Eddie (which, as I mentioned, is an entirely different story all together). And if you want a free bicycle wheel, you have to go to the tunnels in the basement of the building across the street from the Fayette Street Projects and scour the Free Store by torchlight for hours, while tentacled machines creep from every facet of the warehouse-esque space, sliming on and tickling you in aweful ways whilst simultaneously laying worship at the feet of their symbiotic partner that is Matthew, who lives above Spark Art Space in Syracuse, USA. -Andrew!   Matthew

December After Christmas, 2009 Since I've been working for several weeks on something extremely freaking time consuming, I decided to throw some new sketchbook stuff up here. I would also like to bring up the extremely important point that I believe, wholeheartedly, that we should bring back segregation. I'm talking about segregation between people and computers. I'm racist against computers. We should have city/intercity busses, bathrooms, airport terminals, schools, restaurants, and parks that are dedicated "biological entities only" and "computers only," in order to comfortably accomodate the respective beings. I'm sick of sharing my busses, restaurants, trains, and various other public places with computers, and it disgusts me when I see human beings publically intermingling with the machines. We should be proud of the organisms that we are and we shouldn't be convoluting our meticulously evolved biology by getting involved socially or emotionally with our electronic devices. If you want to mess around with a computer or 3G phone in the privacy of your own home, it's none of my business. But seeing you flaunt your relationship with these inhuman contraptions in public disgusts me. Your parents should have raised you better. -Andrew!

December 8, 2009 This picture's theoretically been several decades in the making.   Stepdad -Andrew!

September 30, 2009 Just a random, new illustration. About two months ago I was riding the Orange Line and saw pretty much this exact scene out the window as we rolled through Downtown Crossing, and I thought to myself, "I bet painting those tiles would be really, really fun." So I did. And, oh yah, there were people there, too.   Downtown Crossing -Andrew!

September 11, 2009 Couple of new newses right now. Let's take a goosey gander at the calendar, shall we? Hm. That's odd, there's only one date on the entire calendar that's important: November 6, 2009 Studio 916 featuring: Andrew Jerz! 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM 916 Dorchester Ave. Dorchester, MA It'll be a small show, but it's a nice location; there will be six other Boston artists featured, and there will be beer, wine, and horse d'evours. It's open to the public and does not cost anything. 7.3 minute walk from the JFK/UMass Red Line stop. Aside from that, I have some pictures to show you.   Christopher B. Holmes -Andrew!

July 22, 2009 Sometimes, when you're a ginger kid from Ireland, you really, really, really just have to scream at the top of your lungs. Especially when you're the singer of a punk rock band with fiddles in it. Warped Tour's comin' around right now, and that means people talking about Flogging Molly, probably one of the only reasons for going to the $35.00+, corporate-sponsored extravaganza. It also means artists being asked to paint pictures about the bands. That's me!   Plus, how often do you get to paint orange hair? -Andrew!

June 24, 2009 I finally got around to putting up some cartoons from when I illustrated for the paper in Syracuse. Some of them are dated - politics-wise - but y'know...you were all there. You remember. They can be found permanently under the "sketching" section, but for now you can just click the image below -Andrew!

May 27, 2009 more about what the heck this is below: Well. Gosh darn. I finally got around to moving my big giant pile of garbage and turpentine-juice back to Boston, or, specifically Allston. But enough about me! Let me tell you about the exciting part. Last summer Andrea York and I organized a COMPLETELY FREE figure drawing/sketch group for the South Shore area of metro Boston called South Shore Sketch Sessions (or S4). It was grand fun, a totally free once-a-week occurrence where everybody would bring food, take turns modelling, bring various forms of music (iPods, record albums, tinwhistles, tapes, guitars, whatever you wanted!) to share, and the turnout was really great. The issue was that, somehow, most of the people most enthusiastic about it were...well...not living on the South Shore (which was the only place that we could really get free space). THIS YEAR, however, Ben "Z" Zwalsky has offered his spacious apartment in Mission Hill as the new location for S4...which is no longer South Shore Sketch Sessions so much as just Summer Sketch Sessions (or S3; since we're all so, So, SO postmodern - those of us running this - each year from its inception the number of S-words will diminish by one, thus the next few years will be: "S2," Sketch Sessions; "S1," Sketch; and then simply just "S," which will not even be a drawing group so much as an ultra trendy club with overpriced mixed drinks, NO BEER that isn't Heineken or Stella Artois, tons of coke-addict girls, and the scummiest cross-section of corporate douche culture that you could possibly imagine [maybe you can't even, in which case you're certainly invited to S3]). So, check out that Facebook portal, or, if you don't have facebook, keep up to date on it by checking back here. Currently the first event is scheduled for MONDAY, JUNE 1st, and if you don't have Facebook, you can e-mail me and ask about details (I'm wicked nice, don't be shy). -Andrew!

April 16, 2009 Here, these are good people, and if you ever see them on the street, you should take them out for a beer or possibly pay them money to do art for you or, even better, use strongarming techniques to extort art out of them without having to pay a dime! Andrea York @ andreayork.com Jack Jerz @ blogspot.com -Andrew!

April rent-is-due-day, 2009 So The Daily Orange, a Syracuse newspaper that I art direct for (which pays a salary, but lately they've been paying me cans of black beans rather than cash, since no newspaper can possibly make money anymore; so, going around to various libraries and community centers around the city and stealing from can drive bins is the only way to feed employees), needed an illustration for a features article about college students, smoking taxes, the depression, and why people keep smoking when they don't have money to buy cans of beans with despite the fact that, apparently, it's supposed to cost a lot of money to kill yourself (Club Camel: Ladies 18+, Men 25+ [there's a place in Syracuse that actually has that rule, but it's not named after a cigarette brand]). I had a friend of mine, Johnny (who used to smoke a pack and a half a day until the federal tax), model for me in a pinch.   Johnny, you crazy: -Andrew!

April Fools, 2009 360° magazine cover for an April issue themed "New Beginnings," with the coming spring and to "try to keep people cheery with the really, really terrible economy," as the art director instructed. And what's cheerier than really, really, really, BRIGHT colors and snakes eating their own tails? Nothing. See the full reproduction on the illustration section of the site! -Andrew!

March 30, 2009 Oddly enough, the huge gap in time between updates of this website is not so much the result of sheer laziness as it is the result of lack of time. I've been working on several projects, including a graphic novel with Brooklyn-based screenwriter, Jack Jerz, who just so happens to have the same last name as me. The novel, Melvin the Warrior and the Seven Ales of Doom is the first of what will ultimately be a twelve-chapter epic - the story of a simple man in complicated times, who happens to live on a world that is flat, rather than round. I uploaded some preview frames and edited out the dialogue...sort of just an art preview. Aside from that, I'm also in the process of doing another cover for 360 magazine - which should be up in a day or two - and various other smaller illustration jobs. I'm also working on moving back to Boston, which has presented itself as a problem, given all of the other riffamaraff. But! Here are the Melvin previews, along with a few other indulgences to bridge this awkward gap between last update and the several that should be coming in the future, as soon as I get my camera working.   Melvin the Warrior and the Seven Ales of Doom:      Richard Williams, and a girl named Emma:   -Andrew!

October 22, 2008 Well, this's going to be one of those super-fun days where I actually have photos of my work in progress leading up to the finished illustration! Woo. So, I got asked by 360° magazine in Syracuse to illustrate the cover of their fall issue. The issue was going to be focusing on themes, traditions, and legacies at Syracuse University. That's all well and good enough, but the challenge here was that all of this magazine's previous covers had been really simple, super-graphic digital illustrations and, while they were open to actually having a real illustration done for this issue, they wanted to maintain the sort of "brand" of the graphic, flat color sort of cover. Graphic, you say? I knew just to rip off pay homage to. So, since this's almost the complete opposite of my style, I went to my local library and checked out every Mucha book with pretty color pictures that I could find, and after looking through his classical big-hat-funny-clothes ladies for a few hours, decided that a good way to illustrate tradition would be to juxtapose the past and the present and their relationship to the university, so I came up with this sketch After that got approved with a few added notes, specifically on what "serious business designs and stuff" actually meant, upon being questioned by the art directors, I pretty much just started going nuts. I knew I would need to work at at least 200% scale so that the design work would reproduce ultra-tight so I went out in search of the largest, cheapest piece of paper I could find. I found a roll of four-foot-wide brown paper in a dumpster behind my studio, and it seemed to fit my criteria. After noodling away like that for about 7,000,052 hours and approximately 374 gallons of jet black coffee, I had the finished piece scanned and made a few color alterations on the computer to arrive at this! And that's my story! See the full reproduction on the illustration section of the site! -Andrew!

October 7, 2008 Well gosh darn it, I guess this's what happens when your web host won't let you log in for months...and then your laptop's only RAM chip fries...and then homeland security abducts and interrogates you...anywho, I have some new things. I actually have a LOT of new things, but these're some of the...important-er?...ones? I had a lot of fun running South Shore Sketch Sessions (S4) all summer and everybody who was involved in that should be thanked, especially Andrea York, John Scott (of the Village Butcher and Deli in Cohasset, MA), Joe, Aaron, Kyle, Emma, and especially Lauren, whose head exploded in the process. Aside from that, apparently womens' issues are very important to me. I mean, they never haven't been, but I've been doing a lot of illustrations about them lately. First off is a spankin'-new portrait...? of every illustrator's favorite potentially-presidential-bitch, Sarah Palin for Syracuse's The Out Crowd, an LGBT publication. I found a great quote from Palin that went something like (and by something I mean EXACTLY like), "individual freedom and independence is extremely important to me and that's why I'm a Republican" and I thought that that was just the cutest. She actually believes that she believes that. Wow. People are so funny, aren't they? Vote Obama. Anywho, the other illustration up now is for Jerk Magazine, also here in Syracuse. The article was about the stigma surrounding teen pregnancy and media bias. You can view all of these new, silly, fun doodads below! Have fun!   NEW! NEW! NEW! THERE IS ONLY ONE OCTOBER!     New in the Painting department: -Andrew!

April 29, 2008 I've been working on these illustrations of certain images from Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test on and off for days and year now, and I've finally got them up here. I missed an opportunity to be an extra in a TV show in order to finish these on time. My dreams of moving out west and playing one of the d-bag boyfriends on The Hills seem to have been squelched. I guess I'll just have to keep drawing pictures until somebody stumbles upon my TRUE artistic genius as a really, really, aweful actor.   Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test:     -Andrew!

April 3, 2008 Jerk Magazine illustrations (from a period of my life in which I forgot how to draw) for an article about a fella' named Timothy Daniel who founded Intellective Records, a sort of musician's union kind of thing. View them!   Jerk Magazine:    -Andrew!

March 27, 2008 Sketchbook stuff is up! Selections from my September 2007 March-2008 sketchbook. Click below or go to the sketch section! Also, since I'm trying to get into the habit of posting some kind've process-oriented stuff up here as I make things, here're a few snippets on the character design evolution for a piece a recently did on Edgar Allen Poe's The Telltale Heart. You can click these images for big'uns. First here is the dividing up of the story into sections and thumbnails of possible quick compositions for those sections. There were a few I picked that ultimately weren't that interesting and decided to go with a scene involving police as a telling moment in the story since it's one of the climactic sequences, plus I have a long dark history with modern day police that I thought would play into this nicely. Next, some research went into various police of that time period and various quick gestures of how I could draw all of the various shapes, sizes, and gaits of cops I've encountered throughout my life. I came to the conclusion from this, experience, and many other sketches that cops are nothing but mustaches and teeth. Police, I have no problem with, but "cops" don't really have emotions, so I didn't want to make these guys seem like human beings so much as monsters, which's what the character in the story seems to think of them as as he imagines them mocking him. Finally, I came up with Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie down at the bottom of the lefthand page above. I played around with a couple of more developed compositions, two of which are shown. I ultimately decided on the front-view because the huge, dark shape created a nice compositional frame for the whole piece. After deciding on the final composition I had three friends model for me and one otherwise skinny kid stick a pillow under his shirt so that he could become the fat bastard that I know is inside of him just waiting for enough corndogs. From that sketch/drawing the final painting became thus: And that's my sandwich! That's my story! There'll be more of this sort of thing later only more in depth as to the painting process itself and probably more interesting to read. Peace! -Andrew!

March 22, 2008 Behold: I make art. There'll be more coming soon when I get around to photographing and scanning things, namely sketchbook stuff. It'll be fun, I can't wait! Look at these for now.   Illustrations:           Paintings: