Mattress Factory's Thanks You for the It's All About You

How kind! Thank you MF! Seen on the Mattress Factory blog!

Pittsburgh Pirates' Dock Ellis’s 1970 No-Hitter While High

OK, so this is a stretch to be related to Pittsburgh, and you may or may not have already seen this anyway, but it was too funny not to share. NYC-based No Mas hired the Brooklyn-based quirky and funky artist James Blagden to create this animation based on Dock Ellis’s 1970 no-hitter. In case you don't know who Dock Ellis is, as Wikipedia says:

Dock Phillip Ellis, Jr. (March 11, 1945 – December 19, 2008) was a Major League Baseball player who pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates, among other teams. His best season was 1971, when he won 19 games for the World Series champion Pirates and was the starting pitcher for the National League in the All-Star Game. However, he is perhaps best remembered for the claim that he threw a no-hitter in 1970 while under the influence of LSD.

SouthSide Works Fountain

Here is a nicely timed photo as seen at the SouthSide Works! Shot by flickr-user brunkfordbraun.

(Found via Only in Pittsburgh)

Dr Sketchy Presents Girls on Wheels Tonight, Jan 18!

Tonight at Belvedere's (4016 Butler) is Dr Sketchy's Anti-Art School featuring Girls on Wheels! From 8 to 11pm, get a little buzzed while drinking and drawing Pittsburgh's finest skater chicks! Sketchy says "we put our usual Free-Wheelin Spin on life drawing, this month with Roller Derby, Bikes, and Skater Chicks! Models include: La Diabla, Damage Dahl, Dollface Dani and music by DJ Zombo!" We'll see you there!

Purchase your ticket (a mere ten bucks) online at Brown Paper Tickets, or you can choose to pay at the door.

Link

Afrodisiac!

Above is a short promo video for the awesome 70s-themed comic Afrodisiac (get it at Amazon) by localist Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca that has "cats, gats, spats, and feathered hats. Action as big as a Georgia ham and wool so fine it'll blow your mind! Lock up your daughters, come hell or high water, cause here comes the king of the concrete jungle!"

The comic is garnering some great national attention, including New York Magazine's list of the Top 10 Best Comics of 2009, and the January 2010 Maxim Magazine, among many other reviews! You can checkout checkout some of those reviews at Rugg's blog along with his sketches and other illustrations.

Jim and Brian had also collaborated on the popular Street Angel comic (or here at Amazon)!

Link

Handmade Arcade 2009 Video!

Above you can watch a nice, short video that Brian Staszel made and uploaded showcasing 2009's Handmade Arcade with just a smidge of what awesome products and people were present. The event seems to be growing more and more each year, not only with the amount of attenders, but also with sellers, and the work to be purchased gets more and more awesome! I already can't wait for next year!

As the description of the video says, "Pittsburgh’s largest indie craft fair, Handmade Arcade, took over the Hunt Armory in Shadyside December 12, 2009. It was a challenge to show so much talent and all the hard work that went into making the event a success in a short video."

(Found via the always awesome iheartPGH!)

Greetings from Pittsburgh!

NYC-based illustrator/designer Ricardo Villavicencio created several faux post cards for production company Brand New School for a Southwest Airlines commercial and recently posted on his portfolio site. Although not created here, I thought the one for Pittsburgh was too cool not to share!

Link (click on "Southwest Airline" to checkout the other cities)

(Found via Motionographer!)

Brewer Welcomes 2010

Here's another nice New Year piece by the ink-splatter illustrator Mark Brewer (previously mentioned here)! LOVE it!

Graphic Anatomy's Free Calendars!

Sam Thorp (aka gRAPHIC aNATOMY) is sharing with her fans free, downloadable 2010 calendars! She made two versions, as you can see here, which you can download the male or female version. I absolutely love Sam's work, and these sketchy figures are a reminder of how well Sam knows her anatomy - you can see the underlying muscles that make up the line art. And now you can hang up this calendar as inspiration to do more figure drawing - something that never gets old and is an excellent practice no matter what you draw or what level you are!
Link

What Day Is It Today?

Click to view bigger!So we all know that the new year has just begun, but do you have a 2010 calendar yet? No?!! Well good thing Strawberryluna designed this cute and convenient 2010 poster for you and is selling prints of it on her site (or her 1000 Markets or Etsy pages). It's on sale on her Etsy page right now for $5 off! Go pick up yours now!

Link

Elizabeth Perry's Sketchbook!

We recently ran across the rad daily drawings blog of Elizabeth Perry! These sketches provide insight into the Perry's thought behind every line in these drawings with a cool, gritty, rawness to each piece. What I find so cool about these drawings is that they each tell their own story about a particular day, and with great simplicity of watercolors or black ink, while maintaining appealing, simple compositions on the moleskine sketchbook pages. Elizabeth says:

When I began to draw four years ago, drawing every day gave me the excuse to slow down and pay closer attention to ordinary things. The more I drew, the more I noticed, and the more drawing became integral to the way I see. I use very portable materials: fountain pen, brush pen, waterbrush, and sometimes gouache (which I keep in a painting kit made from a mini-Altoids tin), so I can work almost anywhere. Pittsburgh, in Pennsylvania, is a city of hills and rivers, of unexpected neighborhoods and surprising views — I've lived here nearly half my life, now, and look forward to showing you some of what I see.

Follow her daily sketches on her blog, Woolgathering!

Rob Rogers on Meet the Press

Click to embiggen!Mr. (Rob) Rogers' comic (above) was recently mentioned on MSNBC's Meet the Press without credit given. So just so you and we all know who drew this thing, and a good wrap-up to the decade! Onward 2010!

UPDATE:
And another!
(As seen in the Post-Gazette!)

S.W. Randall Toys

S.W. Randall Toys (630 Smithfield St) has been around since 1970, and has a surprisingly large amount of toys considering how small it is.

The toy store was recently featured in the Pittsburgh Business Times:

"While the store’s neighborhood locations in Shadyside and Squirrel Hill continue to target mostly children, the Downtown store now caters to Downtown office workers as well. Jewelry boxes, music boxes, figurines, remote-control toys, Santa Claus dolls, ornaments — (Owner Jack) Cohen likely has stocked it all, offering wide selection instead of focusing on volume sales of a few items the way chains stores often do."

This place is definitely worth the visit, and even though you can't buy Wii games here, you can buy a variety of unique toys and gifts you won't find in any big box store.

If you love jigsaw puzzles like I do, check out their game & puzzle section. No joke- 25,000+ piece puzzles!

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Merry Christmas from Pat!

Click to embiggen!Here is Pat Lewis' awesome Christmas card!

Link

The New Yinzer Presents at Modernformations Tonight!

For just 5 bucks at Modernformations at 8pm, you can enjoy some fine reading by out-of-town poets John Grochalski and Ally Malinenko. "Also on tap for the evening are the local favorites Ed Steck, Renee Alberts, Margaret Bashaar, Joel W. Coggins, and Jessica Fenlon."
Link

SPACE opens Behind the Scenes Tonight, Dec 11!

Tonight, get downtown to checkout Space Gallery's opening reception of Behind the Scenes, a show featuring the works of local gallery owners, gallery sweepers, and other employees of Pittsburgh's museums and galleries from Carnegie Museum of Art, Future Tenant, FE Arts Gallery, The Mattress Factory, the Andy Warhol Museum, and Wood Street Galleries. The opening reception tonight will have FREE beer, wine and food! Personally, I think this is a great idea for a show, and a great opportunity for those behind the scenes to shine. These people work to promote other artist's work while being so inspired and passionate about what field their in, and create their own works but run out of time to promote their own work. This is a great chance for those artists to show you what they're capable of. On the other hand, these artists may not be in art shows for a reason, but either way, there's bound to be at least one good piece at the show! Did I mention that there will be FREE beer and wine, food, and live music by Big Hurry and other local bands!


While the festivities are tonight, you can still catch the show until February 13th.

Link
Link to SPACE
Link to facebook event

SMALL is the New Big at Fe Gallery Tonight, Dec 10!

Click to embiggen!Come out tonight to enjoy Fe Gallery's (4102 Butler St) opening reception for SMALL is the New Big from 7 to 9! Pop City has a nice article about the show, saying:

This month, a new exhibition at Lawrenceville-based Fe Arts Gallery is taking a closer look (you'll have to too!) at the art of intimate objects. When organizing Small is the New Big, gallery director Jill Larson invited 25 of her favorite artists to create 25 works just five inches or smaller. You do the math: that's 625 works of art on display in one 700-square-foot space. Dubbed "25 Squared," the show runs through Jan. 16, 2010.

Hailing from as far away as Germany and as close as Butler St. — not to mention spanning ages 20 to 70 — participating artists work in a range of media, including sculpture, painting, photography and even living terrariums.

So much art in one place! Checkout one of Maria Mangano's rad works that will be at the show tonight, found on her blog!
Link to facebook event

Dead Man's Chest O' Books! Shiver Me Timbers!

Over on John Mander's blog, he posted some great photos of a recent project he did to be auctioned off in a charity event for Beginning with Books. It really looks like John had a lot of fun making this, and I think it would look great in a studio space, or children's room!



Link to John's original post with more pictures!

Chalkbot

Here's a great short video (2 minutes) about the Chalkbot robot that Nathan Martin and David Evans from deeplocal built by hand. The Chalkbot was funded by Nike writes messages with, you guessed it, chalk, on concrete and was featured in this year's Tour de France. It's awesome! Now if only these were affordable I would totally get one and run it all the way up and down Carson and Penn printing images!

WIP's by Susan Constanse

Here are a few very nice new WIP's by the very talented Susan Constanse. Susan's paintings have such fluid, free-flowing lines and shades of abstraction which create a beautiful sense of depth which leaves the rest up to your imagination. Can't wait to see more Susan!
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