a circle, a sphere

Last spring my brother got married and for this happy happy happy occasion I made a little book to show him and my new sister-in-law how happy happy happy I was (and am). There's content in it, even in the medium I drew it in. I originally passed it out during their reception saying, "In honor of this occasion I created this small book. Enjoy."

You can download a diy PDF here to print it out and make it yourself. Please do, and pass it around all over the place.

Books at Anteism

I'm glad to say that the folks at Anteism are including my little DIY PDF books in the book orders they send out - in fact I'm making special Anteism branded versions of several of the books just for them. So go buy their stuff!

This kind of thing is exactly why I make these books as PDFs with a creative commons license - to get the work out into the world. I'm excited for the same reason I was excited about the book that printed in C-VILLE, a local weekly here in Charlottesville - many many more people were going to see the weird things I make.

A writer whose work I like says that the problem with art in the internet age isn't piracy or not getting paid - it's not getting noticed through the seas and seas of other content out there. I'm copying him and others when I adopt a "dandelion" strategy for my works distribution - send all the seeds out I can in all the ways I can think of and I know that some, a tiny percentage maybe but still some, will grow.

free book- Seed Toss, Rough Cut

I'm happy to release a new d.i.y. picture-story book, Seed Toss, Rough Cut. The book is a PDF download from my website here. It's a do-it-yourself book - you can print it out, and then follow the directions on the page to fold it up into a little book.

I'm releasing it under a Creative Commons license which means you can copy it, send it to your friends and even remix it as long as I get some credit and you don't sell it.

You can also read it here:

petals, a spell

You can get the d.i.y. origami book for free here. Thanks for the mentions online:

Metabunker (Matthias Wivel)

Bill Randall

Journalista

The Ephemerist

Newsarama

Cross Hatch Dispatch

Artblog.net

UPDATE: I missed one - Comics Reporter - Thanks Tom!

For those getting frustrated, I plan to make a little video that might help out. Out soon unless new baby arrives first - stay tuned.

free book - petals, a spell

I'm happy to release a new d.i.y. origami picture-story book petals, a spell. The book is a PDF download from my website here. It's a origami book - you can print it out, and then follow the directions to fold it up into a little book.



I'm releasing it under a Creative Commons license which means you can copy it, send it to your friends and even remix it as long as I get some credit and you don't sell it.

New website and free book

I've updated and moved around my website - it's now at www.craghead.com,. The old wcraghead.com will host this blog and will point to the new site. I've added a couple new things: links, bio, press, plus more sample pages of books and a new blog of my postcard drawings postcards AHOY.

One brand new thing is a new book Lisboa, Lisbon which is based on my trip to Portugal last fall. Lisboa, Lisbon is available for reading on the new site or as a free PDF download that you can fold up, staple and play with. I'm releasing it with a Creative Commons license which means you can copy it to your friends, send it to anyone and even remix it as long as I get some credit and you don't sell it. I'll probably post it in its entirety here on the blog, but you can read it (or make it!) right now if you want.

more HTBE

I started doing the drawings for the book several years ago while I lived in upstate New York. My wife was in school and I went with her to the library where she would study and I would draw. I did tons of drawings from Apollinaire's poetry, eventually putting together a xeroxed book to see how they fit together. It turned out ok, but needed more work so I shelved the project, intending to come back to it later.

That later was last year when Elyse at Gallery Neptune asked me to show at her gallery during Bethesda's annual literary festival. So I re-drew most of them and made many more, then assembled them into a book.

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HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE
Gallery Neptune, Bethesda, Maryland.
April 6 - 28. 2007, reception Friday April 13, 6 - 9 pm.
All the work, and a 100-page limited-edition book of drawings published at the same time, is based on the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire.

another page from HTBE

Apollinaire was in WWI, fighting for the French, eventually becoming a citizen. He was in the artillery, then in the trenches where he wrote peoms right in the middle of it all. He was reading a literary magazine Mercure De France when he was wounded in the head by a shell, eventually needing two skull operations. After recovering somewhat, he was assigned - get this - as a censor for the War Department. So he got to sit around and read all day in Paris.

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HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE
Gallery Neptune , Bethesda, Maryland.
April 6 - 28. 2007, reception Friday April 13, 6 - 9 pm.
All the work, and a 100-page limited-edition book of drawings published at the same time, is based on the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire.

more pages from HTBE

This chunk of text is from Apollinaire's poem "Le Petit Auto", one of my favorites - I did a wall piece from the poem too. He wrote it about the outbreak of WWI and how he and a pal were driving across France to Paris the night it all started. It was like driving into a new era. He ends the poem with this line:




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HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE
Gallery Neptune , Bethesda, Maryland.
April 6 - 28. 2007, reception Friday April 13, 6 - 9 pm.
All the work, and a 100-page limited-edition book of drawings published at the same time, is based on the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire.

another page from the HTBE book

Apollinaire was coming from the Symbolist tradition in poetry, a romantic and at times mystical way of writing. His early work is certainly a part of this, but in his first collection, Alcools, one can see him stepping away from all that moonlight and drowsiness and towards the Paris he was living in - one of automobiles, airplanes and what he later called "simultaneity". Think cubism in words.

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Some online mentions of the show:

Journalista (The Comics Journal blog)

Collage Clearinghouse

Mid-Atlantic and DC Art News

Thanks!

I should also mention that the book is available from me - email me if you want one. Or come by the show and but one there. In a few weeks I'll have it in stock at some online stores...

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HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE
Gallery Neptune , Bethesda, Maryland.
April 6 - 28. 2007, reception Friday April 13, 6 - 9 pm.
All the work, and a 100-page limited-edition book of drawings published at the same time, is based on the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire.

a page from the HTBE book

This is the one of the 90 drawings in the book - image by me, text taken from Apollinaire. One of the things about Apollinaires poetry I like is his sense of he future. He has an oversized sense of himself and poet/artists in general as seers and prophets - he calls them hills that see farther; he likens them to airplanes (exotic things in the pre WWI 1900s). His work embodies the spirit of that pre-war time, with his eyes fully focussed on the future and how to make it come alive.

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HOW TO BE EVERYWHERE
Gallery Neptune , Bethesda, Maryland.
April 6 - 28. 2007, reception Friday April 13, 6 - 9 pm.
All the work, and a 100-page limited-edition book of drawings published at the same time, is based on the poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire.