late recently, i happened to catch the latest installment in the "american masters" series on my shameless favorite of networks, pbs. on this edition, the master at hand was dalton trumbo, a prolific and somewhat genius writer of the early 40's who was eventually blacklisted, not for being a member of the communist part - but rather, for not denying it. here is an excerpt from that episode and, although you may be a bit off put by the subject matter, you cannot be offended by his mastery of the english language.

best,
-odd

sometimes stop, sometimes go

recently, as a couple of you may know, i hit a major stumbling block as my hard drive up and died on me. a miserable situation amplified by the steady stream of unfortunate events filling my calendar over the past several months. trapped in said hard drive are five years of my miserable stuffs, including every piece i've ever worked on, a slew of product designs, my entire contact list, a bevy of concepts for upcoming works, etc., etc., you get the point. it sucks! i suppose the hardest part to swallow is that i'd backed my system up onto disks not all that long ago , only to lose them when i moved. yeah, i suck, i know! i do have some people working on data recovery and am somewhat confident i'll be getting most, if not all, assets back. however, this whole debacle has completely disrupted the flow of my schedule, knocking me off course, forcing me to cancel out all shows for the remainder of the year. something that makes me sick just thinking of it. i am, as you would imaging, extremely embarrassed and feeling a touch "what the fuck? i deserve this? really?" i guess the hardest part of all of this is that i've had to cancel two major, major shows. events i've been anticipating and working towards for quite a bit now. having to back out at this stage does reflect badly on me, but more importantly, it lets down those who gave me the opportunity to display my work in their shows. something that, more than anything else, makes me feel horrible. to those, i offer up deepest apologies.

with everything said, i've decided to take this time to step back for a bit; give myself time to regroup, rethink, reorganize and reinvent the approach to terribly odd. after working at this non-stop for over five years now, i feel it's time for a shift - both thematically and aesthetically. this isn't to say that it will be a complete departure from what i've done, but rather a leap in the evolution of the work. part of that process is to move into more personal and emotive concepts, tapping the breaks a bit on all the pop culture references; something i'll continue to do here and there, just with less frequency. i guess, in some strange way, i'm making the best of a crap situation. taking this time to shift the works into an new area is something i've been wanting to do for quite some time, but haven't had the opportunity against a consistent wall of looming deadlines.

now, this doesn't mean i'll vanish completely - there will be consistent updates on here as well as my site. updates of sketches and coming concepts, all starting with a new section of terriblyodd.com devoted to the progress of what will be the biggest and best show i've worked on to date, "iconique." iconique, which will take place april 24th next year at bear and bird, will be a show centered around historic french figures such as napoleon, marie antoinette and nostradamus. the show concept is one i've been kicking around in sketchbooks for well over two years and will finally be able to make a reality. all made to look like classic oils done in the odd style, the scale and complexity of these pieces will be unlike anything i've attempted prior. hopefully, it won't underwhelm.

my only hope is to continue to make work that makes, at least some of you, happy. i promise that if you are even marginally interested in the miserable works i've put together up to this point, you'll be excited with what comes next. so, til then, keep your eyes open and hopefully you guys will dig the next phase of odd crap.

all the best,
-m

skate deck update... finished!

woot! was able to get the last bit of work wrapped up on the skate deck yesterday. so here are some pics of how it turned out. i know these aren't the greatest pics, but by the time i finished up yesterday, it was a little too dark to snap off any good shots, so i just shot some with my personal cam this morning. sandra will be here later today and will work her camera magic - i'll post those pics up as well... although you'll all probably be pretty sick of looking at this thing by then.


completed body of deck... pretty happy with how this worked out.

body of deck, detail...

top of deck... detail... like i said, better shots are on the way...

yet another detail of the top...

song-o-the-day

here's a little goodness from octopus project to fill your skull...

i would choke a granma...

for some of this right now....

mmm, sweet potato pie...

skate deck progress... almost there

right. so, as i posted on my site a little back, i'll be taking part in an upcoming (may 21st) show called "useless wooden toys." the show will take place at a slick new shop here in orlando, forty VII clothing and is centered around artwork on skate decks. if i remember correctly, 30 decks will be submitted for this artshow/design competition, the top ten of which will go on to be made into t-shirt designs under the "forty VII brand. (that's why you'll notice a "47" in my design, it's part of the guidelines :o)>) the top vote getter of said bunch gets an extra sweet deal in the form of a shopping spree at forty VII.

seeing as this is a pretty cool concept for the show, and not wanting to submit complete crap, i started the concept for my deck a little while back. i knew that i wanted to a somewhat military-ish theme with my design... so i drafted hannibal of carcinogen for the job. the rest kinda fell into place once i decided to use the little gasmask wearing bastard.

anyways, i'll quit with the yappin' and letcha peep the pics now... oh yeah, thanks to cassandra m. for being so lovely and taking such sweeth pics.

thanks for checkin in,
-odd


rolling out the last bit of color on the "47"

looking like a fool, trying to get this dried up

top of deck, still needs my logo stuck down.

top of deck, detail.

body of deck, just before putting down the hannibal print.

body of deck, detail.

body of deck, with hannibal stuck down... still needs distressing. that comes tomorrow, so come check me then :o)>

fx 2009 was amazing!

this past weekend, i had the pleasure of being one of the invited guests at fx 2009's project vinyl. it was a great opportunity to meet other artists like buff monster, ron english, peekaboo monster, angry woebots and kano... all of which i've got lots of respect for. i guess you could say that it was an honor enough to be part of this group, but to have gained the respect of these artists is something completely different. it's not to say that i value their opinion more than anyone elses, but it's a great thing when you feel you've earned the respect of those you have respect for.

aside from that came plenty of other bits of goodness, some of which i can't really discuss just yet... but lets just say it'll be worth waiting on. it's funny when an event like this turns into so much more than what you would have expected. thanks again to all of you who came out to say hello. and respect to buff, ron, woebots, peekaboo and kano.

check some pics here.



best,
-odd

anxious to check this out!

i've said this plenty of times before, so i'll say it once more... i'm a huge fan of michel gondry's work. now couple that with japan as an integral character in his upcoming film, tokyo! and yeah... it's pretty simple to figure that sandra and i are anxious as hell to see this!!!



poop!
-odd