From The Archives: 2001 Maze Poster Pieces

From the Archives: Portfolio 2001 Back Cover

This is my favorite of the three 2001 portfolio pieces.  The aura of mystery alone sustains it.

The front cover initiates the portfolio.   It is very presentation oriented and uncomfortably intimate.  The table of contents, still presentational, is focused on organized content.  This is the end of the portfolio, or even further after the end.  The portfolio is finished and these are the last visual echoes of its passing.

The fire of inspiration has been extinguished and the plumes of smoke evaporate into the night sky.  Here the hand of the artist is retreating, fading into the night of clouds.  The portfolio has been presented and the hand now moves away, leaving you to think on what you have observed.  The image block of the moon has lost its glow and become transparent, its contrast and intensity diminished.  It is being absorbed now by the sky. 

This piece is best observed while listening to Cocteau Twins or Dead Can Dance.  I recommend Victorialand or Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, respectively.  I know this is all pretentious and silly, but once in awhile there are those images that move beyond mere representation and step into the mythic, the symbolic.  I am very grateful to have had this image move through me.  Pretentious or not, the mystery within this piece moves me.

Like the preceding pieces from my 2001 portfolio, this was scanned from a physical copy.  This one had many touches up as well and also was sadly lost to The Hunger of the Zip Disks.

{digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

From the Archives: Portfolio 2001 TOC

Here is the Table of Contents to my 2001 portfolio.  This piece was also another victim of The Hunger of the Zip Disks.  This was scanned from a physical copy and touched up a lot due to dust and scratches.

This one had a lot more touch up to do than the front cover or the back.  The xerox copy does not stand the test of time well...especially if it is a full density copy like this - lots of scratches.  Also the scanner I had access to for these scans was a little weird and crappy.  I'm not sure how or why, but there was a huge finger print on the INSIDE of the scanner glass.  Impossible to reach and clean.  Sigh.  I was was pushed for time and had no opportunity to search out another scanner, so I made do and hoped that my Photoshop skills would be mad enough to fix the problem.  I'll let you be the judge of that one.

A majority of the interior of this portfolio was done in black and white to conserve cash.  If the pieces being displayed needed color, those pages would be in color, but otherwise the interiors were black and white xerox copies.  It helps that at the time I was working at Kinko's (Fedex Office to you young'uns)...and yes I paid for all my copies!

Creepy-too-many-fingered-hand just waiting there in the darkness.  Something very arachnid about it despite there being 10 phalanges. It does give me the spider vibe.  No wonder this portfolio never got me a job...LOL...I was showing it to the wrong people.  I bet all the comic book guys were like - what the hell?!?!  AAAAAAAA  Go away creepy artist boy!  I should have been cruising Fangoria or something with this.  Go fig.  My hands again.  Text added in Photoshop.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

From the Archives: Portfolio 2001 Front Cover

In 2001, I took all of my current artwork and created my portfolio for the year.  Sadly, this and most of the digital pieces from that portfolio were lost to the Hunger of the Zip Disks.  I finally figured out that the zip disk scramble must have happened around the last quarter of 2001 or at some time in 2002 because I made this portfolio to show at Dragoncon in August of 2001. 

I was very lucky recently to discover I still had a physical copy of this portfolio.  I was able to scan several images from it.  After scanning, I had to touch it up a bit due to dust and scratches, but the most of the image integrity is still intact.  It is a bit dark, but so was the original Photoshop file.  Those are my hands in the background.  If I remember correctly, everything else was created in Photoshop.  The Moon image/card in the center is from my business card at the time, but here it is inverted from its original values.  I wanted to create an artificial space that would give a feeling of Mystery and Magick in its artificiality.  I hoped to add to that by confronting the viewer with something that is at first glance seems mostly normal, but upon closer inspection is challenging to understand. 

There is always such a strange relationship between my business cards and my portfolios.  They trade off themes very readily and sometimes dominate each other.  My two favorite portfolios so far have taken their themes from my preexisting business cards.   This portfolio and my current one both followed themes that I had used on the business cards prior to making the portfolio.  I don't currently have a copy of my business card from this time frame but I will find it and post.  :-)  My current card is here.

{Digital Images manipulated in Photoshop}

Murder in the Maze Part III: The Second Murderer

During third and fourth years of the Maze parties, so many people were playing the Murder in the Maze game that we developed an alternate set of rules for a second murderer within the game.  This was to help the game last a little longer with a large crowd so that everyone would have the opportunity to be "killed".  Also, sometimes the games would run long and people would have to head home to bed and had not had a chance yet to be the murderer.  So we inserted a second murderer to up the ante across the board!  There were several variations on how the second murderer was activated and came into play.  I don't remember them all, but following is the rule we used most often.

During the game, if the first murderer tapped the second murderer on the shoulder, then the second murderer was activated and tapped the first on the shoulder letting him know that he had become a murder victim and was dead.

Once this unknown murder had occurred, it would throw off any theory anyone had developed so far on the identity of the murderer and turn the game intrigue up to 11!  There was always lots of chatting after we were finished playing about who was where when and who secretly or not so secretly was watching or overheard when the murders were committed.  Lots of fun moments in the dark scaring the crap out of each other!  Good Times!  :-P

The first piece of art here is the flyer for the 2000 Maze party.  The flyer was printed on neon green and neon orange paper.  I apologize for my crappy scythe.  The image of Jack here has a MUCH better scythe!  :-)  Over time, Jack kind of became the official mascot for the maze parties.

{Pen & Ink, Text created in Photoshop}

The second piece of art here is the box I created for the deck of cards I created in Photoshop for the game.  During that time I had backed up many of my art files to zip disks and did not realize my error until too late.  I don't remember the exact year it occurred, but rapidly over several months time, all of my zip disks began to scramble and become unreadable.  I found out far too late that this is something that happens with zip disks over time.  I lost two years of artwork due to the scrambling.  The Murder in the Maze deck artwork was on those disks.  I've looked through all my old files to see if I had a hidden copy, but have not found any trace of the cards.

The person on the front of the box is my friend Don.  He let me xerox his face and use it as the cover.  The image from the back of the box is a skull painted by my dearly departed friend Ratboy aka Mike.  It was attached and used as the keystone in a fearsome archway we built for the entrance to the maze.  I'll see if I can find a picture of the archway and post it at some point.  The background is from several photos Don took of the black plastic that we used to construct the maze.  Those photos were used in the website we created to celebrate and advertise the Maze.  The website only ran for a couple of years but is no longer present on the web.  In my next post I will post some of the work I did for the site and give some more background info on it.

{Digital images manipulated in Photoshop}

More Maze History and Art: