My BFF Hannah sent me a video her pals made. They said "Thank you for putting this on the website, we really appreciate it". Apparently it took four people (David Storch, Mike Api, Evan Menak, Christopher Vespoli) to make this.

Aleks Sennwald is this week's featured artist. Check out this cool video she made about compact fluorescent (energy saving) light bulbs. It's like that Smashing Pumpkins video for "Tonight, Tonight", only with light bulbs instead of the aeroplane and a volcano instead of D'Arcy. Plus, it's illustrated!

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Bracing The Cannon

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This week's featured artist, Jim Kaufmann, recently curated a collage show at the TAG Art Gallery in Nashville. A recent piece from his blog is below, followed by some of the work displayed at the show.

Pesce Withdrawn by Jim Kaufmann

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Koshimaki-Osen

Alex Gross is this week's featured artist. Here's a great description from his book:

Surrealist artist Alex Gross features striking, dreamlike imagery that transcends category. Gross paints a haunting m lange of fairytale, allegory, history, and pop culture, fusing eastern and western aesthetics in an ethereal world populated by kimono-clad Japanese women and lost Victorian dandies. In more than eighty exquisite color images, comprising all of Gross's gallery work, silk screens, etchings, and sketches, this volume illuminates his singular blend of realism and whimsy. Embraced and collected by art connoisseurs and lowbrow fans alike, Gross's work is both enigmatic and irresistible.

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"Arbuckle" by Tailsteak

I overheard Craig talking about a Garfield comic called Arbuckle that reminded me of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The artists remove Garfield's thought bubbles and now the comic is all about Jon. Some of the strips are kind of weird. So I was reminded of another Garfield "spinoff" where Garfield's thought bubbles are removed from the original comics.

"Garfield" by Jim Davis

Maybe I just like it more because it's the original Jim Davis art (totally awesome), or maybe I just like it because it's described as "surrealist". Either way, no one likes Jon. Except maybe this guy, who likes to post and explain every comic! Because they are confusing.

"Garfield" by Jim Davis

Apparently this strip is about "...the implication that Garfield is using Jon's absence as an excuse for binging and being sedentary; telling himself he's only doing this because Jon's not here to stop him, as if he would behave differently otherwise." Who knew?

This is Bob Flynn's illustration for Roger Omar's book, Elmonstruodecoloresnotieneboca, ("The colorful monster has no mouth", duh!), a collection of childrens' dreams. Here's what Bob had to work from:

I was in a planet with a lot of volcanos, and it was too hot.
I was walking when a big lava-monster jumped out from a volcano.
I threw laser-rays from one hand, and ice from the other hand.
The monster threw gigantic lava balls. I could not beat him until I threw ice to him.
Weakened, the monster went inside the volcano and did not came back.

This totally reminds me of the dreams I had after drinking a thimble of NyQuil and reading Goodnight, Moon when I was a kid. Here's two more:

Oliveiro Dumas

Martin Ontiveros

Apparently Explosions In The Sky have gotten a little more popular. Last week, my woman and I saw them play at the Society For Ethical Culture as part of the Wordless Music Series. When I've seen them in the past, I was usually close enough to (almost) get hit in the face with a guitar. Awesome! This time we were farther away than usual, but the seats were comfortable and the show was still great (in spite of the old people, the awful hipsters who kept calling the LPs "vinyls" and the fact that we had to pay more than face value for the tickets).

I don't think the audience was supposed to clap in between songs, but the band kept rocking out for over an hour without our approval. Luckily, my digital camera has a zoom lens and Shira was able to take a picture where you can see that the band is made up of regular-sized people.

They played some great songs from their new album, All Of A Sudden I Miss Everyone, and some old favorites from their last two albums. If you listen to their new single while looking at the pictures...it's pretty boring, unless you already like this band. But if you look at these pictures from the same show, maybe the music will seem more interesting:

[Every Tuesday, Jewcy's Art Director Michael Morlitz will post an image with commentary to visually spice up the Daily Shvitz. This is his first installment. Cutesy title for this series forthcoming.]

Apparently, this is what they do for fun there, so count me in! The website says: The rules are simple: I put the self-timer on 2 seconds, push the button and try to get as far from the camera as I can.

Plaszoom, Rotterdam

Wijnstraat, Dordrecht

There's a lot of pictures, but it's hard to tell if he's running fast or if he's a slowpoke. I bet he's speedy quick though. He only has two seconds!