2008 July 16: This has been the busiest, craziest year of my life, which is great fun on one hand, but also a pain because in fact, I am a profoundly lazy man. I just want to say thank you to all the great people I've met in the past year, from art exhibitions to working on the book to staging shows with Catclaw and doing book-signing and speaking engagements. There's a lot more interesting stuff yet to come before this year is out, though, and YOU can help! Contact me if you enjoy making lots of things happen for their own sake. April 20: My new book, Weird Kentucky, is now officially released from Sterling and is in stores nationwide! I'll be on the road all summer to promote it, doing book-signing appearances and speaking tours, hope to see you out there! March 24: The last gasp of Project Egg (now cancelled) is a new endeavor called Eggs That Are Forsaken. I'm giving away some of the plastic prize-filled eggs intended for Project Egg Phase Three to anyone who sends a letter requesting one. This offer is good only through the month of April, and all requests must be postmarked between April 1 and April 30. Send your egg requests (one per person, please) to: JSHNYC, 242 E. 38th Street #2C, New York, NY 10016. After April 30, all remaining eggs (thousands of them) will be shredded into pulp and used as raw material to add to the surface texture of my paintings. January 27: My new theatre company, Catclaw, had their first organizational meeting tonight. We're gathering an eclectic and talented group of people, and I'm looking forward to working with them in 2008! We're currently doing prelimary work on productions of a story about Toulouse-Lautrec's absinthe addiction called Toulouse-inations and a contested apocryphal Shakespeare play called The Birth of Merlin. (Watch the Catclaw website for further details, as I tend to keep this site strictly about my painting). January 7: After considering the environmental impact, I've decided to cancel Project Egg Phase Three. The existing eggs that are still out there somewhere will suffice for anyone who really wants to track them down. It's possible that I may do further similar projects in the future, but with some sort of different, environmentally sound, vehicle for the goodies. 2007 November 7: There have been several Keyscratchings surprise exhibitions this year (most of them unannounced, of course) but now we're really going into a serious season of bringing the JSHNYC organic copolymer prints of my work to all sorts of unusual venues! You can help - contact me! For a list of show dates, click here. October 4: This weekend, for those of you in the Louisville area, I'll be once again roving around the St.James Art Fair, guerilla-hawking my automatismally trance-spouted Crispy Cards. See you there! September 16: I had forgotten all about filmmaker Stan Woodward coming to film Sarah Elizabeth Whitehead the night we played onstage together at the Rudyard Kipling. Turns out that footage has ended up in Woodward's new documentary Burgoo, which will air soon on PBS. May 31: I just got back from four days in Kentucky's Greenbo Lake State Resort Park, where I did a more informal version of my Dark Observatory performance/lecture series for hundreds of visitors, plus created a new painting I've been commissioned by the state to do. I had a great time, got very spoiled on the VIP treatment given, and I'd like to thank every employee at the park's Jesse Stuart lodge hotel for being so helpful and nice! Thanks to Sarah Lynch for this nice article in the Ashland Daily Independent, and biggest thanks of all to David Deborde, Amy Deborde, and Cary Q. Lyle for putting the whole event together - you're all on my "drinks are on me" list from here to eternity. April 4: I was well pleased with Kaelan Hollon's article in LEO Magazine this week. It's been quite a hectic week, between working on the egg thing and the KISS thing. I'll be glad when April is over! Meanwhile, Project Egg Phase Two is now underway and already showing greater results than last year's installation. If you find one of my eggs anywhere in the USA, Click here to register it! March 14: Lots going on these days... I'm preparing for the KISS Coffeehouse show Fuel to Build A Fire in April, and Phase II of Project Egg, both taking place in April. There'll be more Dark Observatory live performances and Keyscratchings shows this summer too, as well as some super secret special projects that will also be announced in April or May. I'm ready for a vacation already! Now more than ever, I am hiring. February 2: Well, the whole unbelievable brouhaha over the Aqua Teen Hunger Force lightbox ad campaign in Boston has me seriously reconsidering Project Egg Phase II, in which I'd planned to disperse art-filled Easter eggs in all 50 states. I'm definitely going to dis-include Boston from the project now, of course. January 29, 2007: The 2007 Dark Observatory tour started off with a bang the other night at the Bingham Theater in Louisville. My most sincere and profuse thanks to all who attended. The next one will be in Evansville, Indiana on February 10th. 2006 September 22: How can it be almost October already? It was a short summer, Charlie Brown. I've been too busy to update the site much, but Rob Ruane's site keeps track of stuff better than I ever could anyway. The main things that have kept me busy this summer: the simultaneous exhibitions in NYC and Seattle; my photography projects; working on a new major-distribution book project about paranormal activity in Kentucky, and running the Cinderblock Gallery on Main Street in Louisville, which I closed down after only three months because of structural issues with the building. I hear some other people are about to try to give it a go though. Working on my own showroom/gallery in NYC is a bigger priority for me right now. I'm also still working on the Dark Observatory performance series and the Panola comics (nope, I haven't forgotten them!) It looks 2007 is going to be a massive culmination of all the unfinished back-burner projects I've been talking about for the past couple of years. Thanks to faithful friends for their continued support. May 11:I know I haven't updated the Project Egg reports lately, but the findings have just about sputtered out anyway. I've been too busy to think. Between working on the upcoming shows in Seattle and NYC, Project Egg, the next wave of photography shows, new t-shirts and silkscreen prints, and more, I'm about ready to become a hermit and go live in a shack in Red River Gorge. I really need to start delegating. E-mail me if you wanna help out. Like the guy on The Sopranos said, "Don't hesitate to call if there's ever anything you can do for me". April 3: People are beginning to register their eggs from Project Egg even more quickly than I would have thought! Good to know that in this super-busy high-pressure world, there are still people who would notice an egg and pick it up and open it and bother to go to a website because a tiny piece of dirty cardboard inside asked them to do it. March 15: "Night Life", the new CD of Hasil Adkins' final recording session, is out and slowly starting to appear on shelves. It's a nice (but disconcerting) feeling to walk into a store and see my artwork on the CD cover. February 7: My most ambitious project yet, Project Egg, is now formally announced. Alicia thinks I should wear a bunny suit while I distribute the eggs around the various cities. Intriguing idea, "but then again.... no." January 21, 2006: The PBS crew that's been working on two different pieces on me (one a full-fledged documentary, the other a segment for a program called "Backstreet") came to shoot some more material this week, including a shoot at my new Louisville studio inside the Cinderblock Gallery. The current image on the front page of the site shows co-producer Mindy Yarberry and I shooting on the streets of Butchertown. January 5, 2006: Lots of new projects coming up for the new year: the Dark Observatory performances will begin soon, I'm starting work on a graphic novel called Panola based on strips from Window Comics installation. And then there's Project Egg, a super secret project that must remain secret for now even though I just told you about it. The show at Lexington's Limelight Gallery may be up in the air because they're having severe problems with their space and their landlord, but the show will go on, a bis ou a blanc. 2005 October 4: The Louisville Guide has an article by Paula Kounse in the current issue. Images are here. It made a nice coda to the Retrocognition show - thanks to all who attended! September 7: The new issue of LEO Magazine has a nice little feature on me written by the great Paul K. I was on my third bottle of Duvel's during the interview, and left Paul with the mistaken impression that the crude comics in my studio window were paintings. Oops. Hope no one's disappointed if they trudge over here expecting paintings and instead getting crude sketches done in minutes on the back of a McDonald's placemat. August 5: The Worst Day on Earth group show opens tonight in Louisville. I'll be there showing four paintings, including Sparky which also appeared in last year's Small Voices: Microscopic Paintings exhibit. August 3: The Stuckism/Remodernism show Addressing the Shadow opens tonight in NYC, with Charles Thomson, Ella Guru, Sexton Ming, Terry Marks, Wolf Howard and others. I'm exhibiting the large Devil Chef painting, a smaller version of which is also currently still on display at the Jigsaw Gallery in NYC. June 20: I've started Window Comics, an ongoing public art installation in the front window of my studio on 1661 Story Avenue in Louisville. Every sunday a new installment of strange, primitive, and hastily rendered comics will appear in the window. The comics probably won't be archived online, or anywhere else for that matter. June 7: PBS TV producer Barbara Deeb and a camera crew were here yesterday working on a piece about me to be aired soon. I was severely out of it from lack of sleep, so we'll see if they can edit my remarks into something coherent! They filmed me working on a currently untitled new piece in my studio, and sitting around my home rambling about folklore, non-linear philosophy, and the paranormal. May 31: The Invisible Topography show has been postponed until next year, to give myself enough time to properly assemble the enormous construction that will contain the exhibit. A new show, Retrocognition, will be announced shortly. April 28: I just found out today about Hasil Adkins' death. I've been in a daze all day, but have cobbled together a small tribute page to him. April 25: I've been asked to write a monthly column for the Louisville Guide magazine starting with the next issue. The column will be based on my Unusual Kentucky website, but with a greater slant towards weirdness related to the Arts. I'll also be a staff writer contributing other articles from time to time. March 19: Existentialist Clown Comics from Clowns in Love will soon be the basis for a comic book published by Moist Doorknob in Louisiana. I have a pic here of the prototype cover and back cover. Not sure exactly when they're putting it out. February 22: Columbia University's newspaper, the Columbia Spectator, has a review of the Clowns in Love show in today's issue. Although there were a few head-scratching moments in it, all in all I think it's a great article. You can read it on Columbia's website. I don't know how long they archive back issues online, so I have my own copy here as well. February 20: I've posted some images from Cynthia Norton's performance art piece Pulidora-Polishing Machine, which I recently took part in. They can be seen here. Jon Shelton also has some pictures of the event up on his site here. February 11: The Clowns in Love show opened tonight at NYC's Jigsaw Gallery.....Grillo the Clown will be there frightening the guests and loading up on free cheese and cupcakes. Local filmmaker Jay Leibowitz's short film Coulrophobia will be playing on a laptop as part of the installation. The show will run until around the 25th, so try to check it out if you missed the opening. January 29: Amy Barnes of the Courier-Journal did a very nice article about me and my Unusual Kentucky website. Even more exciting to me than the article itself is that they used Midnight at Pope Lick for the front cover. January 28: Tonight I'm the guest on "My Poignant Moment", a local public access TV program hosted by fellow painter Michael O'Bannon. The show airs at 11:30pm, on Insight Channel 98. January 13, 2005: This morning I was interviewed on and off for two hours on WAVE-TV's (Louisville's Channel 3) morning show. I haven't been up that early in years (except for when I stay up all night). We talked about the Abandoned Art show, showed off a sneak preview of the Invisible Topography exhibition, and even managed to get a plug in for RV&OI, whose portrait I painted. 2004 December 29: Fragments of the 20th Century opens today in Somerville, MA, a suburb of Boston. It's at the Someday Cafe in Davis Square, and I hope to see you there. There'll be portraits of such twentieth-century heroes of mine as Pagan Kennedy, Jack Kerouac, Cole Porter, Peter Criss, and many more. December 10: Tonight Gatewood Galbraith and I will be appearing at the Barnes & Noble in Summit Plaza in Louisville. I'll be unveiling my portrait of him and formally presenting it to him in front of the press, who probably won't know what to make of my ultra-minimalist rendering of Gatewood. December 1: I'm now officially represented in the Lone Star State by the Blah Blah Gallery, a favorite of the Juxtapoz crowd. I'm honored to be shown side by side with Mark Mothersbaugh in their "Post-Pop Expressionism" section. November 24: Tim Ritter's Twisted Illusions 2 is now out on DVD.... I have a small part in it, playing a degenerate video store owner who hires a hit man to go after deadbeats who don't return their videos. Brains on Film's Larry Treadway plays the hit man. It can be obtained at b-movie.com.