Pencil on bond paper, at least I think it was bond.

I promise the results of this won’t be this dark, bony and messy.

What’s your favorite animal and/or plant?
No humans or characters, please and thank you. Fantastic beasts are fine, though.

LOST SKETCHBOOK: Red, passport-sized, Muji made.

LAST SEEN: London Borough of Hammersmith, the boot of an illegal cab. My idiot dude companion at the time signaled the cab, left my overnight bag there and then waved the driver off, making the whole thing impossible to trace.

CONTAINS: Recorded scenes of Miffy’s 50th birthday at the National Library of Scotland, epigrams on simplicity from Dick Bruna. Selected paraphernalia from Pixar’s exclusive exhibit 20 Years of Animation, again in Scotland. Chummy London Bobby’s exposition of English football fans concussing each other with newspapers and slitting faces with credit cards. Carnaby Street style sketches in ballpoint and Pantone marker. More fully realized drawings of the Red Dragon of Wales, same medium. A couple nightmares about exorcism. Cartoons of two unbelievably fat Welsh sheep in pencil.

(These days I do most sketching on loose brown paper – that archway drawn from memory is in Edinburgh, not London.)

The photo is taken from the RISD website. I think the ID department metal shop still has it in one of the display cases, along with a stainless steel micro toaster I designed.

Cripes. I am in dire need of forming this documentation habit.

Then after MIT, I took the train back to RISD for the grad show.
This year’s crop was epic.

I went to MIT last month to catch up with some friends and former classmates, one of whom had an exhibit opening there.

From the official exhibition press:

The MIT List Visual Arts Center is pleased to present Orthostatic Tolerance: It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home, the next phase of a new project by Bahamian-born, New York-based artist Tavares Strachan. Since 2006, Strachan has been working on this multiphase body of work that explores space and deep-sea training. The Orthostatic Tolerance comes after two years of intensive research and hands-on training that has taken the artist to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The solo exhibition at the List Center features a number of new works that were developed during Stachan’s recent residency at MIT.

The space bastard aimed for NYC Restaurant Week when I was lost in the euphoria of some mean ravioli to finagle that promise to give him this chair! So once more, any tips on its whereabouts would be gratefully received.

T’s show comes down this July 11. Not to reduce its myriad wonders to mere technical wizardry, but there is a working rocket made from Bahamian sand and powered solely by sugar cane.

There is also a monumental skeleton made invisible via time-honored Venetian artistry.

Honestly, go see this if you can.

That drawing just reminded me of this one- same medium, same period. Different surface, though – this was in a pocket sized notebook.

Yea, I lost that notebook.

But I still have this sketch in my possession!

Lost this one too.

It’s so adolescent, but there’s ridiculous sentimental value – it was the first big drawing I made after getting out of foster care, and one of the few pieces saved from my first high school where they vandalized my artwork.

I need to document everything, even if it’s garbage, just to get in a good sort of habit.

If you see this surface somewhere, would you please let me know?

I lose track of my work so often, it’s disgraceful. Alack, a blog!

This chair first went on exhibit in Montreal, then RISD, then Marseilles. It was scheduled to show in Kyoto, but I don’t know if it even made the trip over.

I designed and built this when I was obsessed with Kendo and had unlimited access to fine, industrial felt in Mexico.

And yes, it is functional; grown under proper conditions, bamboo has a higher tensile strength than steel, while felt is singular in that you can cut it any which way without compromising structural integrity.

If anyone spots this, please drop me a line – I’ve promised it to sculptor Tavares Strachan. Thanks in advance.

Besides keeping track of and tracking down work, I think it will be nice to keep a public account for my friends in case I get dispatched this year.