I started an inspiration blog where I'm going to be stockpiling artists that inspire me in someway. I kept being annoyed that I couldn't remember who did what artwork and then trying to track back to their site. It all just got too annoying. If you have a minute: Check it out here.

A friend just sent me this site for the work of Robert Mars. He uses nostalgic Amerciana to remind us of what the country used to be like before it became over saturated with homogeneous architecture and strip-malls. Check it out here.

Another artist I found recently is Daniel O’Toole. He's an Australian painter who grew up in the graffiti scene and now works primarily on canvas. His characters and use of graphic text design leads to really dynamic results. Check it out here.

I've been spending a lot of time between projects looking for artists that inspire me. Thomas Allen came on the scene a while back with his amazing pulp cover series. He takes old dime store westerns and mystery novels and cuts up the covers to create new scenes that have a really vintage and surreal feel. He even uses multiple books and photographs them together. Take a look at them here.

Been a long time gone. So I've been focusing on work (as should be the case) so I haven't written anything in a bit. There's also a little bug on the back end of the site that's messing with some of the preview images, but the core is still all good. The issue will be fixed soon. I've been working on a lot of stuff. As with everyone else, we are doing more with less. We had a few layoffs but we've been doing really steady since. I've done 3 tv spots since the last post. One we did for Cooper was all kinetic type using images from 4 different sources brought together to look like on cohesive piece. It was my first time with a production like this and it was pretty cool. Then we've also done 2 spots for TD Bank. Of course we had to use R&K since they are the brand spokes-folks. Even with the limitations, we had a lot of fun and I got to rap with Kelly for a minute. She's a really kind and funny lady. We were up in NYC a couple weeks ago for the last shoot and had to spend the whole day in a bus on the side of the street watching through monitors since it was raining. The spot didn't call for rain, but that's the beauty of movie magic. We're in the edit stage right now, and you can't even tell that it was overcast, let alone raining. We've also been working on a totally new 09-10 campaign for PECO. Doing photoshoots and client meetings and all the fun stuff that goes along with it. We shot one of the billboard images in a 19th century renovated townhouse that had no working AC and it was about 100 degrees in there. We still got a great shot out of it and the kid that was our model was the most energetic patient 5 year old of all time. It helped that he had about 8 packs of Swedish Fish. I think I need coffee or Swedish Fish right now, so more later.

Exciting day. Tony got the ChefsofPhilly.com site up and running with a link for ticket purchase. If you are in Philadelphia and you want to go to a great event for a great cause, then get your ticket now. It's 25 bones and 100% of that goes to Philabundance. What you get besides a good feeling? David Ansill, one of the best chefs in Philadelphia, is going to be creating some small dishes for you. The opening is going to go from 5 - 9, but the ticket entry segment with David is going to be from 5 - 6:30 all on March 6th. That's the first Friday of the month. At 6:30 the show will open to the public for free. Come out and buy some art to help feed the hungry. I will be donating 20% of opening night print sales to Philabundance as well. Any other questions or for a preview check ChefsofPhilly.com .

I added a campaign to the advertising section that I did a while back for a pitch. It's a series of 7 billboards promoting a walk-in clinic that had virtually no budget. We had a lot of fun with it and had people laughing out loud at some of them.

Today I have a fear of a cardboard box. With layoffs abound, seeing folks on the street carrying random cardboard boxes full of work lives is creepy. Our industry is no safer than any other. Less in most cases. Now when I see someone at work carrying a box, even if it's just to put their paper recycling in, I get a knot in my gut.

Another really cool thing going on is that I'm getting written up by a great food blog called FooBooz that gives news about the Philly foodie scene. Kirstin saw my work hanging in Cafe Loftus and loved it enough to contact me about it. I'll let you know when it's going to post.

I was rudely woken up yesterday to the sound of crashing brick and bulldozers. Turns out they're tearing a house down a couple doors away from us. I was upset at first, until I realized that they hadn't tossed out the old floorboards yet. I had the guy hold a bunch for me last night and he's going to hold more (longer pieces) for me today. So that means frames time. I'm going to be on a frame making bonanza, so if anyone wants me to make them a great distressed wood frame just email me.