The Chewbacchus!! ?

Sacred-Drunken-Wookiee-Original2

THE Wookiee (AKA Bigfoot in Space) + Roman god of Wine & Revelry = Chewbacchus.

This weekend I am going to New Orleans for the first time! My good buddy Katie and I, who I’ve known since middle school, are road tripping there. We are staying at a friend’s place for an event on Saturday, February 7th called the Chewbacchus and the after party, the Chewbacchanal.

For those that are probably wondering “what the hell is a Chewbacchus?”, well friend, it is a nerdy aspect of Mardi Gras (or as we have started to call it, Mardi Groot) where you parade down the streets dressed as your favorite sci-fi/fantasy/horror/whatever character and throw awesome handmade geek swag to onlookers. Unfortunately, yesterday was the last day to sign up to be in the parade, but that doesn’t mean you can’t go to watch!

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Alien Stripper Pole. 2014.

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Bar-2 D2. 2014.

 There are different krewes you can choose to roll with, including the Wyld StallynsChew-Bake-UsSith HappensThe Galactic SenateReady Player OneAlien Stripper PoleBrowncoat BrassThe Rolling ElliotsMen (and Women AND Aliens) in Black, and so forth. There are tons of krewes and subkrewes in this thing, so there is something for every kind of nerd. I’m torn between joining the Browncoat Brass or the Krewe of Calamitous Intent next year. Along with the krewes, there is the parade’s security team, The Red Shirts, which I think you can still join to ensure the revelers safe passage through the city.

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The Barship Enterprise.

The Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus announced that the theme for this year’s Mardi Gras Parade is Chewbacchus 2015: “The Cult of the Sacred Drunken Wookiee!” Chewbacchus started in 2011, but is growing quickly. It’s been announced that Peter Mayhew (the original Chewbacca) and Andy Richter will be in attendance this year. Peter and his wife probably got a lock on the King and Queen of the festivities. However, one year they chose some redshirts for King and Queen, applauding the underdog! So it could be anyone’s guess who will win the crowns this year.

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The Krewe du Who and the Face of Booze.

I am going as Elizabeth Comstock from Bioshock Infinite and giving out small handmade Bioshock themed notepads with salts, the Lutece twins, Columbia coins, and guns/ammo on them. Pictures of those notepads are posted below. I’ll be rolling with the Krewe du Who, so if you see the giant Face of Booze, I’ll be not too far off. I figure that a lady who makes tears in time and space probably fits in just fine with the Timelord crowd. Allons-y Booker!

Business Card Designs

I work on a slew of projects. So here are three business cards designed for promoting my various creative outlets. One is for my jewelry design company REfusedDesigns Studios, one is for this very blog about my art projects (www.tessamorrison.com), and the latest card is for StrangeKidsClub.com, who I write for and contribute content. My main passion is creating art with with my hands and I don’t think of myself as a graphic designer, but here are some business cards proving that I have some graphic design chops.

Looking at them now I see that I should have pulled down the text on the back of the orange card. The back of the RefusedDesigns card I see a strip of white on the left where the bleed didn’t extend far enough.

As you can tell I have a penchant for rounded corners. They don’t seem to get dinged up as quickly and are just more pleasant and tactile. The REfused Designs card with the gloss black text on matte black background is quite sharp. FYI, right now I have my etsy shop emptied. I’m debating whether I want to sell jewelry through them anymore.

Stripe from Gremlins!

Here is the fiber art piece I made for Guzu Gallery’s “Icons of Horror Show: A Haunted Portrait Show & Halloween Party.” Gremlins was one of my favorite scary movies as a kid. Yes, it was also a goofy comedy, but as a kid it was freaky to think about monsters scurrying in the dark sabotaging machinery, cutting power lines, and coming after you. One of the original scripts actually had the gremlins kill Billy’s mom, but instead they had her be a badass killing the gremlins with kitchenware. Think how different that movie would have been with Billy avenging his mom?

Ok, I’m getting sidetracked here, but yeah I made a thing! Looky! He’s approximately 8″X29″ and is made out of foam, felt, and a little wire to make his ears nice, perky, and posable. He will be for sale at the show at $275.00. Interested parties should contact Guzu  about purchasing this fiendish little fellow. 512-454-GUZU (4898)  info@guzugallery.com

If he doesn’t sell at the show, all the art goes up for sale online on November 3 at around Noon CST.

Opening reception for Icons of Horror is Friday, Oct. 31st from 7-10 p.m. At 5000 North Lamar Blvd. Austin, TX.

The show is open until Dec. 1st. So if you can’t make it out on opening night, it’s no sweat. It’ll be on display for a while. However, you might wanna show because the first so many people in the door get a free copy of Gore Noir Magazine and there will be a live music performance by dark synth maestro, Xander Harris.

World Oceans Day Hawaii!

PangeaSeed invited me to take part in an exhibit at the Honolulu Museum of Art during their first annual “World Oceans Day” art and film festival in June. For this show I made a fiber art sculpture of the endangered green sea turtle. The piece is titled “Honu” and was on display at the Doris Day Theater helping to promote the films.

I was lucky enough to attend World Oceans Day Hawaii! It was doubly exciting seeing that I’d never been to Hawaii before. Tre’ Packard and Akira Biondo of PangeaSeed really put their heart and soul into this event. If you don’t know about PangeaSeed  they are an international organization that work with artists and the community to raise awareness about conservation and preservation of our oceans and their inhabitants.

Here are some pictures from the trip:

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Moth Man! Fabric Art Sculpture

With the resurgence of Kaiju films there have been several monster themed art shows popping up lately. After receiving invites to partake in a few I decided to make a Moth Man to pay homage to my home state of West Virginia. Here is the resulting soft sculpture after hours of building a wire armature, cutting, and hot gluing fabric.

Moth Man!

Moth Man is featured in Streets of Beige’s online gallery called “THE BIG ASS MONSTER SHOW!” which started May 16th. You can check out the rest of the submissions here: http://www.streetsofbeige.com/2014/05/sob-presents-big-ass-monster-show_16.html

Sweet flyer for the show by Matthew Griffin.

Sweet flyer for the show by Matthew Griffin.

Moth Man will be for sale at another T.B.A. show around September.

I tried to pull from various depictions of the Moth Man. Drawings of him have all sorts of different types of wings (went with standard moth wings instead of webbing or feathery wings to avoid making him look like an owl). He obviously had to have large red eyes, because all sightings of him reported those peepers glaring at people. After adding the mouth and eyes he really came together as opposed to looking like an over-sized grey pine cone. : D

Check out this sweet poster for the Streets of Beige show by Matthew Griffin. I bought a purple variant of it for my apartment.

 

“FBI Special Agent Doll Cooper” for David Lynch Art Tribute Show

I felt (pun intended) on a roll with the 8″ Supernatural Time plushies and decided to make a large-scale 29″ tall plush figurine of our favorite FBI agent for the David Lynch art tribute show, “In Dreams.” Here are some photos of my finished piece along with some process photos.

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My custom one-of-a-kind piece is for sale in Spoke Art’s shop.

WHERE:
Spoke Art Gallery
816 Sutter St
San Francisco, CA 94109

HOURS:
Tuesday – Saturday
12:00pm to 6:00pm

OPENING:
Opening Reception
Saturday, March 8th

The show is on display until March 29th. So check it out if you are in San Francisco!

“Supernatural Time!” Plushies

These are a set of four commissioned plushies I made for Akeem Lawanson of Rye Bread Radio who has a youtube channel and an award winning vlog. They are for a mash-up webseries called “Supernatural Time!”, a combination of “Supernatural” and “Adventure Time.”
The Bobby one is my favorite. No one’s life is truly complete until they have sewn a miniature trucker cap. The set is comprised of Sam, Dean, Bobby, and Castiel. Castiel is the angel rocking out the sweet trench coat. Bobby is the bearded fellow in the trucker cap. Sam has moose antlers because it was a running gag amongst fans to tease him about his height. Dean is the spikey haired one with the grey jacket.

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Submission for “Aloha Sametan!” Exhibit with Pangea Seed, POW!WOW!, and CometDebris

Recently I was contacted by Tre Packard of Pangea Seed who invited me to take part in a group show. Each artist is mailed a toy blank of their character/mascot Sametan to customize.
Here is my submission, “Findiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Shark” which will be on display Feb. 4-18, 2014, at POW!WOW! HQ in Honolulu, Hawaii. The custom vinyl toys will be for sale on the Pangea Seed site.

 

Designer Con 2013 Trip

Best Trip Ever.

Wednesday, November 6th, I made the 19 hour drive from Austin to Pasadena with the gals from Ink It Labs to work at their booth at Designer Con. For the uninitiated, Designer Con is an annual design convention with over 800 booths selling designer toys, art, stuffed animals, jewelry, clothes, shoes, faux taxidermy, etc. Ink It Labs creates laser cut and print wood and acrylic charms, jewelry, and toys. This year Ink It Labs collaborated with several artists and created limited edition pieces we sold at our booth.

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Designer Con 2013 was an amazing experience where I got to meet great artists such as Gary Ham, Amanda Spayd, Chris Ryniak, Jason Limon, Scott Tolleson, Michelle Romo, and Paul Frank (who we did not recognize)! It was soo overwhelming with all the different  vendors and what felt like too short of shopping time available to me since I was there working. I made a bunch of new friends and work contacts and one new client of Ink It Labs made my year. When he found out I created fiber art and puppets he informed me that he was friends with Sid Krofft and invited me to hang out with him at Sid Krofft’s house!

Me and Sid Krofft.

Me and Sid Krofft.

The creative mind behind H.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost. Words cannot express how awesome his house was, ok well, maybe; Dwell magazine would have peed their pants. He had a tree house, koi pond, hearth that would have looked right at home in the Shire, a water tower on the house feeding clean water into the pool, a studio where he hosted artist residencies, an African Grey parrot named Harley who gave him kisses, and a giant fluffy orange persian cat named Mr. Red. There were plants everywhere, it looked like the set from Land of the Lost, and under the stairs there was a spherical fish bowl. I didn’t get pictures of the inside of his house, but you can watch the movie Ruby Sparks; his house was used in a scene.

Lauren and I with Rick and Deb Lazzarini.

Lauren and I with Rick and Deb Lazzarini of The Character Shop.

Still reeling from the whole experience of meeting Sid Krofft at his house, I got an email from Rick Lazzarini asking if I could work with him on a project. I’m bad with names, however I kinda recognized the name, but I definitely recognized the company name; The Character Shop. They are a special effects studio specializing in animatronic puppets! I had not met Rick at Designer Con, he just happened upon my work online. I call him and we get invited for a tour of his studio. Rick created the Queen Alien in ALIENS, he worked on Hocus Pocus, The Sandlot, Mimic, etc. I used to watch the T.V. show Movie Magic, LOVED IT, well they were on an episode and that is where I knew them from. The Character Shop was insane, I was like a kid in a candy shop, marionettes, hand and rod puppets, maquettes, animatronics, and they were nice enough to show us around and even let me operate an animatronic tentacle! squee*!

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After the tour of The Character Shop we started our journey toward the Grand Canyon, which we checked out the next day. We got to the Grand Canyon a little before sunset. So the pictures didn’t come out too great, but it was gorgeous regardless! : D

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The day after our visit to the Grand Canyon we went to Albuquerque and hit up The Stranger Factory and Walter White’s house from Breaking Bad. The lady who lived there was home and told us stories about her home being picked as the location and being on the set of the show. Those were our last stops before getting home to Austin on Friday, November 15th.

All I have to say is that 2014 is going to have to work really hard to top this year. I’ve got a several ideas for this upcoming year’s projects. Hope they pan out. We shall have to wait and see. : D

Steve Zissou Puppet

Spoke Art is having its annual exhibit, entitled “Bad Dads”, it features artwork inspired by the films of Wes Anderson. They were nice enough to invite me to take part again this year. The show opened yesterday, Friday, November 1st, and is on display until Nov. 23rd.

Seeing that for the last Bad Dads show I made Royal Tennenbaums marionettes, I decided to stay in a similar vein and created a Steve Zissou ‘muppet’ style polyfoam hand and rod puppet.

He took a few months to make, that was when I wasn’t working the ol’ day job or interning for Trouble Puppet Theater for their show “The Head.” I’m really pleased with how he came out, especially since he’s only the second hand and rod puppet I’ve ever made. The first one being the Kenneth the Spider puppet I made 3 years ago for the Youtube web series “Seth Martin and Friends.”

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