if you ever read anything about airbrushing on a technical level, you'll be told that it requires immense patience. there is nothing more truer in this world! it can be quite unforgiving and needs a lot of setup and cleanup, but the results are really beautiful and it's such a versatile tool. one of the things testing my patience with airbrush right now is that my compressor is leaking air from the drain valve. instead of shutting a window onto my neck about it, i figured to step away from the tank and show you my humble library of airbrush books. i've been collecting them for education, inspiration, and to feed my innate urge to buy used hardcover books that cover my somewhat niche and outdated hobbies.
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after the election loss last week, i've spent a lot of time on my screens watching people spiral, activate, argue, plan, fight, grieve, celebrate, move on…all the things. it’s very human yet overwhelming and i don’t want to contribute more to it, but idid need to get some of the thoughts swirling in my head down to make room for what’s next. i am going to tell a very personal story, but it dominates my mind whenever i feel the world is ending so the perspective may be helpful to those who feel alone in their grief right now.
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the verge's allison johnson recently asked 'where did our 2004 photos go?'' and i know exactly where mine are: they're on my computer. i'll share some that i think best show the essence of what my life was like in 2004.
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november the first be with you, my friends. i have done a lot these past few weeks, and naturally i have started to feel crushed by the five unfinished drafts of blog posts i've been writing on paper, screen and in my mind. because i caught myself feeling bad for not publishing anything, here i am 31 minutes before a zoom call sharing with you some of my bathroom art.
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a month ago i left a job i held for several years, a job that took me through a winding road of launching a product, going through an acquisition, lots of high points and lows...but ultimately i got to end the journey on my own terms, on my own time. i couldn't have asked for anything more, especially given the state of the world. i'm so very proud of my work at glitch and fastly, and it's special how i got to be one of just a handful of people who can say they have grown and lead millions of developers in creating the web and community! it was a lot of fucking work, though, and i need a break.
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releasing an editable document on the web for anyone to edit in any way is terrifying but exciting. that's in part why i worked on glitch for so long - letting millions of developers run arbitrary code, more often than not for free, allows incredible viral moments to happen that shine brighter than any of the bad stuff (spam, phishing). this facilitation of web building always comes with its moments of noticing someone is doing something you didn't intend and you immediately thinking 'oh, that's it, we're fucked' but more often than not the next moment you're tearing up because the web can be so beautiful.
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the last several weeks have been a lot, between plotting and executing a major life change and co-hosting xoxo. i have so much to say about those things, also past events like devrelcon that i've gone to...there's been a lot. i just need to finish my last week at work and process the past month and then i'm confident i'll never shut up on here.
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in my last blog post i talked about the kissy lips mac osx icon and how reactions of my use of it shaped the direction i took a lot of my art going forward - essentially, if i choose to express myself in a way and people tell me it's not professional simply because of misogyny, i'm going to double down. it was in september of 2014 when ben sisto, artist and expert on the song who let the dogs out, reached out to me about an art residency program he was running at the ace hotel, 24 x 36 - where 36 artists spent a night at the ace hotel in nyc over the course of 24 days.
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since the dawn of time, mainstream operating systems would offer a set of default avatars to choose from when creating your user profile. these avatars often had no context related to the software they came with – last night i learned that andy's old xbox 360 avatar was a pair of lemons. naturally, i had to introduce him to the iconoclast, my own founding mother of default avatars: the macosx kissy lips.
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