Why Imagining the End of the World is a Great Idea

Today's Seattle Stranger has an excellent article by Jonathan Golob about how to imagine the world ending, It's Time to Freak out about Climate Change". As I am a strong advocate for the positive effects of imagining your neighborhood as a post-apocalyptic wasteland, I recommend giving it a read.

Jonathan's idea, as I get it, is something like this: if you can't imagine your world devastated by climate change, you're not really ready to start doing something about it. The Seattle Post Apocalyptic Map Project isn't specifically about climate change specifically, but about existential threats in general: financial meltdown, collapse of the food distribution system, war, global terror, gang violence, cynicism, and the breakdown of the social fabric.

Dealing with these horrors is a process of the imagination. First you imagine what could happen. That's the exercise that gets your imagination in shape. Then you imagine what we might do instead. We're role-playing gamers, so our imaginations are already in shape. We've got a leg up.

In news, the post-apocalyptic map is now better than 2/3 done. I'm on pace to finish it at the end of this month. Then it will hang in the Seattle Google offices for a month as part of a show there. After that, I'll be looking for a public venue to hang it. And I'm thinking about a way to make it accessible to more people as a poster, folding map, PDF etc.

I Know What I'm Doing this Summer

I just got the word that I'm going to have an art show at Seattle's Google offices in October. Since I use Google tools almost continuously to help create my art, I'm super excited about this show. The problem is, the picture I most want to show is nowhere near done.

I figure I need about 30 hours of work to finish this. Which means I'm going to be spending a lot of my mornings and evenings working on this between now and October. Fortunately, I can hardly think of a better way to spend my time.

Capitol Hill Dusk

Capitol Hill, Dusk

Madrona Morning

Devouring
All three of these pictures are being shown as part of the Mercer Island Visual Arts League miniatures show on Mercer Island all this month.

The Obsidian Labyrinth Show in West Seattle

I've kept it quiet because up until the last moment I wasn't sure it was going to happen, but my art is now hanging in the West Seattle Cupcake Royale!



Getting these hung was an epic four-hour death march in which everything went wrong, and I made my retired mother-in-law stand on a chair and hold paintings up for half the time. Let us never speak of it again.



Based on the success of the Microdungeon 10, I've put up a custom microdungeon request sheet. Cost is $10. The constraints are based on the show. Sorry, but you have to go to the venue to get the rules. Please no cheating!



The space at West Seattle is pretty small, so there are only 9 micros included in the show, but they are 9 of my favorites.



No plans for a party for this one, but if there is an Art Walk in the neighborhood, I'll try to be around for it.

Disapointments

Something I'm learning about art: you get your heart broken sometimes.

My Capitol Hill art show for October has been cancelled--or at least postponed until January--because someone in the organization made some promises and then didn't keep them. After a couple of months of getting up at 6am to draw and then staying up an extra hour at night to matte pictures, you can guess I'm pretty pissed off about it.* Someone else was also scheduled for October, also signed a contract, and moreover they showed up first.

This isn't the fault of the fine folks at Cupcake Royale. The person who scheduled the show doesn't even work there any more). It's not the fault of other artist, who makes pretty cool looking mythic figures painted on big sheets of what appears to be plywood.

So 101 microdungeons have been packed away and three large professionally-framed pictures are going to hang on my living room wall for a while longer. Come January we'll do it all again, but this time with booze , homebrew, music, and dancing girls, and it will all kick even more ass, I swear.

Also, I'm waking this blog up again so I can show you some of the dungeons I've drawn in the last few months while I've been focusing on art shows and stuff.

* Actually the second time this happened with the same organizer. Fool me twice.

WIP: Portrait

Another larger WIP image, hopefully to be completed by October:

This one is a real departure for me. Detail of upper area:

More detail:

A new Wall

This month I was due to have an art show at Verite Coffee in my own Madrona neighborhood, however the show was cancelled due to a double-booking with a school group. Sad news, considering I had just spent the last two weeks furiously completing and framing pictures, several of which featured somewhat twisted versions of Madrona houses and buildings.

To make up for, they offered me an October show at their Capitol Hill Location: the one with the huge walls. The one where you can see the art blazing out across Pike Street when you walk by. The one that's a favorite stop on the Capitol Hill Art Walk (though, perhaps more due to the cupcakes than the art). Seduced by walls, i said yes.

Life has a weird way of closing doors and opening doors at the same time.

So my existing art will be horribly swallowed by the giant walls at the store. I can probably fit my whole existing inventory on the back wall alone. The plan is, over the next four months, to make at least 5 huge dungeons, 24'x28' or bigger. So I'm going to be pretty busy.

Another consequence of this change is that I realize it's time to finally let the Year of the Dungeon come to and end. I don't mean this blog, which will continue to have a trickle of activity. Rather I'm letting myself off the hook for posting microdungeons to the blog in any kind of regular schedule.

So that's the story. I'm not quite sure what any of this means except that I really hope there will some extremely cool dungeon art showing up on this blog pretty soon. Fingers crossed.

Getting Ready for the Show

Yikes! I have an art show going up at Cafe Verite in Seattle in less than a month and I'm not ready!

Hibernation

I'm still hibernating...

It's a weird transitional time right now. I'm forced to realize that so much has changed in my life in the last 4 months that going back to the same-old isn't even an option.

I'm back from Canada and the news is that my Mom is doing much better than anyone, including her doctor, considered possible! She's currently recovering in hospital. At her age a heart attack is always a serious matter, but the current news is good. Thanks to everyone that sent prayers and wishes.

At work, the big software launch is imminent, which means there will be some pressure off in the consulting business, which means a bit of a break, hopefully. This has been the biggest and busiest few months in my career history, which has all sorts of implications for what comes next.

With lots of time on the plane and in hospital rooms over the last week, I decided to take a bunch of movie stills from the old Tron movie and play with the design aesthetic to see what I can make of it for some weird cartography and illustration stuff. So now I've got a big stack of new ideas to play with.

The Year of the Dungeon art show was also an unforeseen success. I really did not anticipate the response (Thanks ya'll!). That opens up a whole bunch of options for me artistically.

Plus the Purple Worm Graveyard and How to Host a Dungeon sequel are quietly mutating in my desk drawer.

So the upshot is that I may have a modicum of time and even a bit of capital to play with over the next few months. There's a strong potential for life-chaning awesomeness in all this.

But in the meantime, I'm working, thinking, and hibernating.

The Dungeon in Art

Wow, this is way too cool not to instantly post: there's a panel on Dungeons & Dragons in Contemporary Art in New York this Saturday. Seriously, I wish I could fly out just to see it. If you're in the area, go! The lineup is spectacular to say the least.

Why didn't I post any dungeons last week!?

I didn't post any dungeons last week. The reason is that I've been spending a lot of what used to be blogging time drawing stuff for the art show in December. I'm going to show a couple dozen microdungeons. But the microdungeons alone don't feel like enough for a show. So I'm spending a lot of time in the "studio" (which is known as the kitchen table the rest of the day). I'm going to make it up next week by posting more dungeons than usual.

In the meantime, here's a glimpse of what's been eating up my time.

Some color microdungeons:


Some BIG dungeons:


Some in-between stuff still in progress:


And a few surprises not to be revealed here.

I'm having a blast drawing for at least an hour every day. I had no idea getting ready for a show would be this much fun.

Some details on the show: it's at Cortona Cafe at 2425 E Union St in Seattle's Central District. The art will be there the month of December, and the opening party is Saturday December 18th, at 7:00 PM.