I know I haven’t put up a blog post in a very, very long time, but this news is IMPORTANT! I have three pieces in a show in August at Portland’s beloved Curb Gallery, and the good folks at Curb liked them so much they’re carrying them over into next month’s show!

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My world got smaller when artist and art teacher Gary Faigin died this past September. Gary was not just a colleague that I knew for over 40 years, but he was also a personal friend. He and his wife Pamela knew me and Eve in New York, and we kept in touch after Gary and Pam moved to Seattle and Eve and I moved to Portland.
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I don’t know if a lot of you know, but Matthew Courtney recently passed away due to an accidental drug overdose in New York. Matthew straddles the line between celebrity and friend. As the host of the long running open mike at ABC No Rio, (where I honed my deservedly forgotten performance art act), a published poet, and also an announcer on Comedy Central, Matthew was eminent enough to get his picture in the papers – the Village Voice, at least. But he was also enough of a friend that I occasionally hired him as a model for illustration reference. This image comes from a Voice review of a play Matthew appeared in.

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Mark your calendar! I’m having an exhibit of early posters and comics pages, mostly vintage prints but some originals, drawn in the 1970s and 1980s in Portland, when I was still signing my work David Celsi. Many of these have been posted on Patreon over the years, but this will be a golden opportunity to see them In Real Life, and possibly take one home!
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I have had a crush on Shelley Duvall since I was a teenager, so I have an abundance of renderings to choose from. Below are some decorated envelopes sent to friends over the years:

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My very talented nephew Ivan Pyzow recently recorded and released a lovely new song which includes cover art by me. I’ll let Ivan tell it:
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Regular visitors to my Patreon page are aware that for most of a decade I have been posting End Strips, that is, short narrative and non-narrative comics drawn on strips of paper left over from other projects, in a vertical format which looks good on phones.
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Copied from Steve Doughton’s Instagram:

“ILY2 is pleased to present a screening of Earthlings, a film by Portland-based writer and director, Steven Doughton on November 6 at 7:15pm at Cinema 21. The screening will be followed by a live conversation between Doughton, writer Jonathan Raymond, Earthlings actor and Executive Producer Luis Chávez, Brooklyn-based film writer Nolan Kelly and artist Patricia Vázquez Gómez.

Based on the short story “The Suckling Pig” by Portland writer Jonathan Raymond, Earthlings follows a small group of strangers from vastly different cultural backgrounds who share a singular meal and evening together. Actor Luis Chávez and director Todd Haynes serve as Executive Producers for the film.

On Earthlings, Doughton writes “I’ve always been drawn to dialogue-rich movies, in which dramatic shifts in plot or character can hinge on a single thread of conversation. So when I read Jon Raymond’s story ‘The Suckling Pig,’ its cinematic possibilities struck me immediately. In it, a group of people with almost nothing in common spend an intimate evening together which they will never forget. I want to place the audience directly within the disquieting situation of a dinner party among strangers, thereby allowing them to experience the struggles of the characters as they try to relate to one another across a well-appointed table and a vast sea of cultural and political differences. The audience should discover (as the characters themselves do) that these five people have secrets and depths they rarely share with anyone.”

Tickets for Earthlings are NOW ON SALE at Cinema21.com. Tickets are $15 and all proceeds from ticket sales go to the Oregon Worker Relief Fund
Poster by David Chelsea”
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My very talented nephew Ivan Pyzow recently recorded and released a new song which includes cover art by me. I’ll let Ivan tell it:

Today, my song “In My Dreams, You Win” comes out on all streaming platforms (Spotify, Apple Music, Bandcamp, everything). I’ve attached the lyrics below. I sent out a demo of this song to this mailing list in March and I’m so happy to share a studio version now. And it features cover art by my lovely uncle, David Chelsea (also attached below). I’m really grateful to everyone that helped develop this song – Jake, Danjuma, Matty, Chris, Gus, Sam, Brok, and Anna.

Bye!
Ivan

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I was recently approached by Sheperd.com to compile a list of books to recommend. What is Shepherd? Here’s what their website says on the subject: “Shepherd is like wandering around your favorite bookstore but reimagined for the online world… along with little notes from authors pointing out their favorite books.”

The recommendations on the website are all over the map. Some recent ones are: “The best young adult shifter romance books” “The best science fiction books in aesthetic universes” “The best historical fiction books about the Tudors” and “The best Christian romance with spiritual and romantic passion”. Since the Shepherd people had chosen me because of the popularity of my perspective instructional books, I decided that my list would be “The best books to make you a better artist.”

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