Tom Burtonwood

wow…. this last 3 weeks has been insane. and tomorrow we have an opening at What It Is…. i’ve been teaching a class at UIC and another at SAIC… plus doing renovations… and Holly is a grad student at SAIC which means she is at school 13 hours a day… so all things considered there has been no time for retrospective scannings and postings. i came across this piece cleaning the office so i went ahead and posted it for good measure. created at pearl one afternoon it depicts an Interactive Art Lab behemoth. IAL was a web design / hosting / start up Jeremiah aka Piko Piko (aka small and round) and I worked on together for a few years. this was a stab i had at “branding” … needless to say we didn;’t use it in our marketing campaign but i still like it…. it reminds me of lego star ships i would make as a kid, (minus the penis protrusions and nipples of course….)

Doom Bear Havoc, drawing, 2002

Between October 2001 and August 2002 i worked at Pearl Paint in Chicago along with many. many other fine, young, crazy, displaced, deranged, artists and art students too many to name…. each day was a constant fight whether the vampires (certain managers) who were trying to steal our souls, the lincoln park trixies casting their intricate wedding invitation faux vellum curses on the hapless paper dpeartment, or the general suck that is retail…. to all of you artists who suffered and suffer still in retail hell  i post this image, of Doom Bear Havoc remember him at 4pm on a rainy afternoon with 2 hours to go, no more breaks, no caffiene to be had, no sonic youth on the stereo and a line of zombies assaulting your counter…..