Commission

Back in December I was contacted by an old friend who has a successful set design, fabrication and event staging company, I used to do quite a bit of work with him and his crew. He had a graffiti install job for me that involved painting a few set pieces in the shop and then installing them at Muchmusic for a performance by an artist that shall remain nameless. After that I stayed on with the crew and continued to work with them on the opening title sequence for the Superbowl 44 and CBS ’s coverage of it. Big jobs both of them. Good times, long days..













Superbowl 44. this was all for the CBS opening title sequence and commercial break -station identification jump cuts. I have worked in the world of television and film for years and as T.V. goes this is as big as it gets. Millions of viewers. Funny thing is I didn’t even get to watch the Superbowl this year, I was working.
I wish I managed to get some better quality photos, it was so hectic and crazy in there while they were testing out the lighting and smoke machines. Barely had time to rush off these few shots.


The numbered lines and checks are all laid out in adhesive vinyl. Everything had to be measured super precisely with chalk lines and laid out carefully to keep everything straight and congruent. Now that is some warehouse space. I sure wouldn’t want to get tackled on this gridiron though.
Scaffold tower.

Payday for this work ensured a merry Christmas indeed, just in time.

I was contacted by the makers of Havana Club rum to do some live painting for an event they were throwing in Sept. Ever since my voyage to Cuba I fully and completely endorse Havana Club rum, I still have an unopened 7 year old bottle in the kitchen. Anyway the first two sketches below were submitted, when I mentioned that the letters could be filled in black they of course had to see that as well. In the end, in true corporate fashion they felt it was not legible enough, so as requested I dumbed it down for them a bit. On a sunny day I would have really enjoyed myself, the Cuban music was good, i had a nice big canvas, Yet unfortunately all it did that day was rain nonstop. Barely a crowd of 30 at the event’s peak and as any promoter who was involved would tell you, it was a complete failure and in my opinion a huge waste of money. Except for the money used to pay me. Because I worked so hard all day with no umbrella, in a complete downpour. And I didn’t even have one mojito, rum and coke or anything.


Here is the ‘more legible’ sketch that finally got approved.



This is what the sketch I brought ended up looking like at the end of it all.
It literally never stopped raining the whole time. How aerosol even managed to adhere to a dripping wet canvas is way beyond me.

Due to the fact that no one else who was involved with this wall has finished yet I am only posting my work.

There she goes again…



A neighbor who lived around the corner commissioned this galactic cluster of nebulae and supernovas for her garage door. It was a great opportunity to empty out the 30 or so quarter full scrap cans that have piled up this summer. Kept all the full ones that the commission paid for.
The other side of that garage.

These are some of my favorite shots from the 2 episodes of the National Geographic channel’s new series ‘Aftermath’ that I worked on as a member of the art department. Over 2 months we created many sets for the show in many locations, not all of which are represented here in these photos. The general plot line of an Aftermath episode centers around some cataclysmic end of the world type of apocalyptic scenario, and what humans do to survive. I don’t really care to explain any of the details here, but the photos you see below may just speak for themselves, I hope. The work on the beach was definitely the most fun. the entire crew was sent up to Sandbanks Provincial Park for a week for these sets and locations. The link below will take you to the original first Aftermath pilot, which I had nothing to do with. it’s called ‘Population Zero’. These shows are fairly heavy on the CGI so it was nice to get so much actual sets and special effects involved for these episodes.                      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4R8IkSOY9k




When our makeshift windmill was in position the wind got it spinning so fast that when we stuck a 2×4 between the blades in an attempt to stop it, it hacked the wood down like a carrot on a Cuisinart. A true hazard for any actor in the scene, so it stayed tied off.

Getting this tail section off the truck and down the trail to the beach was pretty interesting. Oh yeah and the trail was fringed with poison ivy to either side.

Getting any work done and communicating on this point was so hard because the winds did not dip below 50 km/h the whole time, just so loud and always knocking our stuff down. My face was all red and windburned by the end of it
December in July.
Quite fond of this photo.
Goat wrangler.
Special fx team on the water cannons.
i really like this shot.
Custom made emergency refugee center base camp type thing in Seneca.
The infirmary

Hyperbaric chamber at the Seneca College commercial dive school training pool. The pool has a depth of 40 feet, justifying the need for a Hyperbaric chamber. Deep enough to get the bends.

These shots are from the second episode I worked on, shot almost entirely in Hamilton. Ont. Commuted there and back every day. Long days

Painting up this abandoned car while the on-set police officers looked on was pretty fun, felt strange.



In an attempt to be regionally correct from a graffiti standpoint I got 2 New York writers up in a set that was meant to look like the NY subway system. News1 Inkheads and Cycle BA. Tags executed in black colored hairspray that comes off with soap + water. Called streaks n’ tips.

Somewhere in the Casa Loma tunnel system.

It’s a real challenge to pull off something clean on corrugated metal. This was for my friends over at the 47 Gallery in Parkdale. That fence needed a bit of sprucing up.
I intend to put some better quality photos of this up soon.


The 47 Gallery blog is here -http://47gallery.blogspot.com/

THE NUMBER ONE COLA IN FINLAND.. So i had a meeting with the director and his art director and we decided on some pretty rough guidelines for the imagery that I would paint on the 8 panels you see below. These were used to block in some very large window frames that the camera pans across in this 30 second spot.(only to be aired in Finland). Essentially they needed to board up the windows in the location because the view outside of them was a construction site. So this art was the solution. In the scene there’s some kids skateboarding and bmxing through some community center or something I dunno.. When I’m sent the link for the finished product I will of course post it up here.



These panels were all completed over the course of a day and a half. I still don’t understand how I managed that. The kind of deadline pressure the film world can place on people is unreal. Short, minute windows of time and huge expectations within them, especially with the commercials I find.

These were all painted in a set shop down on Commissioners rd. and then brought to the location and inserted into the window frames. I’m told the camera did a pan of almost all of them so I think one or two may have not made it into the advert itself.

A big commission came through just in time after the vacation…I needed cash!. I was able to use their skyjack on this one. took a few nights. Better photos to come.

I have had quite the time trying to get decent photos of this work. The overhead fluorescents give off way too much glare. the glossy Montana paint only makes it worse. I will keep trying and post them up after i have gone in with my own light source and a better camera



BODY SOUL MIND 2009

From March to mid November in 2006 myself, and a small crew of film carpenters built two bunker-like cottage loft studio treehouse things at the end of an undisclosed lake somewhere {i’m not at liberty to say where, or for whom}. I learned so much about framing and all aspects of building that year.So much fresh air, hard work and good food -I don’t think I’ve ever been in such good shape before or since. All the materials had to come downriver on a sketchy barge towed by an even sketchier boat. Many challenges, and towards the end of the job the cold was one of the worst. Still -easily the best job I’ve ever had. Damn those after work swims/beers/fires/barbecues were good.
The living room and kitchen. Running water pumped from the lake and ran through a purifier, Propane powered stove etc. and generator. Completely off the grid.

A very clean, modern look for a cottage yes?







Above you see the world’s most grandiose outhouse to be-with loft and picture window and tons of storage space. 16 feet tall.
Above is the first structure we built on this property. smaller. Known as the bunkie
The walls in the photo above are retracted back to reveal the 3 faces of reflective glass. the walls are clad in aluminum siding and move on wheels locked into sliders in the ceiling portion of the soffit. The front facing panel folds down on a crank and pulley system =it tucks itself into the ceiling overhanging the deck when in windows revealed position. The whole compound locks up like a fortress. as you can see below. no cottage break-ins going down here.
I wish it was mine…