Cowboys & Aliens

I found a headless cowboy figure in the sand, brought him home and placed it on my shelf with some other plastic figures all battling and sharing time dimensions. Pan-American athletes throwing javelines at robots, cavemen swinging clubs at googley monsters, Merlin conjuring, Winston Churchill debating with Moses and The Invisible Plan thingys by Mars1 (some of my favorite plastic figures ever!) just hanging out and keeping the peace. One of these Mars guys, I was always disappointed with. It seemed it was missing a head to go in the cylindrical stump protruding above it's body. I kept thinking that a head of some sort will show up one day.

When that day was too slow in coming I made an alternate plan for my little headless Invisible Plan fella. I'll just turn him into a head for my cowboy friend. It was unbelievable how the uniform green color of the cowboy matched perfectly with the top part of the alien. I love it! Somebody told me there was a Cowboys and Aliens movie in the works. Hmmmm. 

     

MONA LISA ART MEAL

I've just hung up some new work at Mona Lisa Ristorante Italiano here in Winnipeg. When I arrived, I was surprised to find out that my fellow painter friend Luther Pokrant was also hanging work there, so I thought even though it's not 'really' an art show, I wanted to make a poster to mark this occasion. I have shown work on and off at Mona Lisa since 1985!

 

In this show you will see my first 4 oil paintings ever(!) that I completed just recently for this venue. There are also some new acrylic paintings as well as a few older works. This restaurant has some really wonderful food and great pizza! You can't really go to just look at the art so you might as well make a meal out of it.      

CCCOMIC CONVENTION

I will be attending and setting up a table this weekend at the Central Canada Comic Convention held at the Winnipeg Convention Center. Of course I will have My sci-fi and fantasy posters as well as all my NAKFACTORIUM wares....including my 2$ gumball machine with some new items and my popular 25 cent Secrets Of The Universe gumball machine. Also new are my Nakamojin Guys- little original sculpted fimo figurines in a spiffy crazy package! 

See you there!

NUIT BLANCHE - Culture Days

My experimental film 412222 which originally premiered in my installation Component For A Mechanical Landscape at Plug In ICA will play at The CUBE in Old Market Square with 11 other fantastic experimental films along with new LIVE original soundtracks by the eXperimental Improv Ensemble on September 25th at 8:30 PM.  the Winnipeg Film Group has organized this event as part of Winnipeg's first Nuit Blanche. it's FREE    

ZINE SHOW

At Freud's Bathhouse & Diner opening Thursday, August 5th is a new Zine Show offering up all sorts of DIY publishing from a whack of crazy hooligan popes.....including myself with my BOOKLETS®  and flip books and other Printed Matter. The show continues untill August 29th.

42 Albert St., Winnipeg in the Exchange.

MY STUFF

I was in the Winnipeg Free Press again on Saturday June 19th in the Detour section. Check it out here.....CHEE.....ZY....lovers. Questions and Answers. Photo below courtesy of Joe Bryksa at the Free Press.

Spaceship Five

Here is  a recent pencil crayon drawing for fun. A couple posts back there is a pencil crayon drawing that I did which was the first in a long long time. I have another spaceship sketched out that I hope to do soon. The original is 9 x 12 in.

SHE CHEWS BOOKLETS

 

Booklets has been selected to be part of a group show at the Irvine Fine Arts Center. The opening is Tonight!

PENCIL CRAYON TIME

     

     Here is a recent pencil crayon drawing I finished to display at a Science Fiction convention held here in Winnipeg every year in May. I had not worked in pencil crayon for many many years. Most of my pencil crayon drawings were done in the eighties alongside my painting. I'm excited now to do more. 

     I am showing the process at which i do these. I sketch directly on the black paper with no other preliminary drawings. This is a 9 x 12 inch drawing. Every step is a thinking process as to what colors are going where and how I am going to fill the space. Sometimes I spend more time thinking about my next move than actually drawing. In the past I would sometimes do the drawing with all it's shading with white then go over that with the colors.  

AERO EVOLUTION

UPC bar codes began widespread use in the beginning 1980's.

 

52-50-066 This is an Aero Chocolate Bar wrapper from around 1987. This same design had been used since the 1960's with virtually no changes. Aero was originally made by Rowntree (since 1935) but merged with Mackintosh in 1969. The bars were previously 36 grams.

L5-50-115  In 1987 Rowntree Macintosh went public and in 1988 was bought by Nestle with an offering value at 4.55 billion dollars.  We now see the Nestle logo up front on the wrapper. In the following wrappers watch how the logo changes. 

     If you look at the top of the wrapper there is a 7 digit number. The last three numbers seem to change with every slight change in design or alteration of the printed wrapper. I have a Caramilk wrapper where there is a single increment number difference and the only foreseable difference was a switch in the order that a couple of the ingredients appeared in.  So since the time of the wrapper shown above this one, there has been 49 changes to the wrapper. I am only showing a sampling of major changes in the design appearance of the wrapper.

     Oh yeah, the Aero lettering design had finally changed after all those years and Nestle cut a gram of chocolate out.

     Is there a difference between Milk Chocolate and Pure Milk Chocolate?

 

L5-50-129  Here we go with the Bubbles in the phrase Pure Bubbly Milk Chocolate.

  

L5-50-177  The newer Nestle logo and Aero is Big on Bubbles

L5-50-242   I just love how the bubbles have now exploded throughout the design. I absolutely love this one. Why the pause after Big........? Again a new Nestle logo.

L5-50-242  (Why is this number the same as previous wrapper?) There are many changes again. The bubble slogan has changed and the Nestle logo has changed again! This wrapper from March 2010

Huge overhaul of Aero lettering style. (April 2010)I was not a fan at first, but it's growing on me. The number at the top is a whole new ball game. The slogan 'Have you felt the bubbles melt' has been shoved to the sidelines. Will it be totally gone next time around?  

PECHA KUCHA NIGHT

How does it get from here to there?

This Thursday May 20th I will be one of about 20 presenters for Pecha Kucha night Vol.2. Everyone gets 6 minutes and 40 seconds to talk about whatever they want and using no more than 20 slides at 20 seconds each. I will show images of work from my recent show Visual Chew but the main part will illustrating the evolution of the AERO chocolate bar wrapper. COME ONE AND ALL FOR DRINKS AND DISCUSSIONS! 

INTERMIXA-MANIA this weekend

I will be attending the inaugural  Intermixa-mania event this weekend that is being held at Plug-In ICA and I will be selling my art multiples and books and many of the novelty items I had my recent Visual Chew show and and and and....

.....here is one of my newest works that I will have there as note cards.

Visual SMASH!

I'm excited about the wonderful success I am having with this new show. It was fun to create all this stuff and it's turned out to be a fun show. 

There have been a number of reviews and articles which I am including here.

Eye Candy - Winnipeg Free Press - March 13, 2010

Looking At The World Through X-Ray Specs - Winnipeg Free Press - March 25, 2010

Chew On This - Uptown - March 25, 2010

Chew On This - The Manitoban - March 24, 2010

Food For Thought - The Uniter - March 25, 2010

 

Akimblog - April 1, 2010

Visual Chomping

The show VISUAL CHEW at Martha St. Studio is a wonderful success. People are really enjoying it. Here is a preview article which appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press. The Opening was very very well attended and people seem to be coming out in numbers during the length of the show.

I hope to post some shots of the opening night soon. In the meantime here are a few shots of what you first see when you come through the doors. Then there is much more!

VISUAL CHEW

It's Time for a new Show of craziness and fun and multiple visual packs of Whollop. ZAP!

I've been super busy getting this show together. New products and Novelties will be unveiled as well as many new silk screen prints and one-of-a-kind prototypes. You've seen some items here like the Sgt. Smokes and Bacon Bookmarks. Well there will be plenty more as well as a 25 cent gumball machine dispensing Secrets of the Universe and a 2 dollar capsule machine with a variety of novelty fun. Read more below.

Opening reception Thursday March 11, 5:00 - 8:00 pm

WOW! BIFF BANG POW! ZOWEE! ZING! SOCK-A-MA-GEE! All of this totally RULES!

Don Bailey - Writer, Music Historian, Collector

Pasternak’s VISUAL CHEW:

Original Novelties, Art Multiples and Packaged Thoughts

March 11- April 23, 2010

Martha Street Studio

11 Martha Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba

Robert Pasternak's debut print-based show now at Martha Street Studio

POPS with inventive new visual twists and turns: featuring novelty art

multiples, imaginative packaging and eye-popping graphic design. The

show titled VISUAL CHEW - brings together for the first time ever - a

diverse selection of Pasternak’s imagined products from the past ten

years. Martha Street Studio will be selling these Pasternak products

including prototypes, silk-screen prints, colorfully-crafted boxes and

sculptured-novelties - from Bacon Bookmarks, and Micro Dot

Monsters to Pollick Lollipops produced by the Jackson Candy Co.

THRILL in amazed puzzlement behind the questionable urge to create

tangible toy titillations that actually work wonders like Oh you think

it's funny? But it’s Snot! - Which are pre-packaged novelty boogers

“ready to roll and flick.”

Gaze at comic-book inspired curiosities filtered via hard doses of

modern wartime reality in nicotine time! ZAP! How about a pack of

Sgt.Smokes? Fully poseable, used cigarette butts that look like a

cheap packaged toy found at a dollar store - but WHAM - the novelty

idea of kids actually using these to mimic the army sergeant as he

blasts a few rounds of ammo is totally absurd!

Maybe you have restless fingers? Well what you need is Robert

Pasternak's FUM GUM - Fun for Your Fingers - a Bubbled Double-sized

novelty chunk of modeling clay that comes with Ummm… a Bazooka

Joe-ish, proto-Pud-type insert! Fun activity for your fingers! So real

- or rather surreal - that if you did not look twice you would just

POP it in your mouth and start chewing.

 “All of this started with making mini comics,” says Pasternak as he

tinkers over the next possible addition to VISUAL CHEW. “This was a

very economical way of publishing your art, and making it accessible

to give away or sell inexpensively. I then started to think of other

ways to package my art, and this led to creating brand new ideas for

Pasternak products. Being a surrealist, I love the absurdness of

taking a ridiculous notion and finding a way to package it. To make it

look slick, as if it exists in the thousands and it would only carry a

39-cent price tag. I also love candy, and candy packaging, so you will

see many references to both existing, and nostalgic candy-inspired

packages at VISUAL CHEW. My NAKFACTORIUM turn-style toy capsule

gumball machine will even be dispensing some of these art items for

only 2 dollars a POP!”

ROBERT PASTERNAK

Is a Winnipeg-based, multi-disciplinary pop surrealist who moves

seamlessly from metaphysical paintings and science-fiction

illustration to hand-processed film, collage with found materials, to

imaginative product-design. From High-Sci-Fi to Low-Scrounge comix,

Pasternak has exhibited his work extensively in his 26-year art

practice, and Nak’s illustrations have graced album covers, science

fiction magazines, and literary book jackets. His exhibits are always

different in that they usually highlight one of the multitude of areas

of visionary visual work that he is continually juggling and adding

to.

In addition to his art practice, Nak has worked as a production artist

for silk screening and cresting shops, as an art director for Zygote

magazine, as a digital colorist for a multimedia firm, as a creator of

hundreds of posters and product fliers, and as a freelance graphic

designer. Guided by a mix of new age philosophy, comic book ambition,

and a fundamental belief in the interconnectedness of events,

Pasternak creates an exciting makeshift universe filtered by a type of

comfortable visual osmosis where his work and audience can meet. His

personality and his art studio both reflect this practice; filled with

salvaged material, vintage memorabilia, and a zillion projects waiting

their turn on the Pasternak production schedule.