So plus my artwork, I have also been doing design work for the past ten years.  I don’t normally mention them both in the same sentence.  But as you can see above, there is a huge sized banner from “Sportfight 8: Justice”, hanging behind world renowned UFC fighters Randy Couture and Matt Lindland.  These dudes funded my rent and refridgerator for a year and a half.

I was the graphic artist and web designer for Randy and Matt.  They both have lived here in the Portland, Oregon area for years.  Totally different than anything I’ve ever been into.  In addition to UFC fighting, winning an Olympic wrestling metal, the military games, a show on Spike TV, appearing in a Steven Segal movie – They run an event called Sportfight and a fight training club called Team Quest.  I designed for Sportfight and Team Quest (amongst a few other random projects).

As you can see above, they let me have some fun for their “Justice” fight.  I went with a western theme.  Matt also had this silkscreened on the side of his truck.

As I’ve been looking through old artwork and photographs to start compiling here for you, I thought you might get a kick out of seeing this.  Very different than my artwork or anything I’m much interested in.  But somehow, I feel like working for them was somewhere in the middle of both.

- Joe

Libretto is a hip-hop emcee from here in Portland, Oregon.  In 2005, he released a single called “Volume” featuring Vursatyl and Jumbo from Lifesavas.  It was from his full-length album Ill-Oet: The Last Element, released on Dim Mak.  It was on the Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 video game soundtrack.  Not that I have really played that hardly (or any games released after 1992 or so).  Anyways, I got really into the single, and later got ahold of his album.

Maybe a year later, Libretto and I ended up getting together.  I did some designs for him.  We hit it off really well, and he’s been a good friend since.  In fact, we’ve even collaborated on some music together.

He and Rev Shines (from Lifesavas) had a birthday party at Holocene, in February 2008.  Libretto had me do the poster/flyer artwork for it.  It also happened to be Black History Month.  So, in honor of his family heritage and to celebrate his life, I put together some artwork for the event.  I created one hundred portraits of significant people in black history.  I don’t normally do historical art, and it was a lot of fun.  Pretty over-the-top project, creating one hundred pieces.  I then took each piece, and displayed two of them side-by-side in an animated video of all of it.  The whole thing seriously takes like five minutes to watch.

Holocene has a video projector, that shows on one of their walls.  It’s really huge.  Maybe thirty feet wide.  So they projected my artwork all night, while the DJs did what they were doing, and people danced and hung out.  I really enjoyed being able to do this for my friend.

I saw a fellow walking around with a nice looking camera that night.  I wonder if he has any photos of it.  I took this one on a cheap cell phone.

- Joe

Spencer Moody, Dann Gallucci, and I working on a CD layout.  John Schirmer is doing something much more important on the computer behind us.

I love how it looks like we’re working on plans for some sort of covert operation.

Things are looking pretty intense.

Dann and I contemplating the artwork.  We were probably laughing a moment later.  But these stills look so heavily concentrated.

When I was a teenage kid in the 90’s, one of my favorite bands was Murder City Devils.  They had a huge influence on me musically.  I cannot tell you how many times I have listened to them, while working on my artwork.  Spencer Moody, was definitely one of my most admired vocalists, at an adolescent age.  Just one of those bands, that I got into at just the right time in my life, that came out at just the right time.

Years later, I got fairly involved with a record label out of Seattle, called Go Midnight Records.  It was run by this especially kind fellow named John Schirmer and Mark Gajadhar, an equally friendly drummer from The Blood Brothers.  They ended up signing a project of mine to their roster (Thunderball Fist).  They also had me do quite a bit of artwork for them.

Spencer (the vocalist I mentioned a few paragraphs before) and Dann Gallucci (the guitarist from Murder City Devils, and Modest Mouse at one point) have had a number of projects on Go Midnight Records.  I was really excited, when I was asked to do most the art for these projects.  Including a collaborative design with Spencer, where I put together a bunch of painting that he did.

My roommate Silas and I worked on some videos for a website concept we had for the label.  I stumbled across them a few months ago.  Took a few stills of me working on a CD layout with Spencer and Dann.  I don’t know if I have photos of me working on a CD design with anyone.  Especially two artists who really meant a lot to me, when I was much younger. So thought you might get a kick out of it.

- Joe

You can see it here:

http://www.thefader.com/2007/2/14/imprinted-teenage-teardrops/

Thank you, for crediting my name and whatnot.  Very nice of you.

- Joe

This was a co-release t-shirt I did the artwork for, between a Portland band called Insomniac Folklore, and myself.  An American Indian riding a skateboard, over a desert with pyramids.  Live Or Die Man, is the name of my brand.  Basically, anything that has my artwork on it, that I put out.

Poster artwork for a show that I put on at Satyricon, a venue here in Portland.

Logo that I created, for an organization called Subterranean Oasis.  My dear old friend Jimmy Brougher from Eugene, Oregon, started the group.