I painted this as a guitar pick prototype that says "Andrea Maddox and the Hey Y'all's." We produced about 100 picks and 100 stickers, and I bring them to our shows. It's small, cute, and people love it. It sits on the merch table. I made the display from scrap wood and leftover acrylics—it was fun to make on a simple wooden plank.

This is the t-shirt screen print for our first EP Long Drive Home, recorded at Joey’s Horsebarn. It his is the first test print, signed by me!

Movin’ On is a song I just wrote about dating, meeting someone new, being really into them, wondering if they're into me, and dealing with their lack of communication. If you want me, talk to me; if not, I'm moving on—I’ve got one foot out the door. We recorded it for Ghost Note’s single series at Joey's Horse Barn, where we also did our EP and a live studio session. Joey and I are now working on a solo project featuring me on keys, my main instrument though I don't play it with my country band. On this track are Matt Berger on drums, Cory Gray on piano, Bella Kosmacher on fiddle, and Joey Weiss on bass.

We're at the edge of some beautiful place, and the owl, who's the star of the animation that I just made, is flying overhead. I'm curious to think about what's happening inside that house at this moment. It feels pretty magical. Maybe people are sitting at a table and playing cards, eating ginger cookies, and drinking tiny coffees. There's probably a dog laying in front of a fire, and there's an owl flying overhead.

This is another rock Cairn. It's also sort of similar to the other painting inspired by awe—of nature and a reverence for it. Again, the idea of a rock cairn feels ancient and memorializes some sort of spirit that has lived. These pieces do connect to the stop motion: I made a photocopy—I took a picture—of this painting and the other painting, printed them out, then cut out pieces to use as background in the animation. So some of this stuff shows up in the animation; the top rock definitely does, and parts of the grass in the bottom rock do.

This painting is inspired by the idea of rock cairns. Do you know what that is? So, back when I used to do archaeology, and we would be wandering around Central Oregon and find some rock cairns, and you think oh my god. This has been here for so long, and this is somebody's memorializing someone or, you know, making some sort of structure that says “I was here and I was thinking about something or someone” But I also have been feeling really connected to nature lately and really into planting native plants in my yard and just thinking about how we humans wanna control everything and how, like, planting natives in your yard is a way of saying, I'm not in control. I'm letting go and letting the earth be be the leader, which is what us humans should be doing. So that's, the inspiration for this painting.

An old friend shared this song with me when I was having a hard time. That friend is now somewhere else, we don't know where! Not gone, but not around like before. Whenever I hear these lyrics I kinda take stock of everyone in my life that I care for. And I think about how crazy it is that we're all here at the same time, and instead of being something else, like a cool rock or something, we’re us, I don't really think God is real. It's okay. (Recorded by Cory Gray at Scenic Burrows, Vancouver, WA December 4th, 2025. Only 1 tape made.)

I made this mask when I was, like, 16. I was a a TA at the in the ceramics class at my school. So that basically meant I cleaned up after people, and then I got to make whatever I wanted to. And I made this weird gender bending little red riding hood wolf character and then glazed it and then painted it also with acrylic paint. And I wove the rope. At one point, I had attached it to a hood, and I did wear it, but it's very uncomfortable. It's heavy, and it hurts my face.

This is a painting of my partner, John Paul Harrison Rapp- who is also a musician. It shows him in the Halloween costume he’s kind of becoming known for every year. He doesn’t really like to dress up, but it’s pretty easy to paint on a bandit mask and you’re instantly in a costume, so that’s what he goes with. He also loves books; that’s why there are books behind him. He’s a big reader, always has been. We’re both readers, yet lately I’ve drifted toward audiobooks—don’t know what happened to me in the past five years, but that’s more my style now. He still likes real books, and most of the stuff in our apartment is books at this point.

“Insatiable” is one of the first songs I ever wrote and recorded, so it's very old. I originally recorded it on a cassette 4-track. For the lyrics, I used a piece I'd written describing a dream experience. The piece wasn’t intended for a song so the singing came out in a unique way (to me). This song has always stuck with me. I thought it would be fun to re-record it, and I think Cory captured it really well.

It's called Alone with My Thoughts, another spray-painted background with the sun—or maybe the moon—shining on a golden tree. Golden grass and little wheat-looking plants grow around it. It represents being alone and absorbing your own creative magic. The plants aren't a specific species, just leaf shapes I like to draw.

The sun is setting in some ghostly golden landscape. Spray painted sky, a tree and it’s shadow ghost. Stars and sprouts appear as night descends.

This is a handmade leather guitar pick my crafting puppeteer dad made, and I signed it. I’ve actually played several of my guitars with this pick. I wanna say he made it within the last fifteen-ish years, though I can’t quite remember—my memory’s not very good. A leather pick gives a sound that’s sort of nice for bass or a thicker acoustic guitar. It’s durable, so you can throw it in your purse and you might not lose it as easily as you would a normal pick.

Cassingle! “Feel Like Makin’ Love”. This is, you know, my party hit. If I'm at a party and wanna play a sing along, people enjoy this one. Never recorded it before, this is the only recording of it. And it was recorded at Scenic Burrows with Cory Gray in December 2025 with Sam Brewer on the drums and the bass and some lead guitar. We tried making love twice, but the first try was the best.

These are handwritten lyrics to the song Danger, which I wrote while living on 39th in Hawthorne—you know, maybe I was falling in love a little bit, maybe with the city, maybe with a person. Back then my guitar player at the time, Jeff, added some noodly guitar parts, and they really made the song. I have good memories; it reminds me of old Portland and of first moving here after coming from Asheville, North Carolina. The track ended up on Dirty Radio, which came out in, like, 2011, I think.

This is a cassingle of a song called "Coronation." It's a tune I wrote in the dead of a pretty intense Idaho winter—really bitter cold. The piece is about the coming of spring and hope in a new season, so it carries a sense of warmth breaking through. It's just acoustic guitar and vocals, and that's pretty much it. I recorded it at Scenic Burrows in Vancouver, Washington in December 2025, then dubbed the track to tape cassette.

This is a cassingle (tape cassette single) of a song called Rabbit Stew by Tispur. Rabbit Stew is a pastoral tale about a dog that gets lost chasing a rabbit. It’s a testament to my upbringing in Southeastern Idaho on my family's farm.

This is a Polaroid from a cassingle session with Cory Gray at Scenic Burrows in Vancouver, WA on December 3 2025. In this picture im playing my first full size acoustic guitar that I got when I was about 15 years old. So I've had it for a long time. And it's an Art and Luthiery Canadian guitar. It's got a nice black lacquer finish, which I carved into at one point in my early twenties, and a helicopter is flying over the moon. Very low.

I don't know what I have to say about this thing except it's not Miles Davis. I really don't know. It was an evolution—like most of these -until it finally revealed its identity completely. I'd like to talk to this person, but they're not really looking at you, kinda preoccupied, so I wouldn't bother them. I do really like solar shields; I can't actually wear standard sunglasses. If I wear them, it has to be the full coverage. Otherwise, you're seeing two different things at once, and I'd rather not.

This painting is Mount Saint Helens thinking about “it”— a pre-eruption, thought bubble of what’s to come. Inside there’s a hammerhead shark; They haven’t evolved for forty million years, so the hammerhead hit its peak design and like the mountain has been that way for millions and millions of years, They’re both, in my mind patient but potentially catastrophic, destructive forces— patient killers waiting it out just below the surface.

About fifteen years ago I found this jawbone in Eastern Oregon and glued it to this board. I added dried-out bottom-of-the-bucket paint—great texture, kinda bone-like yet still soft. For years I saw a vague face, the jawbone serving as the jaw. After living with the piece forever, I finally knew what it was: the jawbone is the Titanic and those ridges are smoke stacks. A long journey to that epiphany, and yeah, some things take a really long time.

This acrylic on wood painting is titled Jimi Hendrix's Meandering Blues—and we've all been there before. Oh, that's funny., I have blues and greens, all the feelings. I picture myself as the floating cube, trying to avoid the blues. Completed in 2025. (17.5x21.5)

This is goofy brand Lee and Nancy sand in a can. Good for the beach, the sandbox, glass, flocking, castles, clams, touching, and more. I made this in about 2016 in Slab City as part of a project where I found discarded aerosol cans in the desert and brought them back to life. I was part of an experiment called Sunfort. Before that, I was the caretaker at Salvation Mountain, on the National Registry of Folk Art Historic Places. It's a man made art mountain by Leonard Knight, a work built over thirty years from hay bales, adobe, and hundreds of thousands of gallons of paint.

This painting is called Light Green Fella—basically all the emotions and thoughts when you’re feeling green, inspired by a Michael Hurley song. It’s sort of Kermit too, I guess, with Kermit down in this pit in the bottom left. It’s all the emotions and thoughts that one has while feeling green in this fucked-up world and all the shit going on. Acrylic on canvas, with a homemade frame out of old-growth doug fir.

This is Down With Wilco, my biggest Minus 5 seller, recorded in Chicago with Wilco (The Band). It came out a couple times as a double vinyl, but has been out of print for a long time. Last year Yep Roc wanted to do a reissue, and I made it more like the original record. It only has one song different from the original CD, and everything is from the actual sessions, whereas the double album had extra tracks that were stretching the concept a bit. So this is the purest version. It sold out instantly because it was a Record Store Day thing. I barely even got a copy of the original release, though I did snag a couple test pressings.

It's a test pressing of the five-record box set I put out in 2013 with Yep Roc Records. The original box set was limited to 750 copies. So it's kind of rare in itself, but, this is one of the test pressings. So there's five LPs inside it that are just marked by letters Sides A-J. 57 songs or something like that. All new at the time in 2013. It was mostly recorded in my studio at the Dungeon Of Horror. At least all the songs were finished and mixed there. A few were done at Type Foundry with Adam Selzer. But we only tracked like six or six/seven of the songs, you know, in the live setting. Otherwise, I had people do drums in my basement or do tracks in far off places, but mostly it was done in my basement. Some players on this record are Jeff Tweedy, Peter Buck of course, Linda Pitmon, Joe Adragna, Jim Talstra, Ezra Holbrook. God, there's so many people. Dennis Diken and Jim Babjak of the Smithereens, Chris Mars!, Mike Mills of REM, John Ramberg, Kurt Bloch, Laura Gibson, Wesley Stace, Tucker Jackson (one of many excellent Portland pedal steel purveyors), Jenny Conlee. Ian McLagan and Bill Rieflin -- rest in peace, my dear friends. And Casey Neill, Jesse Greene. The usual assortment of quality.

I've done three volumes of Neil Young songs since the pandemic. I started doing it just as a activity because I was locked inside -- and what could be more fun than playing Neil songs? Pretty soon I had a whole double album worth of stuff, and then I thought, maybe I should write a couple songs about Neil or inspired by Neil. So I did those, and I added those to the the first record. And then I've done two more volumes since then, and one of them has, like, five or six songs that I wrote myself, inspired by Neil. Suddenly it's 2025, his eightieth birthday, just a couple days ago. And, I thought, well, I'm gonna do two original songs, and I'll call it Neil Young Vol. IV. I had planned on doing a seven-inch for his birthday, but no way I was ever gonna get that together in time. So I just recorded these two songs last week (with help from Joe Adragna) and put them up on Bandcamp, and this cassette will be the only physical manifestation of it, for now anyway. Neil & Crazy Horse had a song called Fucking Up, so this is Fucking Up 2. It's about getting old, you know. But staying young too. And the other song, Requiem for a Horse... I mean, I may be jumping the gun because I don't know that Crazy Horse is dead or anything like that. Of course they're not, but, you know, I felt like maybe their days playing with Neil might have come to an end. Maybe - I mean, I don't know. It's open-ended song though. It may be called a "Requiem", but the chorus is “the horse lives on and on and on” So, you know, it it could go either way. And either way, it's beautiful.

I made this candle holder using a carving method called sgraffito to make the eyes and the teardrops, when paint a colored slip onto the clay and carve out images. I like making ceramics when I don't feel necessarily inspired to create music. It's nice to still be doing something creative, and it's a nice time to have, like, a meditative quiet time that is necessary for writing music. So I feel like they kinda help each other.

Here we have another stoneware bud vase. It's it's got but one one little bow. I was trying to make a bunch of different kind of designs for for bud vases. Something that you couldn't find in a store. A nontraditional shape. This is a shino glaze, which is a Japanese glaze that’s a really traditional old formula that people have been using for centuries.

This is a stoneware flower vase that I made. I used is a high fire clay. It was fired to cone 10, so it's the highest fire that you can do. That’s what makes it a stoneware. It's the most dense type of ceramic that you can make.

I collaged this piece of music together from a long set of modular-synth improvisations I recorded in 2018 on a small Eurorack system I borrowed from a friend. In 2019 I sifted through the material and shaped it into a coherent piece. The chime-bell sounds at the end come from a Yamaha TX-802 FM synth. We dumped it to tape at Scenic Burrows Studio in 2025. The tape label is made from the another piece from the Xerox Moire series and cut and hand applied to the tape shell. It’s watery, bubbly synthesizer music.

This was kind of an experiment in flute making. It's one of my early attempts at making a multi-note flute that played an actual scale. It's got four finger holes. Three in front and then one thumb hole in the back, so it plays a five note scale. I just placed the holes where they felt sort of natural and made it kind of intuitively and tuned each note by changing the size of the holes. The overall length determines the root note- the lowest note it'll play, and then the position and size of each of the holes changes the pitch. It's an end blown flute with a notch in the end of the tube that you hold to the base of your mouth so that your chin kind of closes the end of the tube and leaves an opening that you blow over with kind of a focused stream of air. It is made from the kind of plastic tubing that you can run hot water through and it and it's still potable.

This was research and development for the art I used for some lathe cut records that were cut on clear acrylic squares by Gorby lathe cuts, based in Milwaukie, OR. Since the disc itself was clear plastic and it was in a clear plastic sleeve, I wanted to print on clear pieces of acetate, these interference patterns, and then have a different pattern printed on the label of the record so that when you took it out of the sleeve, it would do a Moiré kind of animated pattern. I made it using a copy machine starting with the original source material of a security envelope turned inside out and then kind of hand-manipulated with each iterative copy and superimposed on top of itself through multiple copies on the same piece of paper.

This cassette has 2 unreleased demos for the upcoming Abronia record called called “Shapes Unravel” which is set to come out. 02/20/2026. They were recorded at Red Lantern Studio down on Russell Street in Portland, OR. Band members are Robert Grubaugh playing the big drum, Danny Metcalfe on bass, Rick Pedrosa on pedal steel & percussion, James Shaver playing guitar, Keelin Mayer playing saxophone singing. And I play guitar and sing backup vocals.

We needed a poster for a show when we were playing at Turn, Turn, Turn, and I asked my mom if she wanted to do one. I don't know if I even told her or she just came up with a lizard on her own. I don't remember. Watercolor and ink on cardstock. 03/05/2022. Abronia, Zebra & Idaho Joe Wilson at Turn Turn Turn in Portland, OR.

I made this piece during a time when i was touring a lot with Ghost To Falco around 2010. It began as packaging for a limited-run CDR that I sold on tour, and I kept going with the art after the discs sold out. The cardstock probably came from my mom’s house in North Carolina. I’m pretty sure it’s acrylic paint. Instead of brushes, I would pour a lot of paint onto the bottom of a metal pot or sheet metal, press it onto the cardstock, then lift it so the paint pulls into little veins. After it dries, I add another color. The method has grown more involved, and I’ve made larger works since, but this was the genesis of the process. I’d rather not say what I see in it—I like to leave it open to interpretation.

This cassette holds two unreleased versions of a song called “Softer and Slow”. I wrote it while walking between my house and the bar over a few nights; that weird part came after the bar. It’s got a sort of Grateful Dead festival part as the bridge. You’ll just have to hear it to find out. I’d kicked it around in my head for years and finally recorded it at Scenic Burrows in October 2025 with Cory Gray, with Dan Galucki on drums and Sunny Galucki on boxing gloves and background talkery. The tape cover is a sharpie rendition of a salmon I caught while fishing in the Sandy River with Cory.

This is another alternate cover for the Sport Fishing USA record “So Long”And this is a photo of me standing looking out on the Pacific Ocean. This is on the trip when I first moved from Ohio to Seattle in 2015. And it was just a beautiful spot somewhere in Northern California or Southern Oregon, I think. I can't remember where exactly it is. Midwestern boy sees the ocean for the first time. That is the first time I saw the ocean. Sport Fishing USA was a band with my brother, Brendan, and our friend David Byrne. We were rock n roll power trio. We played in Ohio for years, and it was my first band where I played songs that I had written, and this is the last record that we put out. “So Long”

This is a digital print of a photograph I took in Northern California. It’s from the same photo series I used for the Sport Fishing USA “So Long” album cover. I had originally planned to paint the lettering onto an album-sized blow-up and use that as the cover, but I abandoned the idea; I still have those drafts. The paint on the print is acrylic. I don’t know the exact location in Northern California where it was taken.

On this cassette is an unreleased track that was recorded after I got back from a tour playing a lot of country rock stuff. I basically wanted to do my take on Henry Flynt's "Lonesome Train Dreams" with some Joe Meek style producing. Since my full name is Enrique, I decided to call it "I am Henry too" as a homage to Henry Flynt.

This is a mask made from various things, including some old rulers from Fred Meyer and finger joints from a box for the teeth. The eyes are just old fir with some staples in them, some random pieces of hardware, the nose and jaw are bone. Got some decorative hinges. The background wood is oak. I believe that oak came from the Stoller winery. And it is from a tree that was fell there. I either made it earlier this year or late last year. I can't remember. So late twenty twenty four or early twenty twenty five. And who is this person? Oh, man. Whoever you want it to be. You know? It's like, I don't know, man. Is he sizing you up? Is he really? I feel like he's kind of sad, but, also, maybe has stuff to make him appear more intimidating.

This painting is the cover for my solo record Too Heart, Too Earth, coming out on November 2. It’s a painting I worked on over 2025 for the FarSound project. The surface is, I believe, an old cabinet door from a good old house I picked up, with stained plywood serving as the background. The medium is acrylic paint—just plain acrylic paint. I painted the entire piece myself, truly all by myself.

I thought a circuit board would be the coolest thing for an album cover, just because a circuit board itself looks cool. At the same time we were building all these different synthesizers to bring on tour. As we were developing them and they were getting crazier, I realized I could match those ideas: we could develop a synthesizer similar to what we’d take on tour and make it so you could build it at home as the album cover—you’d have your own synthesizer. Once we realized that, we said, “Okay, let’s do this.” We were about halfway through recording, and we decided we had to put that synthesizer on every song on the record. So we scrambled to get prototypes built in time to record it on every track. The ‘Synthesizer’ album is a complete idea, and in the Grammy mix for Best Recording Package and Best Alternative Music Album.

This is the supersonic fuzz gun schematic, hand-drawn by me. Unfortunately, there's no date on it. It includes all the markings and was even used as print filler paper, which we used to clean out the silk screens. We always hand-drew these from what we were putting in solderless breadboards, arranging all the parts. This was my language to describe the parts using rectangles and squares, helping us build these things. It was all wired together on small perf boards, with wires connecting all the parts, assembled by referencing this drawing. Everyone constantly referred to it as the guide for building. It was insane to think about, and you could see changes or clarifications made to the parts. This provides insight into the beginnings of Death by Audio.

This is one of the earlier Death by Audio pedals I made. It combines a brass master clone with a boost drive circuit. I built it while working at a toy design place, using metal boxes from fake chemical kits they sold. This pedal is unique, sometimes glitching out, but the sound is incredible. It has sharp edges and a bit of craziness, showcasing the madness wired into it. The sound is unparalleled, and the ability to switch the octave and change the tone is fantastic.

This Blueberry Pie Candle was used in the film HERETIC, which I co-directed/co-wrote/co-produced for A24. This candle was featured on screen in a pivotal scene with actors Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher, and Chloe East. Multiple candles were produced, and new ones were used each time the scene was reset. The Blueberry Pie candle played an important part in the film - without giving away spoilers, the candle recontextualizes the safety of the situation that Chloe & Sophie's characters find themselves in. A24 loved the candle so much, that it became a major part of the marketing for the film, being featured on the teaser poster, trailers, television spots, and it even became an item re-produced and sold in the official A24 store.

This is the desk chair used by Hugh Grant's character (Mr. Reed) in HERETIC, a film I co-directed/co-wrote/co-produced for A24. Our art department sourced this chair somewhere in the greater Vancouver region where we filmed, and it was used throughout principle photography on the sound stages at Golden Ears Studios in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia. The chair was featured in the scenes that took place in Mr. Reed's library. Hugh had several pages of dialogue he had to deliver while sitting in this chair. After the shoot wrapped, the chair was transported via a semi-truck to our storage unit in Iowa.

This is a 35mm film reel from HERETIC, a film I co-directed/co-wrote/co-produced for A24. While the film was shot on a digital format by cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung (DP of Oldboy), my filmmaking partner (Bryan Woods) and I wanted to make a 35mm print that could be screened at various venues, including the Vista Theater in Los Feliz and the Music Box in Chicago. We were concerned that some of the colors would have a difficult time translating to 35mm film, so a test print was made of the last section of the movie, which is what this item is. This film print accumulated some scratches during production, but it was shipped to us in Iowa where we ran it through a 35mm projector at The Last Picture House, the theater that Bryan and I co-own in Davenport and made sure the colors were satisfactory. Please note this is only Reel 6 of the movie, which is about a 20 minute section of the end of the film. We chose this section of the film to test as it contains the darkest and brightest sections of the movie.

This song's about a barfly, and I like to think of him as an alcoholic amnesiac where every morning he wakes up, and he's like, “oh, dude. I feel terrible” But then he drives by the bar, and he's like, “what's that spot? I wanna go check that out” He's sort of a helpless sour man. It's about this bar in Oregon City, nearby where I live called Rodder's that’s just is a place where dreams go to die. And this recording was done at Scenic Burrows in a couple hours in September 2025, recorded by Cory Gray, a kind of one instrument at a time in rapid succession type thing. Just quick fire and then dumped to this cappuccino swirl colored tape cassette, and this is where you can hear this unique recording.

This is a 1of1 lacquer cut of a song I was commissioned to write for a fundraising campaign in 02/2012. This guy Jason hired me to write it so he could us it to break up with his then-girlfriend Joanna. I recorded it alone at my house on Gantenbein in North Portland: a couple vocal tracks, two guitar lines, a bit of bass, and hand percussion. It’s a mellow, meandering minor-key tune—little sad, little pretty. Adam at Telegraph Mastering cut it while I watched, ran it through his machine, and handed me the record.

This is a song I wrote for my grandma. I grew up in Sacramento, California on a cattle ranch, and this tune is a kind of celebration of springtime—those crisp mornings moving cattle and branding back in the nineties when we did those things, afternoons at fishing ponds, being a kid in a beautiful place—and how my grandma was there for every bit of it and still is. She liked the song a lot; she was a good audience. I played it for her in her living room, and she sat patiently, listened, and really enjoyed it- i think. I recorded it in 2012 in my little studio at my house in Portland. On side B there is a version if “Break Up Song”

This tape cassette has some recordings never heard by anyone before. Two are me singing some Delines tunes, and one is a Richmond Fontaine tune that was never released called “Why You Like That, Brother?” These were recorded by Cory Gray at Scenic Burrows and put onto this tape just for Ghostnote. The Delines tunes are “Mr. Luck and Miss Doom” which is the title track off our last record, and then “Kid Codeine” which was on a record of ours called Seadrift. And they're both played the way I wrote them originally. Kid Codeine was a kind of folk tune, and Luck and Doom has always been a song I really liked. And “Why You Like That, Brother” is just a kinda misfit Richmond Fontaine song that never went anywhere, and I forgot about it. And and then when I was playing around with these, I suddenly started playing it so I put it on here.

Wake Up Ray is I'd been working on a short story for months about a woman that that gets mad at her husband and takes a birdie bought her and threw her out into the the little bird out into the snow, and it just didn't work as a as a story. And so one night, I wrote it as a song, and and it was on the last Richmond Fontaine record. And it's probably one of my favorite tunes. And this is just you writing it writing out the lyrics? It's an old it's an old version. I used to write out the lyrics, you know, on a on a good piece of paper when I was done with them. It's kinda marker, and that's this. And what record was did this come out on? You can't go back if there's nothing to go back to. Cool.

“The Pull” is a song about alcoholism. It's about a guy who goes into AA and, once he's sober, realizes he knows absolutely nothing, so he quits talking. His sister asks why he stopped, and he says, "Because I don't know anything." The pull of booze makes him so mad he starts boxing. He borrows his sister's car to get to and from fights, but after he detaches a retina he has to quit. The pull still won't leave him alone, so he starts running every night until he can't think, just to escape the pull of tequila.

I think it's like how I look at introspection, just looking in on myself and trying to figure out why and how I deal with things. I'm staring at the holes I'm digging, learning to handle problems in a healthy way, recognizing my own issues and my frequent inability to confront them.

Scrapheap is kind of just a representation of ideas in my head that go unfinished. Like these piles of stuff that I start on and I rarely, if ever, come back to. And just kind of like the the quilt of garbage that I collect and and don't know what to do with, really. Tombow brush pen on paper.

Passing a bodega, the lone window sign—giant letters spelling “milk cigarettes”—flung me back to my adult youth. My brother, our friend Gordon, and I were holed up in a shitty punk house after every roommate bailed, forfeiting the security deposit. Three depressed chain-smokers, we never cleaned, looping Lee Hazelwood’s “Requiem for an Almost Lady” while sulking over lost girlfriends and jobs. A repossessed car sat outside; inside, every table held bowls of milk turned ashtrays, every container stuffed with butts, cereal, and mold. Yeah—those were the best years of my life.

It was a drawing in my sketchbook I did several years ago that I always dug. During artist week at the Sou’Wester I recreated it large. The original is 8.5x11, but this one runs 14.5x20.

I did this drawing some years ago at my ADX studio in Portland for my friend Beth Haidle, creative director of the kids’ illustration and comics magazine Illustoria. I occasionally do work for them, and this piece was an illustration for the magazine.

This drawing eventually landed on my book cover, The Tigers They Let Me. It isn’t the final illustration, but one variant I made while working it out. I retraced the image, scanned the line work, colored it, then photocopied and enlarged it onto thin colored paper I’d salvaged from the Portland city dump during a six-month Glean residency. I’d come away with stacks of that paper—stuff I really dig. While preparing pieces for the residency show, I ran this tiger image onto one sheet and typed a poem over it. I’m not sure the poem exists anywhere else. Its lines circle back to the book’s themes—very memory based, very love based.