Bowie Tribute Show at Thunder-Sky

I was fortunate enough to be able to contribute a couple of pieces (one watercolor and one b&w ink) to an upcoming David Bowie tribute show called "Bowie in the Basement" at the Thunder-Sky, Inc. gallery in Cincinnati. The show's opening reception is a couple Fridays from now on April 29th, and the show runs through June 25th. This should be a fantastic event. You can gaze in awe at all of the remarkable fine art pieces that should be on display, and maybe mine can ... at least make you laugh, perhaps?

I knew that I wanted to create some pieces based on the lyrical content of some of my favorite Bowie songs, which was a unique challenge. The main challenge, of course, was simply narrowing down the tracks. I will dig up some of the "outtakes" from ideas I didn't end up going with later in a separate post. As "Low" ('77) is my favorite Bowie album (and one of my all-time favorite records in general), I knew I wanted at least one piece to be of a track from that record ... but which one? Initially I took a crack at designing some space-age cars to draw in sequence all over a page, crashing into various craters and asteroids and whatnot (from "Always Crashing in the Same Car"). And then there were, of course, unlimited possibilities for the opening line of "Breaking Glass" ("don't look at the carpet ... I drew something awful on it"), but the right idea just never came. Switching away from Low, I doodled a theatrical "Life on Mars" poster using all of the colorful characters used in the chorus of the song, attempted a brand new "alternative" LP cover for "Scary Monsters", etc. It was a ton of fun.

The "Low" piece I ended up going with was simply my favorite track (and a little bit of "Breaking Glass" thrown in for good measure). Go figure.

I also stuck with "Life on Mars", but rather than making the film poster I mentioned before, a thought occurred to me when dissecting the lyrics. As someone who is a bit nerdy about kaiju and Japanese monster toys ... why can't "Pink Monkey Bird" be exactly that?