The drawings below were completed between October 10, 2009 and May 30, 2010.

Created between October 2009 and May 2010, Octopus Cloud Swing is the first blank notebook/journal that I have ever successfully completed. In some sense, it represents the completion of a task I set for myself back in 1987. Back then, my parents had presented to me for the holidays, a copy of Atlas, by Glen Baxter. Baxter’s illustrations paired with his hilarious, absurd captions captured my imagination. Though I lacked artistic training of any sort, I knew that in some way I had found a calling. From that moment on I wanted to give voice to the stories floating around in my head. My first attempt was a collection of drawings and stories I titled Rendered Senseless that now sits up in closet collecting dust. Drawn as individual panels, the collection was intended to be a published book. This is different.
During the last year, I have filled several other sketchbooks with cut outs, but this collection figures as the first cover-to-cover book drawn by my hand. I do not consider this book art or illustration. If art is about intention, this is something else entirely. It is the fulfillment of a promise I made to myself to complete it. Where once there was only the blank page, there is now a record of my imagination and labor. My hope is that it may serve too as an encouragement to my children, for them to take the ideas they may have inside them and put them into the world.