Back in 1996 as Phish was finishing the recording of their 6th studio album "Billy Breaths" they approached me to see how I might interpret a particular fish eyed lens selfie taken by a certain bass player on a computer camera in the recording studio. On its own, Mike's nose is a majestic thing of beauty... a veritable wonderland of luxurious real estate. In the context of a 1996 fish eyed computer lens it suddenly took on other worldly dimensions. At the time I was doing my own odd take on 20th Century Cubism, so the band sort of half expected to see a Picasso-Braque Cubist interpretation of this image. For this piece though I decided to return to my Surrealist roots and I penciled a preliminary drawing that had the feel of an alien sea creature. A crustacean multi-beast washing ashore. I spent the next two weeks reinterpreting the image into a large colorful oil painting. I drove up to the Bearsville studio on the final day of mixing and stepped out of the car to see the band gathering around in the driveway to see the piece. Their expressions suddenly mirrored the painting itself. I remember Jon Fishman saying "Man that nose is really heavy metal!...". I met the producer Steve Lillywhite who gave me a demo in how to use an Etherwave-Theremin. I played ping pong on the upper deck of this amazing barn turned recording studio with Trey, the resident table tennis shark of Bearsville. Later on we all relaxed and listened to the final mix of Billy Breathes on a seriously amazing sound system.
Needless to say it was a memorable day for me. So...return to present day, and see me up on a ladder digging through a crawl space and opening boxes to find several old drawings including this sketch from 1996. Only the "Nose Knows", how the Schnoz of Destiny wound up in that dusty old box. It's a miracle anything survived those days, especially me. So its my pleasure to release a limited edition print of this fortuitous find. -DW
After initially creating the triptych of prints for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I came to this first piece for the Hobbit feeling quite a bit of trepidation. I was extremely happy with how those prints had come out, so I wanted to make sure we continued that tradition with this first piece for the Hobbit trilogy. As usual with all of Peter Jacksons films within this world, there was no shortage of incredible moments and characters to draw from, but we felt that the climactic meeting of Thorin & Azog made for the perfect scene. It contains all of the major characters and allowed for a really dynamic scene with plenty of details for people to search for throughout. -Dan MumfordOnline Thursday May 24 at 1:00pm EDT at https://en.frenchpaperartclub.com/
“This was one of the first stories I read of Poe’s and I remember being both as terrified as I was intrigued. I had a few shots in my head of where I thought the viewer could be placed, but this one I think told the story best. Although Dupin is the hero of this story with his deductive prowess, I wanted to focus on the horror and tragedy of the murder, where the central figure in this story is a wild animal filled with rage and confusion due to his capture and ill treatment. The viewpoint suggests the eyes of the sailor as he looks through the French apartment window upon the ruin and degradation that he has caused, and the three victims within.” - Jay GordonUS Variant
Dave and the band are back on tour, and as always it was a pure pleasure to work with these guys. This is the official poster for the first show of the tour, from last week in Texas. The folks I know who were there have told me it was an absolutely magical summer night. - JamesPoster is a 18" x 24", Screen Printed Poster
