What Tom Neely and his friends at Igloo Tornado started as a joke on a cocktail napkin years ago has blossomed into a mini-phenomenon. Henry & Glenn Forever is their hysterical mini-comic about the imagined tender love affair between intensely macho punk icons Glenn Danzig and Henry Rollins, with digressions into their domestic duties, lovemaking practices, and friendship with the satanic couple next door, Daryl Hall and John Oates. The resulting patchwork of approaches in aesthetic and humor somehow manages to fuse gay jokes with gay’s jokes, striking a chord with punks, comic book geeks and homos alike– though Danzig himself is less than amused.

Last Friday night saw the opening of “Henry & Glenn Gang Bang,” an art show full of new pieces inspired by the original comic from a variety of vantage points, including works by queer comic king (and creator of Wuvable Oaf) Ed Luce, rising art star Eric Yahnker, and Jar Jar Binks aficionado Levon Jihanian. Take a peek at pictures from the opening below, and go check out the show at La Luz De Jesus before it comes down this weekend!

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When you were eight, nine years old, did you love Dilbert or The Far Side or Cathy? Jump Start? For Better or For Worse (if you were a total dork)? Those were simpler, blissfully ignorant times, before the veil of childhood was lifted and the funnies quickly lost their luster. Grown-up comics gave way to the operatic brooding of superheroes, or alternately, the navel-gazing existential musings of indie comics. Neither genre is widely known for its guffaws and belly laughs. Lucky for us, we’ve still got weirdos like Robert Crumb, Matt Furie, and Johnny Ryan running about, producing deliriously funny cartoons.

Add to that list another comedian undercover as an artist: Lisa Hanawalt. Hanawalt’s formal artistic skill is unparalleled, suave and refined– so graceful and gorgeous, it’s doubly fun to watch her gleefully defecate upon it with an array of dizzyingly crude subject matter. Hanawalt’s work is the perfect mixture of adorable animals, gentle bon moths, and beyond the pale dead baby jokes, poop jokes and/or dick jokes. I can almost picture her as a happy little kid, obsessed with drawing majestic stallions, before something deliciously insidious crept into her mind and persuaded her to draw deeply unsettling, even nauseating images of anthorpomorphized creeps and unstable human bodies from beyond the uncanny valley.

Check out pictures from the second issue of her excellent comic book I Want You, below. The Fan Mail page is especially awesome, and paints a picture of Hanawalt as the type of person who’d be more than just a little bit fun to hang out with. Don’t miss her fantastic new series for The Hairpin, “Rumors I’ve Heard About Anna Wintour.”

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I love Twin Peaks. I also love art, pie, and Clifton’s Cafeteria. So you can imagine the immeasurable magnitude of my excitement when all of these things collided last weekend at “In The Trees,” an art exhibition celebrating the 20th anniversary of David Lynch’s masterpiece.

Nowhere else on earth could have been more appropriate to host such an event than downtown L.A.’s world-famous surreal woodland forest-themed cafeteria, Clifton’s. Supplementing the already-perfect surroundings, they gave us free pie! And donuts! A red-curtained Black Lodge filled with David Lynch art pieces! Grace Zabriskie decoupage! I’m hyperventilating, simply reminiscing about the glory of this event. Take a look at some pictures from the opening, below.

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Melancholy GIF masterpieces from Laura Brothers. Brothers is just one of the many stellar artists exhibiting technology-inspired work in Synchronicity’s new show, Man, Such As We Know Him, Is A Computer.

Synchronicity, run by Chris Gere and Future Shipwreck’s own Katie Vonderheide, is one of L.A.’s most reliably awesome art galleries. Sadly, they’ve been in limbo for a few months now thanks to jackass East Hollywood landlords raising rents– so this show will be taking place at Mastodon Mesa‘s space in the Pacific Design Center.

Spencer Longo has taken on the task of transforming the gallery’s interior with an all-encompassing cyberdelic installation. Come check it out tomorrow night, January 20th– and get sucked into the net! The show includes work from Rafael Rozendaal, Peter Burr, and Owleyes and a boatload of other rad people. Don’t miss it!

Leilah Weinraub has spent eight years working on Shakedown, “the story of a black lesbian strip club in Los Angeles.” What started as documentation of the club’s by-women for-women performances (which Weinraub used for video installations) soon grew into something much more personal and meditative, as she began to focus on the lives of the performers outside the club. The deeper she became invested in the project, the clearer it became that a wider narrative of labor, community and symbiosis was being woven through the individual tales of the women who make up Shakedown’s extended family:

The film is anchored in the stories of three women: Ronnie Ron, the creator and emcee of Shakedown, a large butch/stud lesbian and former Jehovah’s Witness; Egypt, a single mother, beauty pageant fanatic, and dedicated self – (re)inventor; and Jazmyne, the complicated and sometimes conflicted “Queen” of Shakedown.

Go check out the video on Leilah’s Kickstarter page, and consider making a contribution towards the completion of this epic untold tale!

If I ever tumble down a rabbit hole into some abstract alternate reality, I hope it looks something like the world of Jack Felgate‘s paintings. It’s warmly whimsical here, but not simply saccharine– the threat of danger keeps things exciting. A cryptic lexicon of mystical pastel signifiers float freely within a cavernous featureless realm that seems to imply limitless possibility. Rumbling with a foreboding monochromatic undertone of dread, Felgate’s inviting surfaces threaten to give way at any moment to the inherent darkness of infinity. Adventure awaits!

via Ryan De La Hoz.

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It’s an important question to ask an artist: “Why do you make stuff?” At its core, the answer I’d always love to hear an artist say is, “I make stuff for myself.” It seems to me that those are the artists that show genuine talent. So, what happens when you ask two people– partners in life and art– to try and describe the force that drives them, and the things in life that got them to that point?

Victor Cayro and Becca Kacanda are a couple, and they’re both incredibly prolific and inspiring artists. I first began my working relationship with Victor and Becca when they participated in a show that took place at Synchronicity Space, under the moniker Big Apple Graphicxz. Since then, I’ve received epic, epic emails and occasionally a phone call that leaves me in awe of their superhuman character.

Here, Victor Cayro and Becca Kacanda on the question of: Why do you make stuff?

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There’s an atomic afterglow emanating from the paintings of Iva Gueorguieva. They brim with so much kinetic energy, I’d totally understand if you felt a little intimidated by their labyrinthine compositions. But that’s a good thing: Gueorguieva’s work is like a challenge– a taunt inciting you to dig deep below the layers of her shapes and forms. Like an epic mural, your eyes can land almost anywhere on the canvas and find something interesting. Read them backwards and forwards, left and right, and you’ll only uncover more mysterious sub-plots of intense emotion swimming amidst an overarching abstract narrative.

The latest issue of New American Paintings includes a fantastic feature on Iva, penned by the awesome Evan J. Garza. The magazine wanted to delve deeper into Iva’s work and examine her process in action, so we teamed up to make the video above. Iva was gracious enough to allow me into her L.A. studio, where she shared the importance of sound, time and space in her work. Examining those enormous paintings and collages up close, I felt like I might fall in.

Edition #91 of New American Paintings (with a cover by Erik Mark Sandberg) is on newsstands now! Check out more images of Iva Gueorguieva’s work after the jump.

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Peter Sutherland clearly understands the importance of narrative. Just take a look at his website: the landing page is a plainly presented paragraph of scattered childhood reminiscences, with no clear links to a portfolio of his photographs. Forced to read these cryptic half-memories, you’re placed in a trance of sorts, at which point Sutherland sneaks in links to his images. Suddenly these urgent photos of desolate Americana, crooked nature and youthful antics burn bright with the implications of a Universe of ethereal narrative contexts.

Sutherland is a master of all trades– photography, curating, filmmaking– he does it all. But somehow his artwork seems best suited to the printed page. Maybe that’s because it’s so immediate, kinetic, candid, organic. You smell the exhaust fumes of Sutherland’s wanderlust and you feel the dried up mud caked on his camera. Flipping through the pages of his books feels like peeking at a freshly developed roll of film, filled with a hundred impossibly lucky snapshots from the best adventure you’ve never gone on.

He’s been publishing zines and art books for years, through a veritable cross section of my favorite small presses: Nieves, Cederteg, JSBJ, and Gottlund Verlag to name a few. Now, Sutherland has put together a deluxe package of printed (and digital) matter called Work(ed) through Future Shipwreck megafriend Jesse Hlebo‘s press, Swill Children. Work(ed) is comprised of four elements: a risoprint on newspaper poster, a 36 page photo book, a 32 page collage zine, and an online component. Made in an edition of 193, the first 50 ordered come with a free Magic Grip jar opener, which “also removes lint from your clothing.” All that for $20! Take a look at the madness after the jump, and I’ll leave you with these words that Sutherland uses to describe the project:

clouds of dust
tarps
innersections of technology and nature
sketchy dudes
4×4 situations
blades
alien arrangements
hot springs
road dogs
summits
escape

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2010: it was rad. Super rad, even!

It started off with a totally blank slate: fresh out of a four-year relationship, I found a studio apartment in Silver Lake and began living alone for the first time in my life. Before I really had time to process the sheer terror and excitement of total personal autonomy, I was swept up in the blinding momentum of co-curating an art gallery with my dear friend, Mya Stark. Both of us were total virgins to the gallery world, but more than thrilled to make it up as we went along. Meanwhile, I was made ends meet by working night shifts as an extra in cell phone commercials and writing about art for Spike Jonze’s blog, We Love You So.

Springtime brought a full time gig with the world’s raddest children’s book author, Dallas Clayton, and the opening of a utopian pop-up shop in Tribeca with Family. We Love You So came to an end in April, so I started concentrating on Future Shipwreck in earnest, with the help of one of my favorite writerly voices: the divine Dan Rosplock. Since then, we’ve cooked up more than 200 posts (and more than 1000 posts on our tumblr, Future Shipwreck Lite).

Our goal has been to share as much awesome artwork as possible, while providing useful context and some entertaining ramblings to ponder along the way. We’ve interviewed some amazing people, covered L.A. art shows, shot documentaries, and evengiven away original artwork to our awesome readers! Along with contributions from Oregonian genius Grace Pettygrove and the impeccable Katie Vonderheide, Future Shipwreck has evolved into something splendiferous in 2010, and I’m beyond stoked to see where this site goes in 2011!