Trade and Barter

I'm an art lover- I have been since I was young, which is probably one of the oldest driving forces behind my creativity.  I own dozens of artworks from everywhere you can imagine.  Most of the artwork and prints I have come from trading my art for something I fall in love with.  Here's some of the great creative works which have found a home with me through trade...

Jeff Bertrand is a low brow artist out of Nashville who paints on all sorts of wild surfaces including guitars, found wood, light switch covers and flasks.  Recently, I lent my graphic design skills by designing his new business cards.  In return, I got a flask featuring one of my favorite authors, Charles Bukowski!

Here is a really sweet book from printmaker Jesse Shaw.  I traded some of my own art books with him for it.

Of course, his is much cooler because it's completely hand made.

Jesse cut out detailed portions of his prints and bound them with a patterned page in the back to provide a background as you lay it behind the pages of the book.  Each page is hand printed from wood blocks and lino blocks

Jesse explained that these were really repurposed works because it was scrap prints so to speak.  If a print had a bad spot, he hated to just throw it away so he cut out the good parts for these books.  Each book is unique with different pages.

This low brow painting was shipped to me by Unka Chuck of the Amazing Hancock Brothers.  After seeing their macabre style and mix of printmaking with low brow, I just had to have something.  These guys gut out old mattresses and print on the casings and do all sorts of wild work.

I emailed both brothers and Chuck hit me back, expressing his equal enthusiasm for a trade.  He even went as far as to let me know he'd have something in the mail for me to paint.  What arrived was a box similar to the one he painted and printed on for me.  I did a portrait of Chuck and his brother as one of my siamese faces which he had complimented in our digital conversations.

Here is what I turned out to ship back to Texas before getting "Strutter" in return...

The brothers are known to wear shriner hats at their shows and openings.  I put shriner hats on the little power animals on their shoulders as well.  On the other side, John's hand is holding a gun.

I'm a junkie for the creativity of others... I love to trade prints and even original work so if you are a creative spirit as well, hit me up at dregstudios@gmail.com and make me an offer I can't refuse.