A Photo I took while at the Mos Def MF Doom concert in Chicago.

Its feels good to be rewarded for your hard work and diligence and that’s what the Kid Cudi concert on January 6th was all about for Risa and me. If you haven’t noticed yet Risa and I are music lovers and we really appreciate when our favorite musicians pay us a visit in Milwaukee. Its been a long while now that we’ve both been listening to Cudi’s music and when we heard he was performing at the rave we knew that we wanted to hook him up with a thank you gift, a Risa Marie original. For weeks I had been making phone calls to arrange an exchange. I called Def Jam, I called Motown, I called Phylicia Fant like 12 times, I even text messaged Rhymefest for the number to Good Music, but no answers. We brushed it off and just said we’ll be the first ones to the show and hold the portrait up in the front row. Then about 4 days before the show my friend Frankie Flowers texts messages me that he is supposed to open up for Cudi and if we came with him as his support then we’d get backstage passes! We damn near jumped threw the roof after hearing that. We stayed up almost 2 whole nights working on the portrait and everything else for it and printed it out at Digicopy hours before the concert. We felt like we had all the time in the world because we were getting backstage passes so there was no need to wait in any lines. But, as you know, come prime time the plans change. Due to some over booking error Frankie was redirected to perform on a different stage and our passes wouldn’t give us access to the stage Cudi was going to play on. I know that’s some bull crap right? I wasn’t going to let that stop us though, especially after al the hard work Risa put into that piece of art and her dream of giving it to Kid Cudi. I went and found the stage manager and told him everything that was going on and convinced him to put Risa’s large portrait of Cudi in his dressing room. He gave me his word that it would get there but for insurance we kept a smaller version of the portrait with Risa to try and hold up during the show.
By the time Frankie got done with his set and we made it over to the main stage the floor was packed! There was no way to get to the front let alone a decent spot to watch the show from. So I did something I’ve never seen any else do at a general admission concert, I asked people to let me walk in front of them. No aggravated pushing and lieing about sick friend who are dyeing of imaginary disease that only direct eyesight of the performer can cure. No, I just asked people, one at a time. I told what happened and showed them the portrait and sure enough we made it behind the left speakers to 4 rows away from center stage before faced with a frigid wall of un-inspirable stubborn fans who had been standing their just a little too long to move now. The Show was great. It was a lot harder to film because of all the bumping bodies but I think I scored some nice shots.
After it was all said and done we waited by the stage to see if any one, especially Cudi, would come out to meet and great the fans. Apparently Cudi was out as soon as he wrapped up his encore but luckily for us Plain Pat and Emile wondered back out on stage. With the help of a few risamarie converts, the people we convinced to let us in front of them, we flagged them down off stage and Emile was kind enough to take our small portrait back with him to Cudi for us. As we waited for him to come back I could see the hope and the worry building up in Risa’s eyes and I could feel them too as security began to sweep the crowd out side. We lingered and stalled as much as we could, and thank God we did. We must have been standing no more than 50ft away from the exit when I spotted Emile portrait in hand scanning the crowd for Risa. Risa’s hard work was not for naught. He eyes light up with pure joy when she read the words Cudi left for her on her piece.

Dream on
“NICE!”

Hopefully Cudi found his gift from us, a 24 x 36 version of her work, and will be framing it and putting it on his wall.

Peace

Portrait of Kid Cudi. I presented this to his crew before, and after, his concert in Milwaukee on January 6th 2010. He received a large print before hand and after the concert I passed my copy and a pen on to the stage in hopes of getting it signed and soon after my pen and portrait had returned!

This is a digital painting produced in photoshop

Here is a look at what I have been working on all semester so far.


Its called BRIDGE, a magazine focusing on how the MIAD community is involved with philanthropy, service, and general betterment of our worlds community. I worked in tandom with Jill Duckwitz to complete this magazine concept along with a coresponding online wordpress site (I'll upload stills of that later but its going to be the basis for the next version of this blog)
It was a nice chance for me to do a little writing, some photography, an interview, some cheif editing, a lot of designing, and a good amount of hair pulling but it was all worth it.


Tell me what you think..

I drew this while watching Gone With the Wind with my friend Gloria... and she likes to make faces.

When Risa and I heard that Rhymefest would be playing at Stonefly this week end the first thing we said was "we gotta make him a portrait!" So Risa Banged out this beautiful piece and we handed it to Che before the show. Needless to say he loved it. Che, Rhymefest, put down a great show along with Milwaukee's own Prophetic and the Fresh Cut Collective.

We had a great time. I put this video together so quick because Risa wanted to share the experience with all of you.


Prophetic spitting Big Dreamer umbrellasup.com and the Rhymefest Portrait





Here is the fan art that he was going to how Kanye for us.








Click the image below to download a copy of the CD Rhymefest was talking about.

Met Rhymefest last night!! And was able to give him a portrait and get my copy signed. (Thats what the white area is for on the drawing). He loved it! Said it was the best fan art he has ever recieved. After the concert he brought me on stage to give me a hug and thank me. It was surreal. He even said he would show Kanye West the portrait I did of kanye in a week from now when they get together!!! Best night ever!