Cropped Will Cardini artwork

November 23rd, 2011

Quick E.A.S.T. Endcap

Filed under: Recaps — Tags: , — William Cardini @ 2:05 am

Thanks to everyone who made it by Glade and I’s place during the 2011 East Austin Studio Tour!

E.A.S.T. Stop #121

We both had a blast and got to meet a ton of great people. My favorite though, were our first visitors. They were two teenagers who go to an arts magnet high school and their moms. One of them told me that they hope they can have a house like ours when they grow up. I hope that we inspired them just a little bit. It also made me think that high school me would probably be pretty stoked about the setup I have now. It’s good to get that reminder that I’m still living part of the bohemian artist dream while working a day job.

November 18th, 2011

Final E.A.S.T. 2011 Weekend at the Hensel Hypercastle

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:29 am

Hey y’all, this upcoming weekend is your last chance to come by the Hensel Hypercastle during E.A.S.T. 2011 to see Glade and I’s art. Just like last weekend, we’ll be open from 11am to 6pm, Saturday and Sunday. We’re Stop #121 on the tour, 1807 East 22nd Street.

Here are some shots from last weekend:

Hensel Hypercastle entrance
Here’s the front door. We’ve got Glade’s Welcome to the Hypercastle print on the door, a new artwork by her above the TV, our Christmas tree (out a bit early, we know), and a spinner rack of Glademade cards.

Hensel Hypercastle comic table
Our coffee table is chockful of comics. Most of them are for reading but a few are for sale. I’ve got comics I’ve drawn (such as my latest, VORTEX), comics by fellow GCPM members (such as Kid Space Heater by Josh Burggraf and Lords ov thee Black Sun by Mike Miles), two issues of the GCP’s poetry/comics anthology Catch Up, and various issues of anthologies that I’ve been in (Math Fiction, Candy or Medicine, Smoke Signal, Taffy Hips, and Secret Prison). Come by, chill out on our couch, and feel free to flip through everything.

Hensel Hypercastle prints
We’ve got almost all of the prints from our Hypercastle print show at Austin Books and Comics and every print we had for sale last year.

Mark P Hensel studio
I switched out the artwork on my walls in my studio.

L Glade Hensel studio
Glade has some birthday banners on the walls of her studio.

I hope to see some of y’all this weekend!

November 12th, 2011

E.A.S.T. 2011: VORTEX Debuts at the Hensel Hypercastle

Filed under: Print Comics — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — William Cardini @ 2:29 pm

I meant to get a blog post up yesterday but Glade and I were up until super late prepping our house for E.A.S.T. Here’s a sneak preview of part of our house:

Hensel Hypercastle during E.A.S.T. 2011
From left to right: painting of Anthony Romero by Anthony Garza, pillows by Glademade, sculpture casting ominous shadow by Alison Kuo, framed screenprint by Rand Renfrow, rocking chair embroidered by Haleh Pedram (with another Glademade pillow), and strange shamanistic wall sculpture from a Pedram garage sale.

“But Mark,” you may be thinking, “What’s in that box on the coffee table? Are those …” you squint “… comics?”

Let’s get a close up:

Hensel Hypercastle during E.A.S.T. 2011

Dear reader, your suspicions are correct! Every year at E.A.S.T. I like to showcase my major project from the past year. In 2010, that was the unsold artwork from my show Hypermorph at Domy Houston – and this year, it’s VORTEX, a graphic novel that I’ve been working on since the beginning of June. The first 32 pages form a nice semi self-contained narrative so I printed them up as a 7×10″ black-and-white xerox minicomic.

Come by E.A.S.T. Stop #121, 1807 East 22nd St, today (Saturday November 12th), tomorrow (Sunday November 13th), or next weekend (November 19th and 20th) from 11am to 6pm to check VORTEX #1 out! Glade and I also have a ton of other great artwork, comics, prints, and cards for you to see. I’ll be posting more pictures next week.

If you’re not an Austinite and want to order a copy of VORTEX #1, they’re $5 plus $1 shipping. Just leave a comment on this post or see my connect page for other communication channels.

November 8th, 2011

East Austin Studio Tour 2011: The Hensel Hypercastle Postcard

Filed under: Events — Tags: , , , — William Cardini @ 7:43 am

Glade and I are doing the East Austin Studio Tour once again! This year we got some postcards printed up. We spent last night driving around Austin and dropping them off at various coffee shops and other places.

Here’s my side of the postcard:

Here’s Glade’s side:

We’ve decided to call our studios the Hensel Hypercastle.

I’m going to post more images and previews of what we’ll have on display over the next week and a half.

November 30th, 2010

E.A.S.T. Recap and New Miizzzard Screenprint for Sale

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:29 am

I hope that everyone in the U.S. had a belly-filling Thanksgiving! One thing I’m thankful for is everyone who came by our studio during E.A.S.T., so thanks y’all. Of course, what I have is never enough, so Glade and I spent some time brainstorming ways to bring even more people in next year. We’ll see if they work.

If you’re feeling nostalgic, I just added a couple photos to the East Austin Studio Tour 2010 set on my flickr, check it out here.

On the last day of the tour, I finally had a new edition of 20 Miizzzard screenprints ready for sale. Here’s a shot of the purple/green version (there’s also purple/orange):

Purple and Green Miizzzard Screenprint

Click here to see process shots of the screenprints

November 18th, 2010

Stop #107 on the East Austin Studio Tour: Second Weekend

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — William Cardini @ 12:54 am

Thanks to everyone who came out to our place on the East Austin Studio Tour last weekend! Those who couldn’t make it, there’s still this upcoming weekend. We’ll be open to visitors from 11am to 6pm on Saturday and Sunday with free beer, snacks, and art.

Here’s how my studio is looking during the interstitial:

View of my Studio between the two E.A.S.T. 2010 Weekends

If you look closely on the bookshelf on the left, you can see an old broken toy Grimlock. Is that worth anything? The painting on the easel in the middle is something that I intended to finish during last weekend (working on it while people stopped by). I didn’t get very far, though; I forgot how hard it is to actually work on anything during E.A.S.T. On the right, in the background, you can see a collection of Gold County Paper Mill merch that I have for sale. On the right, in the foreground, you can see two screens that I got burned at Industry Screenprint this past week. I plan on using them to print a new Miizzzard screenprint for next weekend.

Click here to see more interstitial shots

November 12th, 2010

Stop #107 on the East Austin Studio Tour: First Weekend

Filed under: Artwork — Tags: , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:48 am

The annual East Austin Studio Tour is this upcoming weekend and the following. Studios all over the east side will be open from 11am to 6pm on Sat Nov 13th, Sun Nov 14th, Sat Nov 20th, and Sun Nov 21st. Glade and I are participating just like we did last year. We’re Stop #107 on the tour (1807 E 22ND ST). We’re gonna have another Aaron Flynn installation in the garage but unfortunately Alison Kuo moved to NYC so she won’t be here to install by our couch again, but we do have one of her drawings from her solo show at SOFA. Everything in our living room will be completely different from last year – we’ll be showing all of my work that didn’t sell at my Domy show, our artwork from our show at End of an Ear, and our engagement art.

As some of you may recall, several weeks ago I went to my parents’ house in Houston and cleaned out my old room. I brought some boxes of my old stuff back, which made my normally cluttered studio an impossible-to-navigate mess. I’ve spent the last week cleaning and getting rid of stuff and I thought it would be fun to post before and after shots.

So, here they are:

BEFORE:

The View from the Entrance of my Studio before Cleaning
The View from the Entrance of my Studio before Cleaning

AFTER:

The View from the Entrance of my Studio after Cleaning
The View from the Entrance of my Studio after Cleaning

Click here to see more before and after shots

January 12th, 2010

2009 Recap

Filed under: Print Comics,Recaps — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:08 am

2009 was a great year here at the Hypercastle! Here’s some of the highlights:

  • I self-published two minicomics:
    • TRANZ, a collection of one-page shorts based around action verbs like “melt,” “grow,” “muliply,” and so on; copies available from me or at Domy Books in Austin
    • Froghead Hangover, a short autobiographical story about when I was living by myself in an apartment and had a run-in with a shaman; copies available from me, at Domy Books in Austin, or at Austin Books
  • I had my comics in issues of Smoke Signal, Taffy Hips, and the online zine hahaclever.com
  • I was in a few art shows, including Monster Show #4 at Domy and No More Worlds at Concertina Gallery in Chicago, which was picked as one of the top art shows of 2009 by Time Out Chicago (congrats to all the other artists and the curators!)
  • I participated in STAPLE! 2009 alongside the rest of the Gold County Paper Mill and in E.A.S.T. 2009 with my lady Glade Whitworth
  • I finally finished making websites for the G.C.P.M. and Glade (linked above)

2010 is already shaping up to be a great year, here’s hoping that it’ll blow 2009 out of the water! I’ve got several projects in work with some awesome and skilled creative people that I’ll be talking about as they manifest, a half-table for the G.C.P.M. and Glademade at STAPLE! 2010, and ideas for plenty of more comics that I’ll be submitting or self-publishing. I hope that everyone out there is having a great start to the new year, thanks for reading!

November 24th, 2009

East Austin Studio Tour Recap/Witchcraft

Filed under: Recaps — Tags: — William Cardini @ 4:28 pm

First of, thanks to everyone who came out to our studio for E.A.S.T.! I had a lot of fun. It was also a hectic and exhausting weekend, and I’m looking forward to relaxing over Thanksgiving and then getting back to it in December. While I was cleaning up my studio and then sitting around I had a lot of mental space to plan out how to arrange my studio for maximum productivity and efficiency. As we all know, making comics/art/whatever is a time-consuming process so I try to streamline it as much as possible. I’m also trying to figure out the best model and publishing strategy for my comics and other drawz going forward – traditional, screenprinting, POD, web, some sort of mix. I’ll post more on this once I have something concrete, but don’t count on anything semi-coherent emerging from the haze.

To keep pumped about all this through the post-event malaise I’ve been listening to doom metal, recommended to me by my buddy Ryan Lauderdale. One of my new favorite tracks is Her Sisters They Were Weak from retro-doom-psych-folk band Witchcraft’s 2004 self-titled album.

November 17th, 2009

First Weekend of E.A.S.T. 2009 Recap

Filed under: Recaps — Tags: , , , , , — William Cardini @ 7:47 am

First of all, thanks to everyone who came by Boongoo Studio, stop #125 on the East Austin Studio Tour this past weekend!

I got to play host to friends and talk to some new people, including our awesome neighbor Thor Harris and these guys Ben Goddard and Daniel. Ben and Daniel recently moved to Austin from the East Coast and have settled in to Glade and I’s old house. Ben sent me his website, he takes some pretty hilarious, well-constructed photos, including this one:

Here’s a shot of something that I haven’t posted before:

It’s a collaboration between me and Glade, it was a landscape that I didn’t use for the No More Worlds show that Glade added a bunch of awesome details to. Speaking of that No More Worlds show, I should have all of those drawings back next week, so come by if you want to check ’em out!

Here’s a shot of Aaron Flynn’s installation, which I didn’t have a photo of last week:

That inside-out polar bear/coyote is amazing.

And finally, thanks to Kate Watson for the shout out on Glasstire! I invite you all to come by and snoop this next weekend.