My failures define me. Making progress.
For a while I was copying books. Not to sell, just to really understand. I would take the book apart and then redesign it. Same words, different look & pictures I know no better way to learn. No one has ever asked or paid me to redesign a book. I’ve sent a few to authors, only Chad Orzel ever got back to me, and he said, “Thanks, made my day.” So nice.
Why make books no one reads, art no one sees, and music no one listens to? Even my kid barely gives a new song or picture a second look. “Great, Dad.” The work is the reward. But at the end, there is work, and it feels like it closes the circle by making it public. It also adds the needed pressure to perfect it, if other people’s eyes may find it.
When I’m honest with myself, I admit that a lot of the art through the years has been pretty cringe. Lots was just awful. It meant something to me, but looking back, it’s not mysterious that it didn’t find commercial success. But it was so much fun to do. Scroll to the bottom for my WORST recent idea!
Anyway, Learning that everything is just one thing. But what is it?
norville
The last six months I have focused on learning about and creating puppets
Since 2020, I set out to understand the publishing business, and even opened up a publishing company and bookstore. It failed.
I have a provisional patent for a magnetic, spinning, chalkboard that is designed around how the mind works
created about 25 books
First Set of books 2020-2023
I created, designed, edited, and produced 20 Editions of 11 Books focused on children’s stories and art themes.
Desiderata - Ultra Violent Winner / Poetry 2023 London Book Festival
Lilibet and the Creature
2021 Page Turner Awards shortlist
Dancing and Other Problems Winner / 2023 Literary Titan Book Award
Dancing and other problems
Winner / 2021 International Book Awards
Lilibet and the Creature
Winner / 2021 Living Now Awards
1, 2, 4 - Trollina, the Deplorably Beautiful Troll - Illustrated Storybook with Brenda Nucton
3, 5 - Lilibet and the Creature - illustrated Storybook with Phaedra Moon (AWARD WINNER)
6,9 - The Man Who No One Loved - Illustrated Children's Book with Phaedra Moon (AWARD WINNER)
12 -They, Who No One Loved - A picture book concept I presented to Phaedra Moon, she hated it lol. It wasn’t good :(
7 some ugly, dark and lovely things - norville parchment
17 - Horse A Drawing Collection I threw together after almost having a car accident that freaked me out pretty good.
15, 19 - Chuck Palahnuk’s Guts : Single most difficult illustration challenge ever!
10, 11, 13, 14 Dancing and Other Problems - I got stuck on this one. It was part of my famous Banksy rivalry that’s been in my head now for a while. (AWARD WINNER)
8 - Silver Lucy: Fashion photography - The only project I was able to do with the late, Great Silver Lucy
18 Desiderata - Ultra Violent Poetry Picture Book - (AWARD WINNER)
16 - A Brief Explanation of Almost Everything - FM DuPont - Book
no number - Heads by Maceo and Dada
20 - The Man in Black Gets Hurt - A Book with no words, just pictures.
Second Set of books 2023-2025
The next round, I only did one edition of 13 Books; I wrote six of them, three under the name Dr. Doctor, PHD. focused mostly on science. The rest I redesigned. Same words, different pictures.
1. A Brief Explanation of almost everything (it’s here twice because I did it as part of the first set and then all the way over again.
2. Albert Einstein’s Relativity
4. How to Teach Quantum physics to your dog
5. How to be Happy the Popular Method - Dr. Doctor, PhD
6. Rolf Dobelli’s The Art of Thinking Clearly (Despite the title the original has no art in it)
12. God - Dr. Doctor, PhD
13. Safe for Work (SFW) - Dr. Doctor, PhD
14. The Aves and The Arthropods
15. Neil deGrasse Tyson (Imaginary) Gives no French Fries
16. The Human Intelligence Tower. (H.I.T.) This is a book explaining the idea around my IRL thinking machine. I found out patent applications cannot have jokes in them. WHO KNEW!
not pictured Woody Dorsey’s Behavioral Trading
Five Board Games
For a time, the way forward was to create games that people could play around some big themes. Slaveopoly and Race cards tackle the myth of race, Hack yo life shows the way to happiness, and Time puts it all in perspective.
They make total sense in my brain; other people have found some of them kinda fun and others, confusing.
Slaveopoly: a deep dive on ancient to modern slavery and shows how race is a holdover from the transatlantic slave trade.
The Cards of THinking Clearly is a Card version of Rolf Dobelli’s the Art of Thinking Clearly, these showcase 99 cognitive disorder cards
Hack Yo Life shows the ingredients of human happiness and how to find it
Race Cards: This is a 92 large format set of cards that trace Race from Ancient slavery (no race), Greek, Roman, Trans Atlantic and NaZI forced labor, Politics, religion, art and finally language. No person has Black or white skin. All humans are shades of the same color. THis proposes a way though, let’s end race completely as a concept. Here are the cards to help.
TIME: This one places technological advances next to human rights to help give situational awareness
I Helped to create and manage an art space created to build large scale industrial ART: NIMBY
I was lucky to work with Micheal Snook, helping with a lot of various duties around the NIMBY warehouse for about four years. We worked to build artist spaces, foster an artist community, and provide a large industrial space for many large-scale Burningman bound art. Because we had to keep rent very low (because artists), we through several shows, a few Fight Parties, and a lot of fundraisers. I learned a ton about community, helping to create art that I don’t do, and supporting a diverse community. I messed up a lot. Snook was really the guy that kept that magical place going for as long as it did.
“If you need a kickass place to build industrial art or want to go to a seriously interesting party then NIMBY is the place to be.”
Had a few ART SHOWS
Pictured: Some Calligraphy I have hanging in the permanent collection of The Miss Moneypenny Metropolitan Gallery of Art, Lake Oswego (Also the corner cabinet in my office)
Shows and Exhibitions
Kunstmatrix Online show - Short Love Tails 2022
Gallery 114 Group exhibition 2019
Market Street Gallery San Francisco Solo SHOW - WHEN ANGELS DREAM
NIMBY - Group Exhibition 2011
Soma Artist Open Studios - The Angel as Protagonist April 2010
Angels Among Us - Solo Exhibition Sept 5, 2010
Oil Paintings of Angels | Solo Exhibition Sept 18, 2006 Madusalon , San Francisco Ca
Falling Angels | Group Exhibition Nov 15, 2008 - Red Ink Studios, San Francisco Ca
New Year Eve - Field of Dreams San Francisco New Years Eve
It’s always playtime. always
-Kit Kat
Looooooove to make music
I play piano, saxophone, and computer
All I know is this Journey (2025) Symphonic Electronica
Music for a funeral (2023)
LOVE AND DANCING - Daw-ling 2022 (Pop album)
Flights - Seven journeys in piano (2020)
Gold Records (Funk EP with Russ Leslie)
Diva Marisa - Opera - TedX Black Rock City
Jayne Bond Collaborations
Don't Date Me - Rocktronica Album 2005
Sucia - I Want My Records Back 2002
This Damned Angel I Remain (Piano Album)
Exsanguis (short film soundtrack) - My only IMDB credit
cielle: the last seven days (film soundtrack)
Assimilating Richard - Dance Drama Music 1999
gods: the musical
4U (singing group) Midwest Tours
DICIB Fashion Show Theme 1999
cielle: songs of sadness -album
But Not for Me (Piano album)
This Damned Angel I remain - Piano
Cream Crackered with Scott Hersher
The Trenchparrots - Irrepressible Urges of Spring
Greatest Hits Album (2001)
I Started out with oil Painting
my very bad ideas hall of fame
This one time, I tried to draw EVERYONE in a book that had no plot. I redid and released the same book five times. None of them made sense.
Once, I added a baby crying to the background of the entire song for no good reason.
Back in 1999 in Calgary, Alberta, Assimilating Richard was a soundtrack for musical theater. The second song has a sample of a baby crying throughout the entire song. There was no baby in the script. I was stubborn and fought for that with the director, but I cannot remember why.
This had a lot of learnings. I did NOT do my research for this project. With a tight timeline, I used a lot of music I had already been working on, so it did not ring true. I remember loving the dancing so much, but I failed to deliver a soundtrack that was true to the story.
I wrote a song for a chicken and played it for her. NO CLUCKS GIVEN #artlife
The book featured a bunch of funny science, jokes and conversations around some general knowledge that seems unrelated at first but comes together to that crescendos into the point that there is no such thing as race. It features Sylvester Stallone as THE BRAIN! Honestly, I like this one a lot and I think it makes sense to other people. Who knows…
I wrote a book with my imaginary Friend and boxing puppet Iron Neil deGrasse Tyson.
I did send it to the real astrophysicist but he has not written me back…the more I think about it, I get it. The whole let’s pretend you’re my imaginary friend thing probably didn’t land well. lol.
The joke here is that The up and down quarks with the electron and neutrinos form the family that makes up ordinary matter or our “everything” is another way to say it.
HAHA right? Jokes that need explaining are the best!
LAST ONE
I tried to line up chasing cars to Romeo and Juliet set in west oakland for a music bookeo; Like a music video, but a book.
It went as well as it sounds like it would.
my worst recent idea is probably
YOGA HOLES
YOGA MATS WITH optical illusions
