JOYENGINE: cause sharing is cool

Ojo Por Ojo (Eye For Eye) is the title of Shitty Kitten’s new show at Plastic Chapel which opens February 14th! Can you tell me a better way to spend Valentine’s Day?… suriously? Shitty Kitten aka Markham Maes always comes full force, his last show on East Colfax nearly sold out… I’d suggest rolling through early if you’d like to get your greasy little mits on a piece. The super block will be lit up that night… with shows also running at The Fabric Lab (Photogrpaher: Ryan Resch) as well as The Shoppe (Theo Knox).

Markham Maes, the shittiest of kittens, never ceases to amaes. Markham is a rare creature, and an artist in the purest sense.  In a time where computers and all things digital prevail, Markham sticks to pencils, pens, paints, paper, canvas and sometimes wood.  He’s been know to work on paintings in his car while stopped at traffic lights. Sure, we scan his work once in a while or digitally manipulate it for various commercial appliques, but when it comes to his real artwork – that shit is analog – all day long.  And yeah, lots of artists still work almost entirely old school with little to no reliance on the computer, but Markham takes it to the extreme.  Can you name the last person you know who hand-drew screen printed and hand-painted their announcements for their latest show, themselves?  I can, it’s Markham Maes and he’s a gem of creative talent.  But, blah, blah, blah, see for yourself – and be sure to check out his latest body of work entitled Letters and Ladies on December 12th at the D-Note.

glimpse of incomplete painting for Letters and Ladies

hand-drawn screen printed and hand-painted opening announcements

Markham stopped by this afternoon.  In typical “Shitty” fashion, he rolled through with a wicked pen & ink illustration of DOO that he whipped up between pulling screens this afternoon.  Markham’s imagination is really the stuff of legend.  His ability to travel conceptually never ceases to aMAES me.   According to Mr. Maes this illustration is a bit of a warmup for a painting or 2 he’s gonna crank out for the S&F™ show at the  Plastic Chapel in September.  We can’t wait!!!

Markham “Shitty Kitten” Maes took week #8 (the FINAL week) of the S&F™ logo/identity design contest.  Week #8 was a tricky one, we (cypher13) received some pretty amazing identity concepts, but in the end decided that Markham’s characteristic over-the-top creative interpretation of what the S&F™ project dreams to be, seriously stole the show.  We’re in the midst of reviewing the eight winning logos a little closer to see who’s gonna get the gold.  We’ll be choosing the big winner soon!!!

As usual, Markham “Shitty Kitten” Maes crushed his latest show, this time at Josh & Tran’s, Shoppe (a first of its kind cereal & cupcake bar chock full of the most coveted art & design books available).  Markham pushed the Sculpey around a bit further than usual, painted a number of albums, album covers, panels, skate decks, and kept it rollin’ all night long live painting both a large panel and a handful of models for The Fabric Lab’s fashion show at the Super Fresh Block Party later that evening (pics and details soon).  Saturday night was a must see Denver evening.  Thanks go out to all those who made it happen.  It sorta… ruled.  Nice work team!!!

Markham “Shitty Kitten” Maes will be showing a new body of work at The Shoppe during the Super Fresh Block Party!  We’ll try to get a sneak peak of some new paintings before the show!

Markham “Shitty Kitten” Maes is a great curator, but he’s a better artist. Regardless, Shitty both curated and participated in Night Owls this past Thursday at the D-Note. Both his work, and the show were super hot. The list of participating artists was long and included, Josh Wills (who crushed!), small-but-dangerous, Keith Jive, Mike Graves, teebee, Sean Gilbert, Alex Henry, John Fellows, Anthony Salazar, and of course, Mr. Maes. We gotta say thanks to Markham, for once again curating another wicked show. While it’s great to have Shitty hosting art shows, seems safe to say, we’d all prefer him in the studio with brush in hand. Word to that.

NOTE: There was about 6x as many pieces as there are photos. Photographer… what happened… uhhh…

Markham curated and contributed to one helluvah show last night at the D-Note (full photo recap later). Nice work out there man! The c13 crew took it down to the wire crankin’ out their owls yesterday in a furious onslaught of priming, polying, masking, taping, painting, unmasking and more polying. Here’s how it went down…

Yeah, sure. I’m a little biased… the dude is my super arty homie and all. But yo, Markham Maes can draw, um, like really, really well. I found this little gem as I was browsing through the archives tonight. This is a drawing of Shitty’s daughter Lilly around the time when she was learning how to crawl. I checked the info on this file and I found that it was created on January 20th, 2005. By the looks of it, it appears that this particular drawing was done on a napkin. Which would lead me to believe that we were probably kicking it at a bar. The memory is a little foggy, but I assume that homeboy drew this with a pint of beer in one hand and a clove in the other. Which, as I now recall, means that he drew this with his left foot while the right was sending the 8 ball into the corner pocket with just the right amount of pocket speed. Dang, can’t beat that shit. Like whoa.

The EHF collective including Markham Maes, Scot Lefavor and Mike Graves will be showing new works this evening at the D-Note in Old Town Arvada. The show curated by Shitty Kitten himself, and entitled Magic Beans for Sale is sure to impress. Other participating artists include, Anthony Salazar, Josh Holland, Mike Gallegos, and Sean Gilbert. Beats will come heavy via JapaDapta w/ our boy Robin Samples on the mike. Look-out, yo!!! Here’s a sneak peek from EHF crew!!!

We’ve been building up our arsenal of vector designer toy templates, being the toy freaks that we are. Shitty wanted to get nasty with some Trexi (the US site is under construction) concepts. We printed him out some templates and here’s one he came back with. Sooooo dope! Who knows, maybe there’s a Shitty Kitten Trexi in Markham’s future…

shittykitten.com | trexi.nl

Mr. Markham “Shitty Kitten” Maes just swung by with some new work for the Nocturnal Mockery 6 show. As usual, the pieces are fucking awesome. We love you Shitty! A few other folks from our crew are putting work in, we’ll keep you posted as stuff rolls in.