New print for Bottleneck Gallery's "Cant' Beat Em, Join Em" zombie themed show which opens tonight and runs through October 28th. Bottleneck is a great new gallery in brooklyn that donates a chunk of every show's earnings to a different charity. I'm happy to be a part of this months show which is working to help support The American Red Cross.

This is a four color print measuring about 10" x 15" and is inspired by the movie  Zombie Land. Its in an edition of 35. For more info on the show please visit: www.bottleneckgallery.com

Also, next week Countdown to (En)Danger opens in Philadelphia's own B2. ALL proceeds from this show go to benefit the World Wild Life Fund. Show open on Saturday October 13th at 6pm and runs for about a month. The show was put together by Ryann Casey and Josh Robeson and if its anything like their previous charity shows, this should be a lot of fun. For more info please visit: worldwildlife.org or Facebook.com/worldwildlife

Had a lot of fun working on this print. Its four colors and is about 12" x 19". And again, all proceeds from this show go to the WWF.

douglarocca.com

djlaroccaART.blogspot.com

www.etsy.com/shop/djlaroccaART

Sonar Love!

This is my piece for the upcoming group show Empty Night Skies. Its is benefit for Bat Conservation International. All proceeds go to help com-bat (hehe) the spread of White Nose Syndrome in bats. Opening reception is friday, April 20th from 7-10pm at Grindcore Coffee House (1515 S. 4th St. Philadelphia, PA). Lots of great artists are involved. Here is the Facebook event for more info.




douglarocca.com
djlaroccaart.blogspot.com
etsy.com/shop/djlaroccaART

PLAYTIME! Recap & Photos

Come on in . . .

 The show was a success! I want to personally thank all the artists that contributed to the show. This was my first time as curator and everyone involved was positive the entire time for the charity. Thank you again. We had a great variety of work and subject matter as always within the autumn society. Many set their contribution to 100% and we had A LOT of toy donations. I was happy to meet members in person: Phil, Drew, Tim, Kasey, Matt (Hepler and Welsh), Mark, and Alex. You all did an outstanding job and I want to thank you for making the time to contribute your work to such a good cause. I hope the show will inspire more members to participate next year when we have "PLAYTIME Strikes Back!"

MUSTACHES FOR KIDS...

Hey, Autumn Society members...

I'm sorry I've been away for so long. I had to move my apartment, and have been cranking away at an ever expanding pile of work that I'd slated for myself. Still I've found time to be most charitable. Yep, I gave up my Beard. The beard I love, and have grown for almost a year was completely shaven off in the name of EDUCATION!!

I sacrificed my beloved Beard, and am growing an absurd Mustache in the name of DONORS CHOOSE and MUSTACHES FOR KIDS. M4K, as they are known is a nationwide four week fundraiser where the member all grow mustaches and collect donations for a worthy cause. I'm humbly asking you to visit my donations page HERE, Make a small donation (whatever you can spare), and help fund school programs and support kids education here in the US. Its a solid tax write off (this is the time of year to be thinking about those) and more importantly, it lends itself to the sense of holiday giving.

Its all for the kids, and there education..

I've been doing this charity now for Five years, and its better every year.

Thanks for your time and support.
Hope you dig the art...

P

PLAYTIME on GEEKADELPHIA!

more press online - thanks geekadelphia

We're a go! 18 great toy pieces are hung and ready for Friday night. Donation box already has toys in it! : ) A lot of "100% proceed" donations too. Thanks everyone.

Playtime!

here's to Mat K for putting on a cool show for a wonderful cause. I would love to see the Autumn Society occasionally do more to give back, and Toys for Tots this season will bring a lot of joy to a lot of kids

i was honored to collaborate on the flyer with Mat, and had the most fun i have had drawing all year trying to capture the joy that came with getting a good toy on Christmas. Besides adding a little something for the drop box, my contribution to the wall was printing our flyer art onto watercolor paper. i then added watercolors, pencil flourishes, and even a little glow in the dark paint to the robot and his ray gun sparks.

Happy Holidays to everyone

THIS FRIDAY! It's PLAYTIME!

Poster Art by Peter Wonsowski / Design by Mat Kerfren

Ladies & Gentlemen of the Autumn Society,

It is my great pleasure to announce that we have one more show in store for you this year, just in time for the holidays! A special thank-you to Mat Kerfren for putting this all together!

PLAYTIME
The Autumn Society is proud to present, PLAYTIME, it’s first charity art show!
Toys bring children joy, spark imaginations and inspire creativity. Help others in the Philadelphia area so that less fortunate children can still have the joy of a new toy this holiday season. What was your first toy? Your favorite? What amazing adventures did you go on with your action figures? What distant planets did you explore with your spaceship?
The Autumn Society will illustrate their visions of childhood favorites - somewhere between plastic molding & imagination.

There will be a donation box on site for new, unwrapped toys for our local Philadelphia Chapter Toys for Tots. And a portion of the proceeds will go to Toys for Tots nationally. Join us this December on First Friday for the art, the nostalgia, and the gift of charity.
www.theautumnsociety.com www.toysfortots.org

PLAYTIME
Opening Reception December 3, 2010 6-9pm
Brave New Worlds Comics
45 N. 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA

THE CHARITY TOYS FOR TOTS
The objectives of the U.S. Marine’s Toys for Tots are to help needy children throughout the United States experience the joy of Christmas; to play an active role in the development of one of our nation's most valuable natural resources - our children; to unite all members of local communities in a common cause for three months each year during the annual toy collection and distribution campaign; and to contribute to better communities in the future.
http://philadelphia-pa.toysfortots.org

THE DETAILS TOY DRIVE & PROCEEDS
Toys for Tots accepts new, unwrapped toys. If you forget to bring a donation, Brave New Worlds offers a variety of great toys. The donation box will be on site until mid December. Toys will go directly to the Philadelphia Chapter Toys for Tots. Our artists have individually selected 25%, 50% or 100% of their artwork sales to go to the Toys for Tots national charity. Brave New Worlds Comics will be generously donating 100% of their standard commission.
www.bravenewworldscomics.com

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PRESS

MC JAWN BLOG

BRAVE NEW WORLDS BLOG

FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE

First Friday Benefit at Red Hook Coffee & Tea

Inner City elementary art teacher Gabrielle Boyce was allotted $0.50 per student for the entire school year. No, that wasn't a type, $0.50 for the entire student per year; doing the math, a youngster couldn't even make a piece of macaroni art on that budget. In the past Ms. Boyce has raised funds before to supplement her already ailing budget of her art classes at Sharswood Elementary School, but at no time as today has her budget been so meager.

What's this: I hear here you say, "that's horrible" and "I want to help." Well here's your chance: on Friday, Oct. 1st, Gabrielle Boyce will be hosting a fundraiser at Red Hook Coffee & Tea. There will goodies to bid on from local shops and restaurants in a silent auction and art to purchase off of the walls. If you're a Philadelphia native, you can stop by and pick something up for a good cause. If you're a local artist, you can donate a piece of art, whether an original or a high quality reproduction. Not in the area, but want to help-out anyway? There is an address above where you can send a donation- a donation of any size would go a long way to help this underfunded arts program.

Local Artists: You can complete a submission form, available at drop-off site, and drop-off your work 9am-8pm, Thursday and at 9am on Friday to the lobby of:

The Market St. Design Center
2400 Market St.
Philadelphia, PA 19103

The Market St. Design Center is near 30th St. Station and has a mural of a whale on the side of it. 9AM FRIDAY WILL BE THE ABSOLUTE LAST TIME TO DROP-OFF WORK. Images do not need to be framed, but should be display ready (i.e. some means to hang the work) and the art should be fairly easy to install. All unsold works will be returned to their creators. For any other information, I can be reached at ryanfriant@gmail.com or 609-332-6241. Thank you so much if you are able to participate!!

Reading With Pictures

I thought I'd share a link to the "Reading With Pictures" Kickstarter site. RwP promotes reading in the classroom through comics. I have a 2 page story (done for charity) in here alongside quite a few high rollers. I suggest preordering, since most of the sales will be done in that way. I don't intend to have a large number of personal copies, and this will help to promote their sales through Diamond. They only have a little over 50 days left in their fundraising with half of their goal to go, so if you can spare the dime to order one now, I know it would help them out a lot...

So, visit Reading with Pictures on Kickstarter

Preview...

Fonts to the Rescue!

I just heard about something pretty cool, and I figured I'd share.

SOTA : The Society of Typographic Aficionados, has joined up to create "Font Aid IV: Coming Together", a benefit font set to benefit the Haiti earthquake victims.

They've said it best:

The font consists entirely of ampersands, to represent the idea of people coming together to help one another. Type designers, graphic designers, and other artists from around the world contributed artwork to the font.

The font is being be sold for $20US and is available through font distributors Ascender Fonts, Veer, FontShop, and MyFonts. All proceeds from the sale of the font will go to Doctors Without Borders, to help with their relief efforts in Haiti.

The “Coming Together” font contains over 400 glyphs and is supplied as a single, cross-platform OpenType font. All glyphs are accessible using OpenType-savvy applications, Unicode-savvy utilities, the Character Map utility on Windows, and FontBook on Mac OS X.

I was psyched to see a lot of my favorite font-wizards involved, like Alejandro Paul.

There are a lot of phenomenal ampersands here, and if you were thinking of making a donation to Haiti and Doctors Without Borders, what a great way to do it.


Cheers!

Reading with Pictures

I thought I'd share a link to the "Reading With Pictures" Kickstarter site. RwP promotes reading in the classroom through comics. I have a 2 page story (done for charity) in here alongside quite a few high rollers. I suggest preordering, since most of the sales will be done in that way. I don't intend to have a large number of personal copies, and this will help to promote their sales through Diamond.

So, visit Reading with Pictures on Kickstarter

Preview sketch at my blog

Mr Incredible vs. Bomb Voyage

A long LONG time ago a good friend of mine asked me to do a piece for a charity auction that is taking place for the Bridgewater PBA #174. And I put it off long enough, but I have FINALLY finished my piece. It will going up for auction at some point in the future and if you guys are interested in bidding on my piece or one of the many other pieces (to name a few; Frank Cho, Walt Simonson, Mike Mckone, Jimmy Cheung, Mark Schultz, George Perez, Travis Charest & Sergio Aragones...) please go here for more info or contact Mike (aka Off White) White directly and just mention the Bridgewater PBA #174 Charity Art Auction somewhere in the email and tell'm Ian sent ya!

Beautiful Grim Art Auction Fundraiser

"Beautiful Grim"

18x24 white charcoal and pencil on paper

Hey guys,

Just wanted to share a sketch that I recently finished for a piece I'll have included in a charity art auction fundraiser that will be held this Spring. But first, a little backstory: Mike "Daarken" Lim is a working concept artist and freelance illustrator who's girlfriend, Cat, was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 25 earlier in 2009 . She is now recovering from her treatment and surgery but the medical bills and toll it took on her mentally and physically have been overwhelming, so Mike and his friend, Leif Jeffers (an animator at DreamWorks) organized this fundraiser to help her out. The proceeds of the auction will go to paying off Cat's medical bills and the remaining funds will go to a breast cancer related charity.

There will be a show held with the artwork at a soon to be determined venue this Spring. Over 200 artists have joined in for the cause and submissions have been capped due to gallery space.

Some of the artists involved include:

Peter De Seve

Donato Giancola

Matt Stewart

Paul Bonner

Bobby Chiu

Dan Dos Santos

Andrew Jones (Android Jones)

Daniel Dociu

Jon Foster

Scott Altmann

Todd Lockwood

Steve Belledin

(a very small handful of the bunch)

For more info, feel free to check out the website at Beautiful Grim.

Thanks for taking the time to check this out and I hope you all like the sketch!

Eric

Buy Things!

The T-Shirt I designed is now available at thropic.com

Prints & T-Shirts

My Transfprmers "Starscream" print is now available at monsterbot.com: STTTAAAARRRRSCREAM!


(click to enlarge)

This t-shirt print will be available at thropic.com in the next week. Thropic.com sells t-shirts to benefit charities and non-profits. I was contacted by one of the co-creators to do t-shirt art for The Valerie Fund, a non profit that raises money for health care services to kids with cancer and blood disorders.

I'll have a post up when it goes on sale.

Art for teh Kittehs!

Hey all - sorry in advance for the long post, but it's for a good cause. So, I'm not really sorry. ;)

When artists can contribute their services towards philanthropic or humane causes, it's really a win-win situation. The financial benefit goes to the cause, and artists get great exposure to a totally new cross-section of viewers.

So of course I feel fortunate to have the oppourtunity to make art for a good cause (if only all my work had such a good end in store!). West Philadelphia-based City Kitties is a non-profit no-kill animal hospital and foster-care organization dedicated to bettering the lives of the significant population of West Philly stray and feral cats, and it's having its Second Annual Art Show and Auction this Friday.

I was first introduced to City Kitties a few years ago through my good friend Mike and his friend , the also-contributing artist, talented photographer and super cat-philanthropist Kyle Cassidy. I was blown away by how much a few awesome women can do out of a house, from providing veterinary care for hundreds of cats (some literally healed from within inches of death) to organizing a network of foster homes and adoptions to loving homes. I'm super happy to have a way to donate my services to such a worthy cause. They're making a difference, and I want to help.

The details are below - if you're around and are looking for an awesome, unique night that you can be proud of having attended, please please please come - see some art, bid on something (the auctions start at incredibly low opening bids) - so snag something awesome for yourself or for a gift! What could be a cooler gift than one that benefits animals?

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(from their site)
2nd Annual City Kitties Art Show & Auction
Join us May 29th at Studio 34 for the 2nd Annual Art Show & Auction to Benefit City Kitties!


When: Friday, May 29, 6:30 - 10:00pm
Where: Studio 34 at 4522 Baltimore Avenue
How Much: $5 at the door (which goes towards any winning bid)

* Buy great art from talented artists
* Win fabulous raffle prizes
* Listen to great music
* Eat and drink with everybody who's anybody
* Support a great Philadelphia charity

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The piece I'm contributing is a small one, but it was super fun to paint. I had the idea of doing some sort of Francis of Assisi / St. Gertrude / "Patron Saint of Animals" thing, but I wanted it to be fun and light-hearted.

Introducing Mme. Gertrude Von Skeffington, Patron Saint of Stuffed Animals. She's got a whole story in my brain already. I know, goofy - but fun. The auction is for the original watercolor, approx. 8" x 10" framed in a simple black oval moulding.

Hopefully it fetches a few bucks for mah kitteh frendz.

Thank you so much for reading!

Punk Rock's The 3rd World

So growing up, I always heard "Eat all your food, there are kids in the third world that are starving and don't have the chance to have what we have"

Now at 21 years old, I recently had the chance to do something about that. I got a call from Soupy from the philadelphia based pop punk band The Wonder Years, to "donate" a shirt design that would be printed and all the money from that design would go to the Heifer Foundation. The band said they wanted to do it for these guys because there are organizations like To Write Love on her arms, which has bands backing it up, but don't say where the money is going except that they sell t-shirts. Where is the money going?

So they wanted to do something that is fun like their other shirts but sorta spoke the same about what this foundation is all about. H.F. is a organization that sends a cow a chicken to a family in a third world country to have milk and eggs every morning. So once they make enough money they find a family and give them the animals. I thought it was a great idea, so I shot off ideas, did a final and gave 3 color variations, and this is the final.

It will be in print after they get off tour around September/October. All money from the shirts will go straight to the foundation, and the shirts are, "from what I am told", being printed on Organic T-shirts and Organic hand made inks.

Band: http://www.myspace.com/thewonderyearspa

Foundation: http://www.heifer.org/