Here is a new piece entitled The Network: We are your News, dedicated to the few who govern what information reaches the many.

I would like to pull some points from Wikipedia regarding the ways in which stations are able to continually broadcast. Economically, networks rely on in-kind donations of time and skills by volunteers (common with community broadcasters), direct government payments or operation of public broadcasters, indirect government payments, such as radio and television licenses, grants from foundations or business entities, selling advertising or sponsorships and public subscription or membership.

With so many people and organizations governing the information broadcast to the millions, they are your news.

Inspiration for this piece comes from the In the News intro from the 1970s.

One of my Flickr pals Mitch Ansara, known by the moniker Spacesick has recently been designing some smashing ‘I Can Read’ book covers for popular movies. Mitch has an incredible talent for watering down the movies’ concept into a simple and symbolic illustration, executing these covers in a 60s or 70s style. Very slick stuff. I selected my favorites, but check out his Flickr stream for the full run.

I’ve been following Mitch’s hilarious Flickr stream for about a year now and he never ceases to post quality and comedic work. He has an array of styles, including designs and illustrations, all of which rock a fun ‘Saturday morning cartoon’ emotion.

Check out the Spacesick Flickr stream as well as his personal blog for more.

Last year I wrote a couple of entries entitled Website Tools for the Artist (parts I and II) where I outlined how I was going about setting up my online presence, and how I was working to promote and sell my artwork to a global audience. I had to do a great deal of research while I was building my tools and having them work for me, and my goal for the posts was to share what I discovered with others pursuing that same goal.

Gino Orlandi over at Fuel for Art has written an ebook entitled How to Sell Art Online, a publication outlining what tools independent artist can use to build, promote and sell their artwork worldwide through the power of the web. I’m a big believer in spreading this kind of information as to help the global art community become stronger, and Gino has really taken the next step.

I discovered this publication through Abduzeedo, where they are having a giveaway to promote the ebook. Check out Fuel for Art for more information.

I bought my ticket today and I’m super excited to be attending FITC Toronto 2009 this coming April 25th to the 28th. I’m very much looking forward to seeing speakers such as Joshua Davis, David Carson, Joshua Hirsch, James Paterson among a plethora of others.

The last time I attended a global conference of this kind was way back in 2000 when I went to New York to rock out at FlashForward, so I’m more then due to spend a few days with lots of like-minded creative folks. Can’t wait.

Be sure to catch the FITC early bird ticket price before February 1st if you are planning on attending.

I have been home sick with the flu for the past few days, so my time at the computer has been far less then usual. I tried doing some sketching on the sofa but generating ideas in my current state proved to be pretty cumbersome, what with a cloudy and stuffed-up head.

However, I did manage to sit at the computer intermittently and created the images above, entitled Ancient of Days. These are experiments utilizing images from nature and various gradient overlays presented in a Polaroid format. I normally have a general idea of what I want to create before sitting at the computer, but these are exceptions to my typical process where I just sat down and started.

Included are images of trees, clouds, aurora borealis, smoke, sunsets, grass . . . the topmost image even has a mushroom cloud in there. I really enjoyed the release of creating these pieces on the fly, and would like to use the Ancient of Days platform to generate more experiments in the future.