Mr. Hooper Art Blog

This beautiful hand-painted cigarette is on Porter Road near my home in East Nashville.

smoke 'em if you got 'em

East Nashville beauty supplies

This sign is also an East Nashville gem. Every time I pass this sign, it makes me think of male pattern balding.

unisex

This establishment had been a beauty salon for a long time. Now it is actually John Guider’s photography studio in East Nashville. I am so glad that the he decided to leave this sign in tact . I love the man’s face with no eyeballs.

Rock on Dude!

This group of drawings were done last week when I was in Chicago.

The Goot from Planet Gooterboob

The Pittsburgh Smoker

When I am out the road and away from the painting studio I like to draw these little comic ideas. This is a batch I came up with while in Pittsburgh this summer.

Turning up the charm

Pittsburgh Mullet

Pittsburgh Devil

One of the questions I get asked a lot at shows is, “What is your inspiration.” In all honesty it is one of the most difficult things to sum up in a sentence or two. For the most part I go to my stock answer: “Pop culture, Southern culture, B-movies, and bad sci-fi.

But the truth of the matter is that there are all sorts of things that I come across that put a little spark in my brain. You may notice that song lyrics sometimes find their way in some of my paintings. Well, one of my favorite things is to work in the studio with some good tunes floating through the air. I can just get lost in the music and the painting. Before I know it  hours have just melted away.

God knows the world loves top ten lists. With that in mind, I want to share with you the top ten musical artists I am listening to in the studio for the past month or so. Here we go, in no particular order:

1) The Vaselines

The Vaselines were one of Curt Cobain’s favorite bands. I have known about them for a while, but have been listening to them a lot over the last couple of weeks.

Check out “Molly’s Lip’s” for some good Vaseline’s flavor.

2) The Replacements

I first  got turned on to The Replacements via college radio in the 1980′s and have been a fan ever since. I have had the album Pleased to Meet Me in heavy rotation in the studio lately.

Check out “Can’t Hardly Wait” . This is one of my favorites.

3) Band of Horses

A great band with a laid back Southern flare.

4) Iggy Pop

I have been listening to Iggy’s version of China Girl from his album The Idiot which I used to have on LP, but I downloaded for the first time a couple of weeks ago.

5) The Modern Lovers

I love this band for so many reasons. Check out Road Runner!

6) The 101er’s

This was Joe Strummer’s band before The Clash. Here is a little sample of what the 101ers sound like.

7) David Bowie

I have had the LP Honky Dory since I was a teenager, but decided to download it a few weeks ago and have been listening to it a lot. It reminds me of being 15.

Buck Owens

The man with the red, white and blue guitar! You’ve got to love Tiger By The Tail.

9) Camper Van Beethoven

Again an alternative band from the 80′s and 90′s. Honk if you remember Take the Skinheads Bowling.

10) Echo and the Bunnymen

I am an absolute sucker for British Post-Punk like the classic Lips Like Sugar

Well, there you go! My first top ten.

Back in June I visited the state of Iowa for my first time. Specifically I was in Des Moines, Iowa for the Des Moines Art Festival. Getting there I saw a bunch of corn fields and a random water tower. Once I was in Des Moines I was so busy that I had little time to explore the city. I did stumble across a really cool place near the site of the art festival, American Dream Machines

If you like vintage muscle cars, this is your place!

1966 chevy II

American Dream Machines is located in Des Moines, Iowa, in the heart of the Midwest and is the largest full-service classic car dealership in the area. They occupy a 41,000 square foot historic Packard dealership that was built in 1929. They focus on American muscle machines with integrity. They usually have around 70 cars in stock at all times. They take pride in buying and selling quality American muscle cars.

I think it is definitely worth a visit if you are in Des Moines.

1968 Camaro, my favorite muscle car

After I did the Columbus Art Fair, I went over to Pittsburgh for the 3 Rivers Art Festival. Anyone who knows me knows that I love going to Pittsburgh. It is really a cool city with its own unique character. That is something that a lot of US cities seem to lack these days.

view of downtown Pittsburgh from Mt. Washington

There is a really amazing view from the top of Mt. Washington. This picture is from my camera phone and doesn’t do it justice. If you visit Pittsburgh you must ride the incline to the top of Mt. Washington. It is a great experience and it is amazingly cheap. I think it cost something like $2 to ride it round trip. Here is a link to the port authority who manages the inclines:

http://www.portauthority.org/PAAC/CustomerInfo/Inclines/tabid/119/Default.aspx

view of downtown from Pittsburgh's north shore

From what I understand Pittsburgh’s “North Shore” was kind of an eye-sore. The old Three Rivers Stadium was there along with several industrial sites. Now there are two state of the art sports facilities. One is PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. This is without a doubt one of the finest baseball stadiums in the country.

pnc park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates

One day while strolling on the North Shore I came across an amazing site. It was Andrew Carnegie’s giant head in the Allegheny River.

Carnegie with snorkel

Anyway, I love to visit Pittsburgh and I plan on going back next summer.

Here I am outside my booth at the Columbus Art Festival the first weekend of June. I got down to the show really early before it opened because I knew we had had storms all night and bad one forecast for about 8AM Sunday morning. Look at the sky! It looks pretty bad. So we made sure that everything was weighed down and zipped up. Then Krista and I took cover in my van about 10 feet back from the tent.

Twenty minutes later the storm was gone and the sky was a beautiful shade of blue. The tent above was on the right side of mine at the art show. This woman was kind of an idiot who didn’t see the need to weigh her tent done. This thing was flipping and flopping every which way in the storm. A couple of policemen grabbed her tent and saved it from blowing away completely. It could have been way worse for the idiot next to me. Her tent could have blown over on top of mine and done a great deal of damage.

This is a jewler’s tent that was on my left side at the art show. This one blew over and the contents were scattered all over the parking lot where we parked out van.

You may have heard about the horrible flooding we’ve experienced in Tennessee. This past weekend I was glued to the TV the whole time to see how bad things were getting. I consider myself very lucky. I had very little damage and we never lost our power. There have been lots of friends and neighbors in this area who have lost everything. So, I in no way want to joke about  the situation. I just think we could all use a good laugh. Middle Tennessee Tornado Penis

The Appreciation Post's album cover

Hey, this is some of my work on the album cover for the Boston-based band The Appreciation Post. I thought it looked pretty cool and was worth sharing. Their album Work/Sleep officially releases tomorrow. However, the band is allowing folks to download the album free at:

http://theappreciationpost.bandcamp.com/album/work-sleep-free

This is actually the first piece of art I created this year. I started it on New Year’s Eve and finished it just after midnight.