.: June 2008

new press packet design

new grafik for my press packet. coming soon.
please email me to request for you or your company for freelance work.
thank you.

head hunter RMX

i made this drawing a while ago but recently had the urge to draw on top of it and add some sumi ink to it.
here is the official Head Hunter RMX. :-)

a walk through the invisible gate

This is the first part of a series of paintings and altars I am working on here in the studio. The recent ideas i am working with are "what is it about deities that inspire and bring about a sense of hope in human nature?" This piece is called " a walk through the invisible gate" which is an idea from ZEN that states there is always an invisible gate and once we stop our thoughts we walk through it..the deeper sense of the mind will see and experience the true nature of reality. My goal was to create a misty freezing ice vibe with this image. Kind of climbing a giant himilayan mountain top and seeing this giant god floating over the landscape. The sculptual portrait can either be the ego or buddha himself. More to come soon!

NEW OFFICIAL LEEMER TEES+

These are the first look at the official leemer teeshirts that will launch this summer.
For a while now I have been doing ghost graphics for a bunch of lifestyle companies and now I am proud to present a series of quality tees of my original artwork. Email me for pre-orders.

X-TRA LARGE AND MEDIUM SIZES ARE ALREADY SOLD OUT!!!

ONLY 25 LARGE SIZE OF EACH COLOR ARE LEFT UNTIL RESTOCK! peace+++ mertz

$34 US

FORBES & PARISH NEWS WITH DESIGNS MY MERTZ+

Forbes.com did a review on Tony Shellman about Parish-Nation Clothing in which I was one of the Head Designers for. Find out more about the brand and the power of graphic arts in todays lifestyle and culture. ( the graphic shirts like the snake, lucky charms and funky face with the lettered teeth were done by yours truly. LOL )

copy and paste addy below-

http://www.forbes.com/video/?video=fvn/business/ph_parish111407

Also scroll down to prior posts for the PARISH PORTFOLIO - with a slideshow of a body of grafix I developed during my time at Parish.

sketchbook

toy qube event in NYC. drawing live with some of the best in the designer figure game. Thunder Dog Studios, Jakuan El Haseem, Ewok..etc. www.toyqube.com

the pen and the sword+

In 2002 I graduated from MICA - Maryland Institute College of Art and left to study Zen in NYC. That last senior year and about 2 years after I was obsessed with line work. All day long I would meditate and draw lines. Most of the time I had no idea of what the drawing was going to look like or knew what the subject matter was going to be. I just drew all the time. Here is a series that spanned over the course of about 3-4 years in my travels to London, Vietnam, Ireland and U.S when doing my eastern / universal studies.

you can see close ups of these drawings on an online exhibition at: http://www.splotches.org/vp013/
and some of these have been published in - semi-perminant 2007 - and wooden toy magazine

2004 - study a vortex

in 2004 i was really starting to experiment with photo, collage and computer graphics. I was interested in vortexes and dimentions and what that would look like. Here are some of my studies around that time period.

for the record+

here are a couple of early covers I designed on for recording artists - Pismo, Kirby Dominant & Giovanni Alomante. The top cover was art directed by Pismo - I just executed the vision, the second package was unfortunately never released but still was pretty strong in my opinion, third was a cover for an album Pismo did release that both Courtney Walker and I put together. Fourth is a album package design I did for Kirby Dominant on Rapitalism Records and lastly, Giovanni Alomante that unfortunately never released what was a promising album. Peace homies.

oldie but goodies

these are some artworks I made in 2000 when I was in college. I was still exploring and experimenting with materials trying to find my flow and voice. Keep coming back...I will be updating the site with some oldies and some more sketchbook work. +