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My artist’s statement:

When Broome Community College in upstate New York asked me to give a speech at their convocation, I sat down and wrote a list of 10 things I wish I’d heard when I was a college student first starting out. That list became the speech, the speech became a popular blog post and the blog post became my second book, Steal Like an Artist. A lot of people have told me they wanted to hang my handwritten list on their wall, so now, almost one year after I wrote it, we’re releasing the list as a print. I hope you hang it somewhere you want to get good work done.

Very happy to announce my new print, “Creativity is Subtraction,” on sale now from 20×200.com. Buy it!

“Creativity is Subtraction” is actually the title of chapter ten of Steal Like An Artist. If you send in a receipt from a copy of Steal to Workman Publishing by midnight tonight (Feb. 28th), you have a chance to win one of these babies framed! Details here.

You can see all of my 20×200 prints on Pinterest.

A new 20×200 print, “So Many Places,” is available through WestElm.com.

the world is so many places! — yet home is the word we’re encouraged to find

See the rest of my prints→

Here’s an excerpt of a mini-interview I did with the West Elm folks:

How do you live with art?

My wife and I work together in a home studio, so we like to surround ourselves with art by filling our walls with pieces from artists we love. Sometimes I’ll even frame and hang pictures of (mostly dead) artist heroes of mine — they’re like friendly ghosts, I can feel them pushing me on while I work. (It’s way less morbid than it sounds.)

What is a favorite gallery or museum that you particularly love or that inspires your work?

Here in Austin, Texas, I really like to stop by Yard Dog Art Gallery on South Congress and see the stuff they have up. Because I’m both a writer and an artist, my absolute favorite spot in town is the Harry Ransom Center on the University of Texas campus — their archive is massive and their exhibits are terrific. I’ve seen everything there from original Frida Kahlo paintings to James Joyce manuscripts.

Read more→

Just in time for the holidays, here are two brand-new Newspaper Blackout prints.

“Open Road” available at 20×200.com→

“How To Be Cool” available at 20×200.com→

This poem is a “deleted scene”—it was cut from my book, Newspaper Blackout, late in the editing process, although now I can’t remember why. It was made from an article about the Brooklyn rapper Lil Mama.

Also: Steal Like An Artist is available for pre-order!

See more of my work for sale →

Marriage is two people in love / standing in the same bathroom

I mean, yes, we’re sinking … but the music is exceptional

One of my all-time favorite blackout poems is now an affordable print at 20×200!

Very pleased to announce that my friend Jen Bekman and the rad gang at 20×200 are offering a new, affordable Newspaper Blackout print for sale!

The Travelogue

Fun fact: this is the poem that Renee Montaigne read on NPR’s Morning Edition in 2008.

Never bought from 20×200 before?  You’re gonna love it. Here’s an idea of what you’ll get when your print arrives. (You can also see the other 3 prints we have available through 20×200 in my store.)

Jen wrote a really lovely newsletter about the piece, some of which I wanted to share here:

I met Austin in person in Austin, TX, when I was there for SXSW, and was glad to get to spend time with him as he was on the brink of big things—spending time with artists on the brink of big things is one of the true joys of my job. His book—which you can pre-order on Amazon—was available in the conference’s bookstore. We went to dinner on the same evening that we both got to hold copies of it in our hands for the very first time. Austin was frazzled and flustered and flattered by the attention that was beginning to percolate. He was anxious about what was to come, and whether the book would sell, and what comes next when it does or it doesn’t.

There were four of us at dinner, each representing a compass point on the map of North America—California, Canada, New York and Texas—sitting at a picnic table on a scrappy patio beneath trees strung with Christmas lights, sipping sweet tea and eating barbecue and talking about poetry. I mean really talking about poetry, because as it turned out, all four of us are pretty big poetry nerds. It struck me then that for all the talk about what was to come, Austin’s accomplished some pretty amazing things already and those things deserved a good portion of the credit for convening us there that evening. And being there? That was pretty great.

With all the insanity going on in my life right now, the  giveaways, interviews, reviews, Amazon rank, etc., I really needed to read this.

To remember what’s important.

As I told the group that evening: the best part (for me) of being an artist and a writer is the people I’ve been able to meet–totally awesome people–whether it’s in blog comments, or on twitter, or in person over BBQ.

I’m a very lucky guy. So big thanks to y’all, and thanks to Jen.

Okay folks, if you’ve been holding out on buying a print of one of my newspaper blackout poems from 20×200, now’s your chance: they’re having a 20% off sale until noon on Sunday the sale has been extended until 2PM EST Monday!.

Enter the code RIDONK in Google Checkout for 20% off your print order. (See the details.)

That means you could own all three prints for less than $50. An absolute steal.

But even better, $50 prints are now $40, $200 prints are now $160.

The 20×16 inch “Agoraphobia” print looks really damned good, by the way. At $160, that’s the cheapest it’ll ever be. June isn’t THAT far away…it would make a perfect graduation gift. Way cooler than another copy of Oh! The Places You Will Go.

A bunch of folks have ordered the “How It Works” print for Valentine’s Day. (I’m in the 20×200 Valentine’s Guide under “Bookish Babe“–hell yeah, the only kind I like!) There are only 25 left of the $20 editions, so if you want one, better order one now! Only 12 left as of Sunday afternoon!

Very pleased to announce that the gang at 20×200 are offering a new, affordable Newspaper Blackout print for sale!

Agoraphobia [ Buy now ]

This is one of my very favorites. It looks really good BIG, so if you can scrape up the dough, I’d encourage you to buy one of the bigger sizes.

Detail:

I think it’d also make a perfect graduation present, if you have a young-un in your life…for that first apartment, etc.

Read what Sara @ 20×200 has to say about the print

Never bought from 20×200 before? Here’s an idea of what you’ll get when your print arrives.

And of course, if you don’t already own them, there are two other Newspaper Blackout prints still on sale at 20×200:

Buy now!

photo by Laurence Musgrove

I’m thrilled to be getting e-mails and tweets from folks who are receiving their 20×200 prints!

We’ve sold over 100 prints since last Tuesday.

Here’s a “gratuitous unboxing” post from Mark Larson:

photo by Mark Larson

Love this twitpic by Marty Smith :

Also, as I mentioned on Twitter, for the 8×10 prints, you can’t go wrong with this cheap $10 RIBBA frame from IKEA:

The mat makes for a lot of nice whitespace around the poem.

Meg and I hung our (more extensive) collection of blackout prints in our library last weekend:

Would love to see more pics from y’all when you get your prints—where did you decide to hang them? E-mail me, tweet with the tag #newspaperblackout, or post in the comments.

[ Prints still on sale at 20x200! ]