Cease and desist

I think we should make up bands with myspaces and websites...not even websites, just a myspace and a few original songs at first... of course with a name that isn't in use already.
As ridiculous a name as possible along the lines of the current trends in band names ...like Wolf Wolf Wolf!!!, or whatever sounds like a reasonable or unreasonable band name.

We create these bands with looks, myspace pages and a few tracks....some pictures.

Then we wait until another band tries to use that name, we write them a cease and desist letter.

Partially I think it's funny because there are fewer and fewer band names out there...or you would think, and they might get angry, and partially because we predicted this stupid name.

I think the piece succeeds if we actually get a band to stop using the name we are using.

Temp install in basement - circular wall test

Interactive Installation - matt's basement boston

Here are two sketches of how I see an installation working in my studio space.

New Collaboration with Lee Walton

So, last night Lee Walton was supposed to talk in Boston, but it was canceled so we got dinner and saw some art. Over dinner we conceived a new collaborative project between HLH and Lee. It is based on some of the old instruction pieces, and we talked about Tehching Hsieh's declaration that he would not make art for 13 years.

So here it is, the new HLH collaboration with Lee Walton. Since it was written and signed in a bar (as it should have been) it is a bit hard to read, but here is the text.

I, Matthew Nash, as representative of Harvey Loves Harvey, and Lee Walton, artist, commit our respective projects to a hiatus for one month (to be chosen) in which we will not create art: we will only paint.

Signed
Matthew Nash
Lee Walton

All we need to do is pick which month to make the piece. I'll frame up this contract for posterity.

Harvey != collaboration

Recently I started buying "The EC Archives" reissues from Russ Cochran publishing. My favorites are the "Weird
Science" comics, although I still love my original boxed set of the first 23 issues of "MAD" that Cochran published in the mid-80s. Both contain great quotes, and the "MAD" set is where the name "Harvey Loves Harvey" comes from.

Today I read this great quote in one of the "Weird Science" books penned by Cochran:

... Al Feldstein wrote all four stories in the first issue of Weird Science, including "Lost in the Microcosm," illustrated by Harvey Kurtzman. This is the only EC story to be written by Feldstein and illustrated by Kurtzman.
Kurtzman was eager to break away from Feldstein's method of writing and start writing his own stories...

Later in the same narrative, Kurtzman says:

There were two differences between Al Feldstein's approach and mine: Al wrote fast, I wrote slow. And Al let the artist compose the pictures; I storyboarded everything.

I find it really interesting that Harvey Loves Harvey, a project devoted to collaboration and the culmination of work that is larger than one individual, is named after someone who clearly could not collaborate with others. Even in an industry as collaborative as comics, Kurtzman needed to be the leader, the singular vision, the boss -- all the things we are against in Harvey Loves Harvey.


Bill Gaines looks over a story by Artist/Writer Harvey Kurtzman. Kurtzman created some of the most realistic war stories ever produced for EC's Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat. But he is best known for his brainchild which revolutionized the world of humor. It's title: Mad. [image found here]