Craig Billow Takes First & Opens Solo Show TONIGHT & That's Awesome

Craig Billow won first place at Phillyist Framed, and promptly pinned the blue ribbon to his chest, like a prize pony. We met last week at National Mechanics, just as the first snowpocalypse was beginning to rage, to talk photography, his winning image, "The Big U," and the perils of art in the recession.

What you realize almost immediately upon meeting Craig is that he's a true believer. When the recession came to sock us all in the jaw and take our jobs, including Craig's 9-to-5, he decided not to look for another one. Instead, he set out to follow his University of the Arts training, and actually earn his full-time living as an artist. And he knows that's a little crazy. To find consistent work, he grins and says, "you figure out how to stalk an art director, then you back off just a little bit so you don't get arrested, but they know your name."

Really though, he's just a guy who truly loves what he does. He started out simply studying illustration, getting hammered with the Wyeths along with all the other art kids, until taking a required photography class. That's when he became completely enamored with the lens, and the new way of seeing the world, so he put down the pencils and picked up a camera to manipulate images in new ways—cutting them apart and then putting them back together again. This is why he's drawn Dave McKeann (enough to have an allusion to one of his sketches from a wall in the movie Mirrormask on his forearm), the illustrator who frequently teams with creepy-wonderful author Neil Gaiman. He think McKean is like a modern Norman Rockwell, someone who completely turns illustration on its head by incorporating new media.

You can see it in his style, which is about half-photorealism. The other half is what you see as you're falling asleep—images which are bright and true only in dreams, some nightmares and some taunting and beautiful. "The Big U", his first place print, is just like this. Sure, it's the SS United States, the big ol' boat docked at Pier 82 that we all see when we're buying Klippans and lingonberries at Ikea, but it's grown in the image. It's a ghost.

He wouldn't be able to make the looming spirits of ocean liners past pop without the kind of tedious practice which is easy to spend huge expanses of time avoiding. To make sure he didn't fall into the treacherous practice of procrastination, about nine months ago, he set himself on a quest to take at least one photo to blog a day. "It's a constantly morphing thing to keep the eye in shape," he said. With absolutely no excuses, sometimes he snaps the image with his candy bar phone.

I haven't looked at every picture in the archive, but somehow I don't think too many of them are from the phone. Craig's got 35 cameras. And before we wrapped up, to drink beer and bullshit, he said "let me pull out my light meter."

You should go to his show tonight. It's in a bar. With a band. He promises a "loud and rowdy rock and roll art show with recession friendly prices." Check it out, buy a piece, commission a portrait, demand to see his tattoo. Art is fun.

Craig Billow Presents Roads Less Travelled
Featuring the Music of The Gentlemen's Club
TONIGHT, 7 p.m.
12 Steps Down, 9th and Christian
FREE