Randy Laybourne who was a contributing artist to the first Concrete to Canvas book, emailed me the other day to tell me about his new show called 20x20. The first ever showing of all 20 of his 20x20 images will be at Swiv Tackle Circus in Oceanside, California. The series of work was a big labour of love for Laybourne and took over 2 years to finish.

The opening is on 17th January at 6pm and it will be up for a month, until 16th Feb. Click more info below to see previews of some of the work and check out Randy's blog at lookforwardtothepast.wordpress.com for background info on the show.

I've just about got my Wurzel Gummidge (old UK TV character with a selection of heads for every occasion) -style work head back on after the hectic and in our case, upheaval of the Christmas period. As is tradition Chris and I bought each other a selection of mostly art based books as presents and I thought I'd mention them here as they were corkers. Click on 'continue reading' below for all the details.

Over the last few days I've been going over the proofs of the new book I've put together, making notes of changes and corrections I would like. It won't be on the shelves until October but it'll be called Art By Tattooists: Beyond Flash and will feature as the title suggests, artwork by international tattooists. It'll be the same format and price as the previous Concrete To Canvas books. Artists include Angelique Houtkamp (sneaky peak of page shown), Guy Aitchison and Michele Wortman, Regino Gonzales and Daniel Albrigo, amongst many, many others. Can't wait to see the updated proofs next month and then the final book in the Autumn.

Artist and animator Lori D (Modart Issue 9) has a new show at University High School in San Francisco running until the 27rd Feb. More details on the University High School website. There's also this nice little movie below.

While in New York we developed a taste for the several vegan cheesecakes on offer and since our return I'd been meaning to try and make one myself. I've only just got round to it, and found an excellent recipe in La Dolce Vegan, one of Sarah Kramer's (my favourite vegan cookbook author) books. I used the basic recipe then made up a recipe for the topping.

I've made three so far - two with a lemon topping and one with blackberry and I'm pretty pleased with the outcome, plus this was surprising easy to do! It's been a while since I've done a food based post so click 'continue reading' below if you'd like to see another photo and the recipe.