shinebrite productions

languishing.

2011-12-30T09:56:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple projects that have been sitting around our house, er, garage for way too long. The cups have been moved to and fro for close to 5 years. Sad, so sad.

I rinsed them off yesterday and will glaze them before winter break is over. Someone out there hold me to this. The kiddos will paint 2 of them and I'll do the rest.

The painting has been propped up by our water heater in the garage for a couple of years. The boy's wooden racer and the girl's piggy car are the main characters. A wooden train car and some foam bowling pins lend a supporting hand.

I added the pukey green yesterday. I don't know what to think about this one right now. I like the drawings a lot. Don't know about the color application. It's done on a hollow core door. This one is the biggest transportable image I have attempted in quite some time.

We're toying with the idea of sealing the heck out of the door and hanging it in the backyard...

mural at the 4-spot.

2011-08-29T12:55:00.000-07:00

i just completed a mural in el cajon. at a couple of friends' house. it's my biggest one to date, 60 feet long. drawing took a couple of days and the actual painting of the thing was wrapped up in a week.

it got quite hot during the week. thank goodness i was painting right next to the pool.

a lot of the head and the heart, as well as the tallest man on the earth were pumping through my headphones.

if anyone out there needs a supercool mural painted get in touch with this guy.

ummm, that would be me.

slide slide slippity slide.

2011-01-04T14:12:00.000-08:00

the slide is a new addition to the girl's toy collection.

sippy lid.

the pattern is lifted from mary's curtains in the film mary and max. amazing film, by the way.

still not satisfied with the pattern element. i may introduce some yellow green inside parts of it.

tift merritt. rogue wave. cee-lo.

and a bit of empire strikes back.

space age.

2010-12-29T09:48:00.000-08:00

done in three parts.

the repeated piece is part of one of the new star wars lego vehicles that the boy got for the holiday. its something from hoth in the empire strikes back.

the blaster is from the buzz lightyear ride up in disney.

the pattern is from the icon for a holiday music file that carrie downloaded on her mac. added it while watching romancing the stone. that movie brings back memories of driving to the concord mall movie theater with my family when it came out. it seemed like such a long ride. back roads and rural on the verge of suburban delaware county. it was like a 20 minute drive.

subduing the ray gun and dressing up the pattern was done with diego and the wonderpets in the background. a little tift merritt in between.

i'm not satisfied with it.

a cup of color.

2010-12-25T15:40:00.000-08:00

warming up.

2010-12-23T11:33:00.000-08:00

the girl's glamour glasses. the boy's spotted lizard. stars from a shrinky dink ornament on the tree.

started a few weeks ago. maybe a month. and it looked like this.

broke it back out last night after everyone was in bed. the lovely missus was in bed sick before the kiddos were tucked in at 730.

listening to a mix i made for her.

tift merritt- mix tape

cee-lo green- old fashioned

dave rawlings- sweet tooth

leisure society- love's enormous wings

the tallest man on the earth- the dreamer

hoots and hellmouth- roll, brandywine, roll

to name a few.

finished off the evening watching box of moonlight. gotta love sam rockwell.

a staggering work of genius.

2010-12-22T22:51:00.000-08:00

pretty much says it all.
i still have a bit of fondness for this one.

another wet one.

2010-12-22T20:08:00.000-08:00

view of the jacked up back porch awning on france street.

monotype done on plexi with watersoluble pencils.
used a smidge too much water for the transfer.

it will be sunny tomorrow. at least sunnier.

i want sun.

2010-12-22T20:00:00.000-08:00

i know we need the rain, but i am not used to it for this long.

caught a glimpse of the sun today. it made me smile.

i just came across this one. looks like rain. again.

one near end.

2010-12-11T20:37:00.000-08:00

one of four large drawings on paper that wrapped up my thesis body of work.
final 2 months in baton rouge.

i titled it "a way".

living in a one bedroom apartment. using the bedroom as my drawing space.

sanding paper down.
mark after mark.

the work i made that year was the most i had made that was consistent in style.

the next print i made looked entirely different.

i still love that cloud.

france street.

2010-12-04T09:34:00.000-08:00

view from inside the back porch of jerome and i's place in baton rouge.
that backyard was seriously neglected.

grant green guitar licks bounding out from the boombox in the living room with the checkered floor.

stereoscope.

2010-12-03T18:54:00.000-08:00

inspired by stereoscopic photographs.

my work at a crossroads here. it bridges the gap between the childlike imagery from before with the more detail oriented work that would follow.

done before i really got going with the pattern, subtle color changes, and more sophisticated imagery in the medallions in the spring of 96.

middling at best.

shine brite.

2010-12-01T20:40:00.000-08:00

gosh.

thinking of my first use of these words together brings me back to my time at summer camp. summer of 1997. first time i met my future wife. go figure:)

positivity. making people smile.

again, using everyday things as my subject. combining this interest with my love of pattern and decoration.

revisiting screenprinting for the first time in over 6 years and using it for t-shirt designs. playing with wearable multiples. multiple colors that are not shown in these "trap" images.

tufted fishies.

2010-11-27T08:13:00.000-08:00

finished up while "watching" janeane garofalo's stand up routine. funny.

the fishies are one of the girl's yard toys. she kept wanting to play with it as i was drawing it. sheesh...

i have enjoyed working on these 2 panels. a bit challenging at moments because of the different format.

i'm thinking they will go in our bedroom above our closet. my goal is to get one more "standard size", read as "small", drawing done this weekend. we'll see. i still have to create a lesson plan, catch up on grading, and organize the mess in the garage.

we'll see.

thankful.

2010-11-24T10:05:00.000-08:00

i'm thankful to have moments like this with my daughter.

i'm thankful for my family and friends.

i'm thankful for the health and happiness of those same people.

this one is pretty near done. if anything changes it will be minor. maybe a bit more value contrast among the main characters of the image. the hinges on it will be replaced and flipped to the top of image so it can be hung that way.

just look at that tightly organized work space. impressive, no?

here's a closer look at the companion piece. not complete, but moving forward. logan painted the color washes in the center and then I added on top of his work. the chair is a relatively new addition to our home. The missus often sits there. laptop by her side.

(the waiting room chair in the other image is one i find myself in on occasion. laptop on the credenza, craning my neck to check out the action of the weekly saturday lsu football game.)

the lamp is one that carrie got recently. it's an awesome lamp. she was very excited when she purchased it. rightfully so.

the morning playlist with the girl at my side- a little bill withers followed by justin townes earle's new album, harlem river blues.

getting there.

2010-11-22T21:20:00.000-08:00

a bit closer.

getting ready to start its companion with the tufted chair and possibly the millenium falcon sandwich cutter.

throw up.

2010-11-22T11:48:00.000-08:00

we took the little doors off our guest bath vanity a bit ago. the unit is cheap and the previous owners made some "repairs" to it.

i thought the doors would make interesting supports to draw on. with the frame built in. or is it on?

i had the girl add some color to the center of the panel with washable color markers. i'll have the boy add color to the other panel.

the frame color is improving. it isn't as vomit looking as it was last night.
more like pepto.

i think darth vader's tie-fighter sandwich cutters will make an appearance as a pattern element. hopefully today.

the jar was made by our friend nicole in brooklyn. the waiting room chair lives next to our credenza.

drawn while watching grey gardens (hard to watch after a while) and the tim burton version of alice in wonderland (kinda crap).

kitchen remodel.

2010-10-27T21:59:00.000-07:00

i've looked up recently from the black tufted chair in the living room and looked at these two a bit more intently.

done to cover up the ugly wood finish of the countertop and cabinetry above it.

wish i had done more of it.

it will be weird when they're gone, but it will be SO nice to have a new space.

seymour.

2010-09-04T23:17:00.000-07:00

while in baton rouge, i took it upon myself to make 3 self published (read as i made 50 copies at the local kinkos and placed them in grad student and faculty campus mailboxes and studios) periodicals.

my abbreviated academic attempt at breaking down the book form i had played with while in philadelphia. while self serving and self important, they have provided me with a couple of my favorite visual images.

first heavy exposure to the 70s era music of stevie wonder. innervisions is incredible. golden lady is aural bliss.

the blue kitchen.

2010-09-01T21:52:00.000-07:00

the condo on 36th street served us well for a number of years. cheap mortgage... and, uh, cheap mortgage.
after a short while we painted the kitchen blue. bright blue with lighter blue trim around all the cabinets.

pretty.
pretty intense.

for a while there i was bouncing from part time teaching gig to part time teaching gig to part time teaching gig. all in the same day.

in the gaps in between i would, what else, document the place and its immediate surroundings. i made a series of relief prints on styrofoam. we were getting a lot of takeout sushi at the time and i would cut out the tops of the boxes and use them as my plates.

the kitchen counter became my ink slab. the pull out cutting board became my print bed.

usually 3 colors done with selective inking of the plate. used a variety of colored mulberry paper.

short circuit

2010-08-27T15:00:00.000-07:00

My clearest recollection of these drawings in process is me laying in bed at a little boutique spa/hotel in palm springs and adding colored pencil to the yellow one.

At that time, Carrie was getting a massage elsewhere on the property.

Early February? The calm before the storm. Our last weekend getaway, pre-kid. Less than a month later the boy would be joining us.

I have a couple more that I have never added color to. Pattern making and repetitive mark making have always been very calming for me. Makes sense that I was getting into these as we were nearing the birth of our first child.

Didn't have a preconceived composition in mind, just responding to the previous rows of shapes that I had completed. I like the compactness and density of shapes in the drawings. Nothing touches one another, but the shapes have a charge or energy to them. Static? Potential?

The blue and yellow ones are framed in the house. I came across the green one as we were clearing out our spare bedroom closet in preparation for our new floors to be installed, and realized that it was not finished. I'll get back to it... some day.

folding. and folding. and folding.

2010-08-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

wow.
between the folds. remarkable film.
i love the transformational aspect of the medium. you do not remove. you do not add.

the mathematical nature of it kills me. in a good way.

what the?!

2010-08-20T14:30:00.000-07:00

woke up yesterday and before my morning coffee, looked at a drawing i had been working on before going to bed.

it was awful. the objects were fine, but the pattern i laid down on top killed it. and not in a good way.
spent any free time during the day trying to subdue the suckage that was present. breakfast time, diego time, and naptime. the boy got up early from his "nap" and drew and painted alongside me at the kitchen table for a bit. nice.

the dino is one that the boy wanted me to put into a drawing after i chose a couple others for a previous work. i mislabeled this one in an earlier post as a hadrosaur. it is actually an ankylosaur.

the banana peels are from a collection of felt foods the kids have. carrie made felt sushi rolls and others from all over did other food items, and then they swapped. some pretty cool stuff.

i think it's fixed...

i've got to get into school mode and start investing time in lesson planning. this summer vacation has been a treat. lots of me time, lots of me and kiddo time. wish the missus had the same schedule, but somebody has to bring home the bacon.

froggie and friend

2010-08-17T22:59:00.000-07:00

summer break is winding down. first hot day in a while. beach day. glad to have these days with the boy and the girl.

started this one while watching "this american life".
continued while the kids were eating breakfast.
finished while they were napping and then drawing next to me.

i love working at the table and them drawing on both sides of me. logan has actually stayed with it than he has before. his first love is still building with legos though.

jammed with the kiddos another time to arcade fire's "month of may".

Pa C d2

2010-08-16T10:22:00.000-07:00

inspired by our movie night with the boy. he loves this droid.

coupled with the girl's night time companion and calm mood inducer.

i like the neon in this.

dinos and legos

2010-08-13T13:49:00.000-07:00

puzzle pieces and a one winged creation by the boy. i wanted two wings, but i compromised.

he liked the dinos but was disappointed i didn't use the hadrosaurus. i'll have to get that one into a drawing soon. need to keep the boss happy.

the pattern comes from the skin of the apatosaurus.

late night session with arcade fire on the daily show. they sounded good. morning wrap up out in our west wing. still listening to the tunes mr. torrieri sent my way. good stuff.

8 drawings since getting back from the east coast on the 2nd. not bad.

i'm planning on doing a workplace series once we start back up in a few weeks.

this is my fancy combination drawing board/portfolio. its where my drawings live while awaiting shows and buyers.

hoot.

2010-08-12T09:42:00.000-07:00

one of the sweetest sounding words that the girl says. more like hoo, hoo, but every once in a while she gets the "t" at the end.

the pattern is inspired by the owl's belly and back.

no background music. a collection of tv offerings- bukowski's factotum (really? matt dillon as chinanski?!), futurama, the daily show, and phineas and ferb.

i commissioned another lego creation.

looking around the yard.

2010-08-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

countless hours of soaking wet fun courtesy of the water table. in fact, the boy was doing the la mesa championship slug races in it yesterday.

the pattern element is from the vents on our patio heater.

i love my new mechanical pencil.

squidy.

2010-08-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

so the missus sewed the kids a couple things for our vacation trip back east. she made these way cool backpacks so they could put essential travel items in them. she also sewed these stuffed squids that have a variety of fabric patterns all over their bodies. big hit! i'm a bit disappointed that i didn't get one...

the boy named his, drum roll please... squidy.

to keep the girl occupied in the car for stretches at a time, all we have to break out is her little boombox. this assumes her to no end. great gift from the number one day care provider of all time, teresa.

thought i'd go with a miami dolphins color scheme on this one.

the creative process was accompanied by dane cook's "employee of the month" (nothing else was on, i swear), more mr. swift, dave rawlings, justin townes earle, and the sound of our back yard sprinkler.

roto completo.

2010-08-08T15:09:00.000-07:00

i'll have to see if the boy approves of the treatment given to his lego creations. i don't think he'll have to much of a problem.

after all, i went over them with a shiny gold pencil.

richard swift on repeat for a spell with a little bit of arcade fire's latest offering.

roto. rotomatic.

2010-08-07T07:12:00.000-07:00

the boy's robot creations are featured along with a car that brought me back to madison drive.
the boy had a backup hot wheels "just in case" my choice wouldn't work out.

some cool kids i got to hang out with in new hampshire had the rotomatic die cast metal mini auto in a bag that contained toys for their daughters. i love the cutting edge rotary technology used in the car design.

i can't remember if it was chad, walt, or myself that had this particular model in their collection...

in progress.

progress.

2010-08-06T08:21:00.000-07:00

may be done.

dinking coffee. kids working their magnadoodles on opposite sides of me.

logan is going to build me a couple robot vehicles for the next drawing.

thursday.

2010-08-05T22:11:00.000-07:00

quality time.

logan got up at 5am. its worth repeating- 5am. kept himself occupied until 7, bless his heart. the girl got up after i did. bless her heart too.
while the kids played with legos i drew.

then we went to the zoo. great time.

during naps i finished one and started another. grooving.

every year i have one productive year. looks like this might be it.

yellow hat

2010-08-04T20:21:00.000-07:00

well, i failed.

set out to get three drawings done in new england, but i only got two done.
the second was completed in waterville valley, new hampshire. 16 people under one roof for a weekend. a blast, really, even if the majority of the group went to syracuse university.

on saturday night we played the second annual game of yellow hat. whoever has the hat, gets to pick the music. pretty simple, pretty darn fun. the items in the drawing were all found in the living room of the condo while listening to a wide variety of tunes and stories. good times.

and that was all she wrote. or all i drew.

we got back to la mesa late monday night. took a lazy day on tuesday. and kicked it today. completed a third drawing based on items i saw at the local coffee shop, cosmos. had my latte by the front window, scalded my tongue on the damn drink, drew, and had matt pond pa's green fury coming through my earbuds.

started another drawing along the street, then finished the coffee shop drawing back at home after picking up the kids from daycare.

white noise coming through the baby monitor.

the little house in la mesa

2010-08-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

the boy was still crawling when we finally sold the place with the blue kitchen. that place had served us well in san diego, but it was time to move on to a place that didnt overlook a dumpster.

that didnt have smelly neighbors.

that had businesses other than liquor stores and a nudie bar we could walk to.

its not mayberry, but we've got our garden (that's out of control), we've got our yard (that's barely hanging on). we've got our main street and classic car show.

i painted (the house) and planted, but did not draw until the following spring. dang. our friend jason had started a blog called napkin canvas, and it got me going on some silly little drawings. on napkins. during the boy's naps.

subject matter? our home of course. and maybe a foot and a leg thrown in.

playing on the laptop- in rainbows by radiohead.

holed up.

2010-07-30T11:37:00.000-07:00

for two years after i left baton rouge my home base was again my parents' house. they were willing to put up with a son that was treading water, not sure what his next move was going to be. i made half hearted attempts at settling in new orleans and austin. sleeping on neal's couch, tracey's floor.

while at my parent's home i pulled a squeegee during the day. at lunch and on breaks i would play hacky sack with a couple guys in the industrial park. after work i would take walks in the woods around the county. the brandywine area is really quite beautiful. would go out maybe on a friday night with my old next door neighbor and imbibe.

by and large, most of my time was spent alone.

depressed? you bet.

in the evening i would sit at my big drawing table in my room and make pictures.

i ended up filling 3 old lesson plan books that my father had around the house. exploring different ways to mix and match materials and images. some are more minimal than others, responding to the grid of school periods that lay beneath. some became layered thickly as i tried to rework failed compositions or color schemes. a few of these have served as inspiration for larger works. filling these pages got me through some dark times.

as a group i call them "suburban lessons".

at the end of that second year i met a girl.

and things started to get a whole lot better.

annie mae.

2010-07-29T12:06:00.000-07:00

there are some works of art that just ring out to you. pieces that stay fresh no matter how many times you see them.

one of those works, for me, is a quilt by annie mae young. one of the many amazing quilters from gee's bend, alabama.

when we got to maine, i noticed my mother in-law had a thick color catalogue of the women of gee's bend and the work they have done there with fabric and thread. i was more than thrilled to dig into that sucker.

this quilt uses old work clothes to create the blue rectangles and corduroy for the warm rectangles in the center.

what about it gets to me?

the contrast between warm and cool?
the contrast between old, worn material and the new?
the irregularity of the rectangles that give it a sense of movement and life?
the simplicity of the composition?
the abstract nature of it that still reveals to me the poetry of looking out a window towards the sun setting in the sky?

its got so much going on. i love it.

as i was looking though the book i came across this photograph from the mid nineties of annie mae and one of her great grand daughters in front of her quilts. my favorite is open on top. i find it surreal how all her work is there. in a pile.

thank you nancy for having this book at your place, so i could revisit this work.

thank you annie mae for taking what you had around and making such wonderful things of beauty with them.

vacation!

2010-07-27T19:54:00.000-07:00

one goal i set for our vacation was to do three small drawings. nothing major, just wanted to get a little flow going.

one down.

source material-
morning kayak ride on highland lake where i saw the most water lilies i've ever seen.
after dinner ice cream where logan inhaled his own cone and then had helpings from everyone else.
stars and stripes pinwheels in front of dennis and nancy's house looking out on the lake.
loon pinwheel in close proximity to the other ones.
greens and yellows are on a number of pieces on the walls of the house.

felt good. most of it was during the kids' naptime and the rest was done after they went to bed, while my father in-law was watching fox news.

a lot of morrissey.

2010-07-26T11:36:00.000-07:00

what does a white young man, with really no drama in his life, from a perfectly acceptable, loving, hard working middle class background do when he gets to college. get angsty.

and listen to a lot of morrissey.

that said, while my family life in the southern suburbs of philadelphia was all sorts of normal, one of the traits that stuck with me the most was that of being a worrier and overthinker. this, in turn, lead me to close myself off from people and stress about the littlest of incidents.

and i could always turn to the smiths, depeche mode, and the cure anytime i needed someone to relate to. and get a little dancing groove too, of course.

to be honest, this angstiness started in high school, as did the listening of musical numbers by the before mentioned artists. but things escalated in college, i was free to explore these feelings in all sorts of shades of grays and blacks.

at some point at the beginning of my junior year, i would turn away from any kind of recognizable figurative references in my work. i was looking at works by many of the abstract expressionist painters. the one i gravitated to the most was franz kline. loved the boldness of the brushstrokes, the forcefullness that is apparent in his work, and the speed of some of those marks.

i think that any young artist goes through periods of mimicking the masters. i think its important. i did it a lot with these abstract painters from grandparents' generation. the subjects of my prints and drawings from this time were small, isolated shapes that looked as if they were often sinking down into or floating in the ambiguosly developed space that they occupied.

in some pieces there was a dramatic contrast between figure and ground and in others there developed a play with subtle differences of value and color. this subtlety would be revisited again in the dark landscapes i made at the end of my time in baton rouge four, almost 5 years later.

the works became more of a study on the power and mystery that light can create.

our son, logan, was born on march 2, 2006. it was then that i was finally able to lift most of these feelings of worry that had occupied me for so long. other things to think about from that day forward. what a blessing that little guy , and the arrival of his sister aurora a couple years later, have been.

and they have supplied plenty of stuff for mr to make art about.

four years

2010-07-24T15:23:00.000-07:00

carrie and i moved out to san diego in the fall of 99. not long after that, we rented a small studio space downtown. we ended up using it far too little and paid rent on it way too long. the space was above a hooters restaurant. carrie "loved" walking by that place right before she was going to be creatively productive.

i started two pieces in that space. both were taken from small drawings i had done in lesson plan books during the previous couple years. each was approximately 30x40".

then they sat. or hung. or were rolled up. off and on in various places for the next four years. every once in a while i would chip away. it wasn't until the summer of 2005 that i completed the two of them. teaching an advanced drawing summer class at a local community college.

wish i had actually taken pics of these 2 before framing them. doh.

in fact, i started and completed a 3rd drawing at the same time i was finishing up those two. i haven't made anything as large as these pieces since, not counting the murals i've done.

since then my work has gotten down to a portable handheld size. if its too big to use a text book as a support, i won't be making it. that said, the work that i have done since these 3 leans heavily on the visual formatting of these guys. the combination of pattern, everyday objects, and expressive atmosphere is something i really enjoy playing with. the mixing and matching of different layers of information offers me a rich, varied world to explore and create with.

that was then.

2010-07-23T22:18:00.000-07:00

and this is now...

done while i was doing those childlike drawings in baton rouge.

mono.

2010-07-23T20:56:00.000-07:00

Walking around jenkintown looking at the side wall of a brick faced drug store. golden afternoon light. early fall.

for an assignment for the landscape class i was taking with richard cramer at tyler. first time i was sketching cropped images of the suburban landscape.

the first turn towards my environment, somewhat immediate, for a source. something that i have revisited time and time again. sometimes this documentation of my place, my space is very tight in scope and at other times wide and varied. it has become a defining thread in groups of my work.

the next time i revisited this theme was at 740 france street in baton rouge. the place with the checkered floor and drawing board in living room, the oversize dining table, and the low riders parked in the foyer.

done as monotypes. a series of prints capturing stillness in our space. gaps. the overlooked, and sometimes, the obvious.

done as monotypes in the print studio, based on drawings from the house... i think. i can not find the sketchbook that would have these preliminary works in it. i don't believe they were from memory. hazy. just plain hazy. this non-recollection is disappointing.

done as monos. why? i've always liked the flatness of lithography, monotypes, and silkscreen. the indirectness of the artist's hand. one step removed from the actual creative act. monos because they are as unique as you get in printmaking and the most immediate in terms of process.

i think i saw my first george clinton show while working on these. playing southern culture on the skids a good bit.

the drawing board.

i continued documenting my places in san diego. a few monos. many others became relief prints.

from our 2nd apartment, in the same small complex.

i love where we live now, but i definitely had a crush on our kansas st. place.

sidewalk chalk, anyone?

2010-07-22T21:08:00.000-07:00

i guess i did a couple large chalk drawings on walls in baton rouge, but it wasn't until my 2nd year at summer camp that i really got into doing the large scale, temporary drawings in public spaces.

i was really "drawn" to the transient quality of these things. with a quick shower they could be gone. which, in turn, would provide an opportunity to make a new one.

the circular format and repetitive nature of the designs came from radiating t-shirts i had done the previous summer, which had been influenced by the portal/pattern crayon drawings from grad school, which had, themselves, been influenced by byzantine mosaics that i had seen in ravenna, italy, while studying abroad my junior year at tyler. a totally linear progression of form and idea, right?

they were done in the middle of the night, with few, if any, people around. when the camp woke up the next day, they were greeted with a new treat.

i see these as a celebration of life, movement, and the elements. they were coming from the desire to leave a positive mark in a place. in the world. one silly chalk drawing at a time.

on the cd player up in PASS- air's moon safari and massive attack's mezzanine.

i think this is the one that was clicking on all cylinders

in front of my in-laws place. right before their daughter and i

left for the west coast. they were not home when i did this.

would have been cooler if they were.

right outside our apartment building in san diego.

our street illegal bus is parked across the street.

tiger stadium and newports.

2010-07-22T15:05:00.000-07:00

at this point in baton rouge, thanks to my friend tracey, i had secured a painting studio on campus.

that's right. in the football stadium. we entered on this side.

the studios were in what once used to be dorm rooms of the football team WAY back in the day. never saw a football game there, but for a while, i was in that stadium almost every day.

with this new space i started to make some large paintings that were based on the figures i was making in the black and white composition book. somebody had gotten a hold of some billboard advertisement paper. i ended up with a fair bit of it to play with. my kind of price still to this day- free.

i used the back of these big sheets of paper. on the front were pieces of a giant newport cigarette ad. the people all cheery and good looking as i made these grimy paintings of weird, all too skinny people on the back. i would lay out a couple sheets on the floor and tape them together so that the size was about 8x12'.

there was an odd assortment of tapes being played in my boombox there- jeff buckley's grace, lyle lovett and his large band, and the barenaked ladies. that brian wilson song is still great.

I would revisit some of these skinny dudes a few years later while teaching at Buck's Rock, but they would be in a much happier place.

changes.

2010-07-22T14:36:00.000-07:00

At some point in my first year in baton rouge i decided i would start over visually. i would draw like a child. breaking rules of good composition and space in art. i was such a "rebel".

the work that i had been doing for a while was abstract and dark. no color. isolated, floating rickety looking shapes built of black lines on gray backgrounds of varying degrees of dark and light.

the only constant would be the use of line. my love of line- drawn, painted, etched, or incised has been the only thing to really stick around as the images i create have changed in style and subject throughout the years.

i bought one of those old school composition books and began to fill it. about 40 drawings in all. not as much as i wanted originally- i was gonna fill that thing, but then i moved on again, to bigger things.
some of the more bizarre and flat out disturbing images i have created are in this book of child-like drawings.

it was with this book that i bought my first box of crayons as an adult.

flashforward...

2010-07-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

i got together with the love of my life in the summer of 99. that same summer i did my first real work in clay. belle & sebastian played a lot in the ceramics studio at camp. so did ben harper.

i was just learning how to work with clay, but i was definitely into it. the staff at camp, mainly nicole and tracy, and kevin, taught me and collaborated with me a lot. it was an incredible learning experience.

when carrie and i got to san diego, i started making these slump forms that i painted with acrylics. carrie kept saying, "why don't you just glaze them?"

it wasn't until i got the job at the elementary school that i actually heeded her very wise advise. then i got rolling with wheel thrown and slab built pieces.

it was at this point that the pattern impulse in me came back loud and strong. the strongest it has been since those pieces in the mid 90s. i loved so many of the pieces that i made in the few years i invested in clay. so little of them sold, though, and i became disenchanted in the medium. that said, this coincided with me going back to school to get my teaching credential.

all in all, though, these functional pattern pieces i made in clay are some of the most beautiful works i have ever made.

unbroken chain.

2010-07-21T20:51:00.000-07:00

i think that was playing a lot while i was working on the thesis body of work. things got darker my last year in baton rouge. different forces pulling at me. uncertainty ahead.

what's a job?

that said, i worked a lot. moved into my own place after jerome graduated. a one bedroom apartment. i used the bedroom as my studio. all charcoal all the time...

the work reflected the uncertainty of the (my) future. i watched the talking heads movie, true stories, more than a few times.

in the beginning

a boy's dream

golden calf- the creation

my thesis paper was really a bunch of bullshit. in hindsight, the body of work centered on my insecurities as a young man heading out into the real world, finally not being supported by the realm of academia.

i would move on from this dark body of work after spending the summer 'teaching" at a summer camp. some of the fun would come back into my work. and stay there.

when the heat rose...

2010-07-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

I discovered something "cool". It was early spring when I got in a groove on this series of drawings and it was still cold in the mornings. I would crank up the heater and start to color. The extra warmth in the house made the crayons give a little. Like drawing with sticks of butter. I loved this. It made it so much easier to get the crayons to fill shapes in solidly.

sea worthy

high maintenance

These drawings would get put aside later in the summer as I started to investigate what was happening in the portals.

While working on these drawings, cds by Roy Ayers were in heavy rotation. Everybody Loves the Sunshine and Mystic Voyage. A bit of Grant Green was in the mix too.

back in the day...

2010-07-20T20:25:00.000-07:00

the year was 1996. 2nd year in grad school in baton rouge. living with jerome in a beatdown house across the street from a mcdonalds. i had 2 studios on campus, but i was starting to go to them less and less. choosing instead to work at the house. we had a big sheet of masonite screwed into the living room wall that served as a drawing board. it was here that i started to get the most out of a box of crayons. i created a series of drawings that culminated in the piece below. working with hand drawn patterns and images from suburbia. these works were the most rigid pattern based pieces i have made, but patterns still are a large part of the work i make... when i actually sit down to make it.