crowds

through my work as an art handler i get a glimpse of what artists are popular with new york's collectors. every home must have a prince, hirst and warhol. the art advisor and interior decorators or the city seem to agree that these guys are must haves. a tiffany's add or nurse painting, butterfly painting and celebrity silk screen are the starting works for new york's rich and tasteless. if you have a little more money a rusche, liechtenstein and koons lets all your friends know expensive your decorator is. loud but inoffensive, large and easily forgettable.

every now and then i am caught off guard by someones collection. a giacometti table, a schiele cityscape painting, a freud nude. they are out there, waiting to surprise me just when i think the next naughty nurse painting will push me over the edge.

diets

i hear the saying 'you are what you eat' a lot. it has a certain ancient ring to it like when people would eat the heart of a lion to gain its strength or the the testicles of a bull to gain its stamina. the literal interpretation of that thinking where you eat something to gain it's specific 'power', like eating muscle to gain muscle, has been replaced with broader terms like eating healthy or organically. healthy diet gives you healthy body. more practical but less exciting.

i suppose i am made of pizza, soba noodles, strawberries, tostito chips (hint of lime) and salsa, toblerone and a good amount of beer and coffee. that seems appropriately for the times.

...

burka

nun

ghost

condom

turd

finger

ala philip guston

song: troggs, our love will still be there

duo

my thoughts this morning are of a couple that i would see from time to time in at gallery openings in london that would always coordinate their outfits. they were in their 30's and each time i saw them they would be wearing matching western get ups, biker gear or german bladerunner type outfit. who were these people?

the more i think about it, the more bizarre and rare this couple are. it's such a simple idea but i can't think of any couple that has done it. i am taking liberties assuming that they were a couple. they could be siblings or artists doing a prolonged performance or social scientists conducting an experiment. i can't even think of an example in the animal kingdom where mates synchronize outfits. the closest thing that comes to mind is one part of a duo (usually the male) putting his scent on his partner. we always think of it as the male marking his territory but maybe its a bonding ritual. a unifying scent.

triplets

i recently observed a pregnancy from beginning to birth and i am in awe of the human body. it is amazing what the female goes through and ultimately produces. amazing.

child birth is obviously as old as time and the human body has evolved in some amazing ways to facilitate this arduous process and to ensure the highest likelihood to survival for the infant. from the rearranging of the abdomen to accommodate the womb to the systematic release of appropriate hormones, it is an amazingly complex and somehow obvious process. as humans we are after all built for this very purpose.

that being said, i can't imagine going through this before the comfort and conveniences of modern medicine and society. the comfort that a specialist from the hospital provides to the sterile environment to the availability of foods, bulk stores and everything else that might be needed quickly. how did a mother take the time to ensure her child knew how to latch on and feed for the first time when she had to avoid being eaten by a bear?

its makes sense now why we tend to give birth to a single child at a time. if you gave birth to triplets anytime before... basically the last century, there was a very high likelihood that they wouldn't survive. be it a mountain lion or the weather or the factory, something would steal your focus away from the offspring.

the octomom is a nice symbol of the almost absurd plushness of our time. the body is being manipulated to produce an unnatural number of offspring and science has found a way to keep them alive. wanting that many children is a perverse manifestation of greed that has teamed up with our natural desire to procreate. the children aren't needed, nor can the mother properly care for them (emotionally or financially in this case) but she wants them, so she gets them and society accommodates, as it always has tried to.

i suppose we would eventually start growing extra nipples if we continued to give birth to multiple children at once.

float

...it will be a while before the rising waters get to us on the third floor in brooklyn.

a test

wade in the water

i like the idea of walking on water. there is something mythological about being able to overcome water in a such a calm fashion. water is ever present, a necessity in life but we all know it's wrath. it is unpredictable, it causes chaos in excess or when scarce, it washes away entire cities at a time. our bodies are over 80% water and yet we can drown in only a few inches of it.

there is something to be said about walking on water instead of running or dancing or floating over it. it shows passive control over the uncontrollable.

jesus and tiger woods both did it (google it). and some lizards. and boats do it...sort of.

on the other hand, working within water is symbolic of a different approach to life. if walking on water is to dominate, however passively, breathing underneath or hiding under water show an acceptance of circumstance. its like being ideological or being realistic. sure, the first would be great, but the latter will likely serve me better.

gender

i recently read that there is a slightly higher likelihood of giving birth to a male over a female because male infants have a higher infant mortality rate. I would have to think that men also have a higher mortality rate in adolescence and adulthood because of the types of jobs men work and our natural inclination to be dumb assholes.

in china, india, south korea and vietnam there are significantly more adult men than women. they credit this to the preference of a male heir to a female one, political policy that limits the size of families and medical advances that allow parents to determine the gender very early in pregnancy. in a strange twist of fate, the giant island of plastic that floats around the pacific ocean is leading to female only births in some places. when the fish eat the plastic and then we eat the fish, the plastic gets into our bodies and somehow effects the gender of our offspring. it seems like nature evening itself out, but i don't want to blame this one of nature.

say what?

speech bubbles like mood rings. the color of the bubble indicates how the person speaking feels. it would transcend the language barrier, unless of course you are color blind. saying a lot without saying anything. if a lot more people shot for that goal than i think the world would be a much more enjoyable, quite place. it i had it my way it would be a lot more colorful as well.

text

text is so logical, its has a direct intention that people automatically know how to engage with it. drawings, at least mine, are less direct. your immediate reaction is unclear. you don't know where to look first, what is most important, how the different component of the drawing fit together. when i combine them i feel that my drawing becomes more clear and my writing becomes less so. there in the middle its nice.

self-fulfilling prophecy

we are saved for the moment.

dis-utopia

i always enjoy seeing the future world in film and books. as i think about different interpretations of the future world, i notice that most of them are dis-utopias. i think that this is because we have this hope that the future will be perfect and even a future world that has usual societal problem is disappointing. the post-apocalyptic worlds are obviously grim (mad max, planet of the apes), or even if its seemingly perfect it was built in response to some catastrophe (aeon flux). future worlds without catastrophe that still have traffic, or slow moving bureaucracy (the fifth element, judge dredd) leave me feeling the same was as dystopias because you want to think the future us would have figured those things out by then.

soylent green

the road

1984

fahrenheit 451

v for vendetta

bladerunner

2001 space odyssey

waterworld

the matrix

A.I.

minority report

star trek

i am legend

the city

they say that new york city goes down into the ground as far as it goes up. imagine everything that is underneath you at any given time.

i am a little bit in awe about how well this city actually holds together. there are so many people doing so many things to make sure the infrastructure doesn't crumble. i was told that london's tube has to shut down every night in london for , because its the oldest in the world. i wonder if new york will have to shut the entire system down at any point? the city that never sleeps, will sleep from 3 to 6am.

song: t rex, new york city

oil

oil is one of those love hate things. i worry about the person that says they love oil, but it would be easeir to say you love many of the things facilitated by oil. cheap travel, readily available goods, plastics, energy... the negatives are more apparent.

from a perspective devoid of politics oil is equally contradictory. it comes from deep in the earth, a place that humans naturally fear, and it creates an ominous black void on the surface. it coats everything it touches and can not be easily removed. it is essentially very old dead things in a liquid form that when mishandled burns like crazy. And for those exact reasons it is amazing how we have turned it into something functional. we light it on fire inside a complex machine to harness its energy. we make outstandingly complex chemical and plastics from this relatively simple and common resource. its crude in its raw state but its byproducts are awkwardly advanced and sterile.

i read about this guy in florida who found oil underneath his suburban home. despite anger from his neighbors he was able to construct a tiny rig that took the place of his pool in the back yard. what would they do if they found oil under a treasured building or ancient ruin. clearly we will dig where there are natural phenomenon, but man made structures seem to carry move weight in these debates. what if oil was found just under the pantheon, or under the empire state building?

airplane eater

this person is consuming an airplane. it has hairy legs and the plane cuts a neon streak into the sky. the gold on the inside of the mouth shows that its not as bad as you think in there. a single breast is the only thing that indicates gender. it is maternal.

upward or inward

i once heard that eastern religions look inwards and western religions look upwards. one says god is within while the other says god is above us.

i went to a 'lecture' the other day at a bar where a leading molecular biologist, gregory hannon, was speaking about his research with RNAi. i had no idea what he was talking about but it was a great way to spend a night at the bar. got me thinking about how science examines what already exists while liberal arts create new things. This can't be applied as any sort of absolute because discovering a new way to treat cancer is surely something new, and arts are certainly based on existing trends, but as a general philosophy i think its true. maybe that was a thought that should have stayed at the bar.

big city

i am not crazy about unions, but if i were i think i would join the teamsters. pretty good name for a union.

song: yatch, psychic city

information missing

human history is a delightfully vague thing. i enjoy thinking about when eras and situational titles start and end. for example, what is an immigrant in america. white people are all imported from elsewhere, but we have been here long enough to be called native. native americans might not agree, but then again, they had to come from somewhere. a burden of our generation, that no previous generation has had to deal with, is the incredible pace of change and amount of information available on an instance. it used to be that history was something studied in hindsight, but not anymore. maybe that's not entirely true. maybe there is a new area of history that's been created. current history, where all the information on hand is studied and analyzed and conclusion drawn. then there is actual history, where the consequences of actions and decisions have had time to play out.

maps

the creation of digital worlds, primarily found in video games like second life and so on, is surely one of the major cultural developments of recent times. the major development is collective experience. lots of people experiencing the same place and things. this is different from sim city or CIV games where you fabricate cities/worlds but you are the only one who sees them or engages with what you have created. when you have the equivalent population of spain entering these digital worlds every day, its a force to be reckoned with.

i am waiting to hear about the first electronic dictator or the first social revolution within world of warcraft. or the digital human rights bill in second life.

middleground

i love the idea of purgatory. my understanding is that is was inserted into catholic doctrine as a fund raising tool for the church. there is something amazingly bold and inventive about that. a whole other level of existence canonized to raise money. and purgatory doesn't seem that bad. i suppose its no heaven, but then again its no hell. probably pretty boring but if you are the type of person that can entertain themselves than you would be just fine. sort of like living in delaware. not the most exciting state in the union, but by no means the worst. and like purgatory, eventually you can move.

sales

burial rituals are a strange thing. putting dead things into the ground or burning them until they are ash make sense on an instinctual level. the cycle of life thing. but preparing bodies to be viewed for say a funeral is very strange. i understand the function, allowing people to say goodbye, to get some closure, but its a strange last image of someone and pumping them full of formaldehyde or whatever is very peculiar.

i have seen tombstones that have photos of the deceased person on it. how does one choose this image? presumable they specified that they want this on their grave and they have a photo chosen before they go. if they have led a long life then how do they choose from a life of photos? do they choose from an image from when they were happiest or maybe from when they were best looking?

a friend of mine is not an organ donor because he doesn't know what he might need in the next stage of things. its hard to argue with thoughts like that.

underfoot

when the smoking ban first came into play i didn't mind. it was easier on my lungs and i had to do laundry less frequently. but the more time that passes the more i miss the days when you could smoke indoors. i think there is a significant cultural loss when you cut smoking completely out of the picture. smoking is primitive in the best way. putting fire close to your face and inhaling smoke. its has been a staple of social interaction and a facilitator of contemplative talk for centuries. if a bar wants to choose to be smoke free then so be it, but they should also have the choice to allow smoking. i imagine the more interesting conversation and happenings would take place in the bars that allows it.

smoking is bad for your health sure, but no one goes to the bar for their health... at least not their physical health.

class photo

i am constantly astounded that there are the human race is so equally divided between men and women. with all the division within our species, be it man-made, cultural or geographic, nature still oversees us to the extent that we create an equal proportion of both sexes.

song: dirty projectors, no intention

massacre

when I think about divine intervention I often think about massacres.

you are all important.

islands

a professor once told me that the only thing worst than a bad painting is a big bad painting. thats a pretty good observation i think.

outdated

i often try and draw maps from memory. it's a good mental exercise and i enjoy being able to track how my geographic knowledge has changed.

a small joy is looking at an old map that shows countries that no longer exist. the solviet union, east germany, pre-1948 maps that show palestine and not israel, yugoslavia, the congo section of africa. finding a map from a country that reflects a bias on a contested territory is rarely experienced but coveted joy. i saw an argentinian map here in london that listed the falkland islands as the maldives.

print

printing is as simple or complex a process as you want it to be. with me its just an extension of my drawings that i can do at home. i enjoy the repetitive and methodical act of carving and the ability to create multiple of an image is great from my work.

printing, especially on the small scale is an excellent combination of the human and mechanical. the original drawings is human, the the carving and printing process is mechanical, then as you alter the printed image you make it human again. the physicality of printing like this is also refreshing as the digital age, as great as it is, moves further and further away from these techniques.

i am a sucker for the cult of personality. joseph beuys was rescued by the tatar people after his plane was shot down in ww2 and saved only by the animal fat they wrapped him in. picasso, when he was still young and known as pablito, carried a pistol in his belt to prove his manliness. royal tenenbaum died while rescuing his family from a sinking battleship.

all i can say is that if i get alzhiemers when i am older, i hope my family reminds me of the great things i did in my life... like when i ruled circumnavigated the globe in my handglider and when i took vladamir putin to 11 rounds in the middleweight championship but had to which draw because of an open facial wound. those will all be good times.

neon

this is a a scene from a titian painting.

i am a big fan of yellow highlighter. its glows and is difficult to look at, which makes me think that had it been invented when religious art ruled, celestial figures would have neon yellow halos instead of gold. its relatively recent invention emphasises the contemporary. it's radioactive.

it should be said that it is amazingly ugly and kitchy, but that also has a certain appeal.

no title

the book format is appealing because people are comfortable with books. flipping a page creates an implied narrative that i can exploit or manipulate. its also convenient and inexpensive, something paramount to my practice. i like the fact that books are often expected to be practice works, but rarely a final piece. that low-browness is nice.

this is a drawing of the back of my eyelid.

song: santogold- i'm a lady (diplo mix featuring amanda blank)

airplanes

airplanes v cars

cars are far more deadly than airplanes but we still fear driving less than we do flying. a reason that i often hear is that we are not in control when we fly but i am not sure being killed by someone else is less terrifying that being killed by a decision you make yourself. i think it might be an instinctual reaction against something very unnatural. human are not supposed to fly and when you think about it a planes is many thousands of pounds of metal being held in the air only because it is traveling hundreds of miles an hour. at least a steal ship in the middle of the ocean can remain afloat when it sits still. maybe its the prospect of being killed in mass. when a plane goes down hundreds go down with it. however, a bus carries large quantities of people and those go down as well.

with an airplane and the right resources there is nowhere on the planet you can't reach within a day. this only became a reality within the last 30 years. thats an amazing reality when you consider how many empires, nations and wars were built and fought around the ability to clear a mountain range or cross an ocean.

golden udder

ghosts

burkas

nuns

udders

a woman came into the shop where i work and said she was painting gorillas. when she left i tried to draw a gorilla from memory. the ghost suited figure wears a gold face because he is important.

a ghost of a deceased person is visiting a fruiting tree. I have been burying a lot of things in recent drawings. dead people, treasure, gold and oil are often found underground.

speech bubbles are a new interest. you can play with whats inside, where it comes from and to whom it is directed. they are useful because its a symbol that we all know how to interact with. i often leave them blank because like most of the stuff we say, its not really important.

The bricks are like the grass I often paint. I enjoy the repetition and the subtle changes in the watercolor.

i lucked out because i have access to highly discounted Lascaux paints. the gouache line is particularly satisfying. they operate somewhere between acrylic and watercolors.

one reason i like repetition is that when an image appears in multiples you can compare it, notice similarities or differences. sometimes there is just power in numbers.

living in London I have learned to appreciate a long line. one should expect to wait in a line to do almost anything in this city. londoners also like getting explicit directions from overhead speakers. the joke is that the english would have made excellent communists.

the golden udder. this reminds me of something from an old myth. i imagine walking into a cave and the entire ceiling being covered by radiating golden udders. if you flip this drawing over they turn into golden burkas.