swallow my tears

I've been pretty much finished with the drawing part of this series for the last month and focusing now on creating the frames, which I'm fabricating out of re-claimed spruce framing lumber from my carpentry jobs. I've been covering the wood with cancelled checks, glueing them down, sanding them to create a "worn" look, then polyurethaning them giving them that decoupage look. I've been working from this huge pile of cancelled checks, that my sister gave me five years or so ago, and only now, being about one third of the way through this project, have I finally run out of these checks. This got me to thinking about finding something else to use that could carry the same conceptual weight as cancelled checks. I thought of a box of old love letters that I had, maybe they would somehow work, in an interesting way, in relation to the prison record forms that I've been drawing on? These letters were from a former girlfriend of mine going back 25 years. As I began to re-read them I started to experience a flood of memory, emotion and melancholy. I've been happily married for 21 years, and still am, yet somehow these letters tore into my psyche.

I've been struggling with all of the implications of this new exploration for several weeks, trying to get feedback from friends and family (the latter not being the best source to expect open discussion from!) and probably the most interesting thoughts have come from my old college friend Robert, who is just now between jobs. We weren't talking about this issue of mine, just the dynamics of his job change. He observed the strange phenomenon of feeling a sadness at leaving his old job even though he might have hated it. He went on further to speculate that even a prisoner might even feel this kind of sadness upon gaining his freedom.

That got me thinking about how I had reacted to these letters, not that I had any hate for this former girlfriend, but I guess it's just the perspective one has once one is no longer in a situation, one can see things differently. And for me it's been a pretty powerful, cathartic experience to contemplate the changes that I have experienced in my life.

archivism

Well, I said that I would write about this and have yet to do so. Simply put it's the belief or passion that holds that documenting just about anything is an important function for art. Much of this work revels in this vein. Next I'll talk about creating comics....I think that part of this blog thing for me is to just try to hold myself accountable to my thoughts...by publishing them publicly.

Validation services

I went to my first artists lecture Monday night at the Arts Center at Kingdom Falls. It was very good, but now I remember why I’ve missed all the other lectures there over the years…I didn’t get home until 11:00pm which makes it pretty hard to get up at 5am to draw before work. The artist lecturing was Tom Burckhardt, child of Rudy Burckhardt and Yvonne Jacquette, both established artists from the 60’s. Something that Tom said had me thinking a couple of days later. He was describing his creative process and allowing that there was a point when his successes within the gallery system afforded him a certain validation, which of course, being a determined artist he shortly tried to undermine in a creative way through his subsequent work. I thought, wow, wouldn't that be a great thing to offer to every hardworking but under-recognized artist out there? Validation services! You could walk in get your work validated and leave feeling all puffed up and good about yourself, energized and ready to dive into some new and wonderful art project. In my own experience a little encouragement often goes a long way, maybe there could be these cards with little boxes on them that get funny shaped holes punched in each box every time you go to get validated? Hmmm...I like it!

absurdism and archivism

I've decided that this series is really about the absurd. As I choose a missle or bomb to depict, I'm looking for some kind of quality to the name that peaks my interest. For example, I started three drawings this past Monday morning, one of them depicts a Russian Medium-range Ship-to-Air Fleet Defence Missile whose name is "Storm", which in turn USA/NATO has given their name "Goblet". So the drawing will depict a storm in a cup. Then there is "Wasserfall" and "Tacit Rainbow", they go together great too. The third drawing depicts Pakistan's medium-range ballistic missile "Ghauri" with its 30-40kT nuclear warhead, did you know that there's a supermodel by the name of Yaseem Ghauri? Well, in the spirit of absurdism, I must say, she looks great alongside serious weaponry!
Archivism? I'll tackle that in the next blog!

sidewinder

I've been working on the "Sidewinder" drawing lately. This series is taking me to places that I normally might not go. I'm learning and becoming somewhat familiar with all types of weaponry, finding websites that fight to eliminate militarism and sites that display resolve and pride in the purpose and value of these weapons. I am clearly on the side of those who wish to eliminate violence and military activity, but it is really fascinating to travel to "the other side" and get that perspective. The arguments for both sides can sometimes be compelling. I feel that after I have completed this series of drawings that I will have my "argument" firmly in place.

At what cost?

I've been thinking more and more about the warfighting industry and how to explore this world through this series. My thoughts are that, we are, in some respects, prisoners of this industry. Where I'm going with this is that those of us who depend on this industry for jobs and the trickle down financial benefits feel kind of stuck or locked into the system. How do we break free of this growing monster? I certainly don't have any answers, but my hope is that by learning about it and disseminating stuff that I learn through my art we can figure out how to change.

no imagination

This drawing depicts pall bearers as "Cavity Sams". For those of you who may not know, that's the name given to the character depicted in the board game "Operation". I didn't know that either until I did some research at the Milton Bradley web site. I've used this character previously in a bunch of acrylic coffin shaped canvases, which seemed to get a lot of positive responses. I see this character as a kind of hapless pawn whose wounds or "operation" cavities become sources for thought bubbles containing suggestive rubric-like imagery.

Small Pox and a rant

Small pox is a drawing that shows images of missiles that, in the true spirit of the euro-centric view of aboriginal culture as great source material for colorful mascot names, reference Native Americans. I wanted to create this drawing within this series now, to just throw out there a reminder to the early days of European expansion into North America, when Native Americans were deliberately given blankets that had been used by victims of small pox as a form of biological warfare. It is appropriate in my mind to remember this within the present day context of our presence in Iraq, for which part of the reasoning given to us for going there was the danger of Iraq using biological weapons.

Now for the rant!

The more that I get in to this series the more I’m learning and discovering and the more I want to take the series in a direction that would make me find out answers to certain questions. The struggle becomes, for me, where do I draw the line between ranting and raving about the awfulness of our military/industrial complex and creating good art? I’d like it to be; whatever I wish to put down on paper, no matter how much it comes off as ranting should be great art. I’m impatient with ideas of “quality” and “craftsmanship”. These are desperate times, we artists need to act and act now! The key or first step toward change or improvement in the state of the world seems to me, would be to present the truth or information about all the bad things. This seems simple enough to do and as an artist I can simply present information in my drawings. My hope is that if I’m clever enough visually I can get people to want to have and keep these drawings, thus having and keeping this information and putting it in full view on their wall at home or work as a kind of really cool and interesting, giant “post-it”. And that’s it…that’s all I need to do, and it’s real easy to do, and that’s what this series is gonna be all about.
Yesterday I sat down and wrote down a few questions about these missiles that I’m depicting, like: “How many Hellfire missiles have been dropped for real?” “What word do they (military) use for this? Deployed?” “When, where were they dropped? Who was killed?” “How big is our military industrial complex? How many people are employed? Who are these people that work on missiles, designing and building them? What are their other interests, hobbies, skills, qualifications, background?”

To answer all of these questions I’m sure I could write a book and I’m sure that there are thousands of books and articles that have been written already, but so what? No one can read all of it with their “free” time so why not put that kind of information in art, not instead, but in addition, as a kind of visual “link” to other information and knowledge that exists out there in the world? By putting information in art what you’ve done is created that very large talisman that people hang on their wall and there it stays for years as a visual reminder to think about the things that are in the artwork, not lose track. And that’s it that’s the best that art can do, the least that art can do. The difference between this kind of art and written articles and books is that art can give pleasure at the same time that it can inform, through its composition and form, and that’s a good, healthy and therapeutic function that is great and needed by anyone interested in trying to effect change and anyone who loves to look at art.

What’s cool about this Prison Papers series is that I can explore this concept of presenting lots of information “visually” within the format of a drawing, through the device of the tablature of the ready-made prison form.

local heros

I have this idea to depict local activists as a part of this "Prison Papers" series. I went to the town meeting that Representative Mike Michaud held in Belfast a couple of weeks ago and spoke and listened to others speak. It was all very interesting, stimulating and very well reasoned. There are some active and bright minds right here in Waldo County. I came away from that event feeling good that there are people within our community that are taking a critcal look at how our leadership has gotten to the state that we are now in. I don't think that we are in good shape. I think that our pursuit of a military solution to 911 has made things worse, and according to Michaud, he's with me on that. More than once I've heard a certain sentiment that expresses a intense frustration with this administration, to the point of wanting to "go back to europe" (that the grandparents left to come to America, the land of the free!)or a feeling of being held hostage to our war policy. Somehow I'm thinking that within this context I should include portraits of local activists within this series. What do you think Lucinda?

"Aspide" detail view one of a growing number of "bullet catcher" motifs!

information please?

I realize that one thing that I'm interested in doing with my art is to present information within it. There is something concrete about information. If all else fails with regard to the imagery's symbolism or meaning there would still be this info that could stand alone and sort of ride on the coat tails of the artwork and be "presented" to the viewer. In this respect I really like Mark Lombardi's work. His information is presented in a schematic format in as spare a way as possible. The scale and sparsness of his schematic layout becomes a kind of beautiful web-like structure. The information contained within the work of art is insanely dense with meaning and implication.

Redeye

This drawing makes me think of eyes that are red from crying and the red dot produced when a marksman aims his weapon. This series are all about missiles, but I just realized the other day that bombs are not missiles and that I'm missing a whole lot of ordinance. I'm starting to get quite an education with this project. I think that this is becoming part of my purpose for creating this work; to learn about these weapons and in turn present them to the public, albeit, filtered through my sense of the absurd.

Politcally Motivated

Happy New Year! This is the first drawing that I've completed on both sides. It depicts a satellite about to be struck by an ASM-135 Anti-Satellite Missile. Of course this missile was cancelled, I think it was part of the Star Wars concept started by Reagan. Floating out in space with this satellite are two "chunks" or shapes that depict a sabertooth lion and a fetus. Next I'll scan a shot from the backside of this drawing...I guess that this is the front?!