thinking big/small today

soon: sedona. perhaps the pastel landscapes will encourage a pastel experience. i'm going to find myself a cluster of cacti and rocks and create a little sanctuary where i can be like georgia o'keefe and discover the beauty of the southwest. also on the agenda: scorpian paperweights and rattlesnake cowboy boots.

for now, enjoy.

Defeat, pencil on paper, 2006

Our Days, pencil on paper, 2006

oh snap!

The Great Apple Pie, pencil on paper, 5" x 5"

Old-Fashioned Company, pencil on paper, 8" x 5"

Let's take a moment, okay?

Oh don't you just love art?

I is for Illegitimate, pencil on paper, 2006

S is for Sinister, pencil on paper, 2006

Dum dum dum!

Oh ho ho. Guess who bought a laptop this weekend (it's all shiny and smart), and guess who's posting new work?

Little Miss Consumer, pencil on paper, 2006

Say What Homie?, pencil on paper, 2006

Thanks for your patience. More to come!

Eat Street Series

I'm posting some more older work. I don't have the resources at this very moment to upload newer pieces (or, I should say, newer "pre-pieces"), but soon I shall kidnap a scanner for my own dirty uses! I'm really enjoying words like "kidnap" and "hijack" lately. I think it's because I just watched "Domino," which was an absolutely horrible movie, but kind of awesome at the same time, like a visual orgasm of mtv imagery. Anyway, the following pieces are part of a series that I started with the intention of expanding over time, but alas, I ended up discarding for lack of interest.

Theses pieces were based on the store windows lining Nicollet "Eat Street" Ave. in Minneapolis. Eat Street, for those of you who are unfamiliar with this area, is filled with the most amazing little ethnic restaurants and grocery stores. There's a heavenly bakery called Marissa's that sells fresh pastries and cream cheese filled pockets of happiness! Wonderful.

For my project, I picked several windows that I was especially drawn to, and mentally removed a lot of the hustle and bustle of merchandise, because quite frankly, some of those windows were aesthetic overloads. So I simplified the image and decided I wanted to incoporate text into the pieces. I spent a lot of time at the library researching Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Hmong writing and characters. Arabic writing is so beautiful in design, and I was very pleased with the way it worked with the other elements of the following piece:

Eat Street 1, oil on canvas, 24" x 24", 2004

DETAIL

DETAIL

Eat Street 2, oil on canvas, 24" x 24", 2004

DETAIL

I should also mention that I used this project to try out different stylistic approaches as well. For Eat Street 1, I focused on a more traditional painterly quality, and for Eat Street 2 I incorporated bigger impressionistic strokes and less defining detail. I am not satisfied with the second piece. I wish I had taken it further, but at the time I thought I had a clear idea formed in my head of what I wanted it to look like (never trust a solid plan, I think).

Self-Portrait

I'm not a huge fan of the figurative self-portrait. I enjoy looking at other artists' portraits, but to stand in front of the canvas with a paintbrush in one hand and a mirror in the other is very unnerving for me.

I'm going to swallow the rest of my excuses because, as I'm begining to realize, it's boring to talk about shortcomings and insecurities and multi-faceted periods of gloom. That's what modern art is for :)

Here are two self-portraits that I am not unhappy with:

Self-Portrait, charcoal on paper, 2005

Self Portrait, oil on canvas, 2004

Old School

When I was in colllege I took a watercolors course mainly because I needed another credit. To be honest, my impression of watercolors up until that point consisted of hopelesly boring pastel landscapes and a kind of looming kincade-esque feeling of self-indulgence. Watercolors just seemed so pretty. And kitschy, like something to be hung over a fireplace. How wrong I was! I graduated from that class with not only a deep respect for an extremely frustrating, albeit liberating medium (when the paint starts to spread, there no stopping it) but also a collection of work that I felt completely satisfied with. What follows are a couple of examples:

Untitled, watercolor on arches, 2002


Untitled, watercolor on arches, 2002

The moral of this story? Watercolors: not just for kids and craft circles.