Ten X Ten X Ten

I found the house out in Athens, GA while out in Chicago. It was through a Facebook page my sister was on, in where the girl was leaving for Summer break and needed someone to rent it out. I was quite nervous, because in my head I had created Athens as nothing more than a small southern town with small southern minds.. which is just not the case (but my fear and the past had manifested itself in such strange and imaginary ways that I could not even begin to process it).

When Dani Ela and I had first talked on the phone I was incredibly wary until she told me she was from Vancouver.

“Oh Jesus you are from Canada. Thank god”, I said.

The house was off of Easy Street in an area called Normaltown. Dani and her husband Thor were so incredibly cool. While they were only here for a few weeks (before they left the entire house to myself) my time with them was incredible. There are memories of us late at night underneath the candlelight of their screened-in porch laughing and playing music with their friends…. and one memory in particular was the massive showering rainstorm that shot down through the southern sky into our town. Dani and I ran out in the rain screaming and laughing while the sorority beginner house across the street looked at us like we were insane.

I was fascinated with them, so much that my already budding curiosity of Canada, spread like wild kudzu across my brain. Dani and Thor talked about Vancouver with me as much as they could.. and when they left I began to study Canada for weeks. In that old white house, on the screened-in porch, I painted alone for weeks. What once held the laughter and music from my housemates was now replaced with the soft night wind intermixed with the distilled humming of a discordant orchestra of crickets and cicadas.

I silently navigated myself socially through Athens in the daytime that summer, often through working the AM shifts at The Last Resort Grill. In the evenings I would spend time with my sister and her husband in their cool modern style home that resembled a romance between Franklin Lloyd Wright and Tennessee Williams. In the evenings however, when I’d take off my backpack and change out of my soiled waiter clothes… I’d sit there on the porch alone and paint my dreams of Canada.

This piece is called “Canadian Circuitry”, and without the help of Dani and Thor, this conception would never exist. In this painting, I have created a home for each city in each province. Each city describes a certain portion of the area and its surroundings. There are green avenues which relate to the parks and forests that are near each area. In Mickey’s face are the other cities that held a high population, as well as the territories of Canada.

This is the last of the “Around the World” Collection and resides as No. 95 in the series of 100 for TENxTENxTEN.

Japan has always been such an intriguing country to me in so many ways. From their cultural practices, art aesthetic, entertainment, language, and history, Japan wrapped up into one painting became incredibly difficult for me to paint. I would say it was difficult not only for the complexity of it’s vast cultural circuitry, but also I had not seen it with my own eyes. Regardless, this piece is called “Mikki No Sekai” which stands for “World of Mickey”, and I’ve focused a high saturation geometric pattern concept inside his face, that bursts out from either end in a display of colorful linear webs. On either side of his face is both a television that references a portion of their entertainment culture, and a Mickey Mouse hat that represents the park in Tokyo. On every corner lies a sea of cherry blossoms (Sakura), which contain the city of Tokyo underneath, and Mt. Fuji above his face.

This was one of the only pieces of the TENxTENxTEN collection that was painted in my artist residency which was in a shipping container out in Las Vegas, NV. “Mikki No Sekai” is a part of the “Around the World” chapter, and resides as number 88 in the collection.

Last month I went to New York City to get some inspiration for the “Metropolitan Series” for the TENxTENxTEN project. It had been almost 10 years since I had been back, so my mind was virtually blank when it came any kind of inspiration or possible idea for the piece. I think the last time I was in NYC I had just re-emerged my desires to be a painter, so my thought processes and understanding to convert my visual landscape into a project were at best minimal, if at all, existing in the first place.

I was staying with an old friend that I knew from San Francisco that had recently moved to the Upper West Side in Manhattan. He had somehow secured tickets to a Wanda Sykes comedy show, and invited me along to see her perform. We rode over to the brightly lit and jam packed tourist epicenter of NYC in Times Square over to the VIACOM building, and waited in line for a bit. While in queue, we came to realization through various sources of information from people around us, that

1. This was a live taping
2. This technically wasn’t a comedy show

What we were actually attending was LOGO Channel’s “New, Now, Next Vote”, a political program “aimed to educate, activate and entertain viewers, while shining a spotlight on the state of national politics through an LGBT lens.” We were part of the guest audience of the live taping. It was a great show, filled with some incredible people (including Rep Barney Frank). The debates were very entertaining and informing, and I was … for the most part trying to be an active participant, but… was having somewhat of a difficult time paying attention because of one detail of the entire show.

Being that we were in the audience, we were faced towards not only Wanda Sykes and the political speakers in the show, but also the massive window behind them that looked over Times Square. Behind the window was this massive video billboard that aired a 3 second clip that kept on repeating. It showed Obama, then Romney followed by stripes and stars from the American flag flying across their faces. While the whole show was happening, I was mostly engaged, but at the same time I was transfixed by calculating the amount of times the clip repeated over and over again. For instance, since the clip was 3 seconds, I couldn’t help but think that the clip played 20 times in a minute, or 200 times in ten minutes. And since we were there for 2 hours and 14 minutes, that… the clip played 2,680 times. Not did I end up doing that, but then I started calculating the times that Obama and Romney appeared .vs. the stars and stripes. Obama and Romney had 2 seconds of time, stripes and stars had 1/2 a second each, meaning that in 2 hours and 14 minutes, the candidates appeared on the screen 4,020 times, and the stars and stripes shown against our faces 16,080 times.

And this my friends, was why I was in special ed classes for most of my life.

Because this screen was going on and on, my head transported into ideas of doing a Mickey head. I had already done a Mickey previously for Disney Fine Art in the realm of Americana, which was called “Mickeymerica” (Limited Editions available on DisneyFineArt.com/TennesseeLoveless) back in 2011, which was selected as the official July 4th print for that year. I wanted to do the same format, but in the realm that was similar to the repetitive screen happening. In the screen the stripes were cold and the stars were warm, which clearly were the reversal of the traditional color format of the American flag. This suddenly became the direction for the new work.

This piece is number 38 in the collection, and the 5th in the series, marking the halfway mark for this sector of the project. It is called “United States of Mickey”, and represents America for the project.

Originally this idea came from a popular picture that was circulating the internet (ie: meme) that began to interest the public in both domains of the web and consumer goods. “Keep Calm and Carry On”, which is the original phrase was issued as a poster in August of 1939 during World War II by the “Ministry of Information” in The United Kingdom. There were two others which were ” Freedom Is In Peril, Defend It WIth All Your Might”  and “Your Courage, Your Cheerfulness, Your Resolution Will Bring Us Victory”. These three posters were issued to the public to inspire the British people and raise the country’s spirit during the first few weeks of war which were deemed times to demoralize the British population.

Sixty one years later in 2000 the poster was reissued at a shop in Alnwick, Northumberland with medium success, however in 2009 is when the phrase and design had reached epic levels of distribution both through products and internet usage. This spread of the meme was due to the public’s panic in the UK over being in dire straits over the then (and current) global economic dilemma.

This piece, entitled “Stay Calm and Dream On” is a part of the “Around The World” series which represents the United Kingdom. This painting, much like the original concept of the poster, is meant to produce the same effect of comfort and raising of the spirit. In times of great distress, especially to those of artistic integrity and/or thick imaginations, some times all we have are our dreams to turn to, to spark our wills to make a difference. In this instance, Mickey is the face to take us back to our childhood, when we were a young army of dreamers, when we believed we could conquer our troubles, when we believed in ourselves,

…and most of all, .. when we believed we could make a difference in a scary and often troublesome world.

I’ve never been one to throw caution to the wind. It most cases when I throw anything into the wind, it generally flies back into my face. I say this, as I’m pressing the purchase button for my trip back to Paris. Still my language skills are of a 1 year old child, but surely my skills are increasing with time. It’s incredibly hard to continue on a path with a language when nobody around you speaks it. In the meantime I spend my time infusing it into my work.

My reasons for returning to Paris are to complete the destination (city series) portion involving both Paris and London this year for this project. On top of that, I’m generally trying to establish some sort of relevance and public relations in Europe regarding my work with Disney, which … much like learning the language is coming slowly but surely.

This is the 3rd and last part of the French collection in the “Around The World Series”. The formula to these pieces is that they connect on a language AND pigment level. All three pieces can function as a standalone concept, but put them together,and combine into this multifaceted collection of language and color.

Example:

Series Number: No. 23
Title: L’Herbe Est Verte
Face: PG/PY SPRING GREEN VARIATION
Background: PB36 BLUE // PY PRIMARY YELLOW

Series Number: No. 28
Title: Le Ciel Est Bleu
Face: PB36  BLUE VARIATION with Pw6 TITANIUM WHITE
Background: PG/PY SPRING GREEN // PY PRIMARY YELLOW

Series Number: No. 29
Title: Le Soleil Est Jaune
Face: PY PRIMARY YELLOW // FLUOR CHARTREUSE
Background: PG/PY SPRING GREEN // PB26 BLUE

All of these pieces connect with the same colors in the background and one time usage in the face of each portrait. This is a communication piece in relaying my understanding of color in a color deficient world, slowly but surely understanding HOW color works by its language and formula, while simultaneously learning a foreign language .. and the similarity between two learning processes.

This is the 2nd of of 3 pieces for the French collection for the “Around The World Series”. At first I had finished the 1st piece (No. 23), and left both the 2 drafts completely sketched and placed ready for painting, however my extreme attention deficit problem caused me to sidetrack and wander off after the shows in Chicago, that getting back into the groove of finishing this and the 3rd piece became quite troublesome. Its as if my brain and hands are two temperamental rivaling brothers that love each other but refuse to work with each other at times.

I suppose it may have been my frustration in trying to get back to Paris this year that caused this conflict. Learning the language and trying to use it seemed to be quite moronic since primarily where I live people only speak Spanish and English, and it seemed that my goals for some kind of artist residency out there was proving more and more to be moot, that working on these pieces were like painting massive “STOP” signs for my eyes to see.

Getting back in the groove to these pieces, however produced a massive surge in my body to work towards a goal to return to Paris this year, rather than mope about it, and I am well on my way to produce a body of work out there yet.

This piece is called “Le Ciel Est Bleu”, which translates as “The Sky is Blue”. This is in homage to the basics of learning the language, and my eventful goal of merging my pop work into France.

Last year I visited Paris for a meeting at Euro Disney in regards to getting placement in Europe. While I figured that this trip was to be complete business and nothing more, what I WASNT expecting was that my vision would entirely collapse underneath me with the massive weight of the cities influence. I consider this trip a pivotal point in the breakage of my work, and I give complete credit to that city for influencing my art in more of an experimental pop format than what I had before. I left the city a complete Francophile, and with a massive vision of returning for an art residency to further the breakdown of my formal format.

The “Around the World” Series is an homage to the breakthrough caused by that city. Furthermore, while I am learning the language as aggressively as I am, these paintings are reminders of the stepping stones in understanding French… and therefore pull in a journal like aspect in pinpoints of where I am in my goal to merge myself and my work into France and the European Market.

This piece is one of three optical pop pieces which go over the elementary basis of learning the French language. Learning the object of the language is much like learning the object that relates to color. These languages, the one of color and French, are both secondary languages to me, and this piece is about putting them together. “L’Herbe Est Verte” which means “The Grass Is Green” tells a story about language and color. Mickey’s face is green to represent the objective color of grass. The rays in the back ground are blue and yellow. These colors will be integrated appropriately into 2 other pieces entitled:

“La Ciel Est Bleu”

“Le Soleil Est Jaune”

I’m off to Chicago for the week, for my first Disney Solo show outside of Chicago at Art Partners Art Gallery.