Tag Archives: pop

“Cotton Candy Universe”, The Human Condition Series, No. 71

10 Mar

Cotton Candy Universe

 

Post Berlin I was in a haze. Everything was a massive blur from the chaotic wonderment that encapsulated me there. I suppose I was a bit heartbroken about the matter, and this was because throughout my life I’ve always connected when I’ve been disconnected from wherever I called my home.

A friend I had met in Berlin decided to visit me nearly three weeks later from my departure from his city. I decided to return the favor in showing him the sights of my home in Los Angeles since he had been so gracious to do the same in Berlin.

In my time with him, we traveled around Los Angeles. Steadfast in my project with TENxTENxTEN I carried a blank Mickey around with me to figure out what feeling or chapter I was going to paint about in our adventures.

His main focus in all of this was a vacation of sorts for both him and I, and I was to relax. Of course, I made whatever this focus was for him, to further my aesthetic into my project. We decided to leave my home in Los Feliz, and we rented a house on the boardwalk of Venice Beach.

While there, he walked the boardwalk in the daytime, and I sat in the front patio of the house painting around Mickey’s silhouette, minutely struggling to come up with a concept of our adventures.. and this came to mind. I decided to focus on BLISS, that ever incredible feeling of just being in felicity of one’s surroundings.

We traveled from Venice Beach to Palm Springs a day later, and I spent the remainder of this piece painting in the quiet breeze of the desert.

This painting represents the calm from the wild storms of heartache and anxiety. In here, Mickey is floating among tranquil bubbles and soft arching hot air balloons that quietly smooth around the circumference of a cotton candy universe. This piece speaks of that vacationing quiet that soothes the troubled heart and calms the quelling mind of life’s trials and tribulations. This is the 79th in TENxTENxTEN collection, and number 9 in “The Human Condition Series.

 

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“Mickissey”, Extra Series, No. XX

31 Mar

"Mickissey"

My love of KISS imagery primarily is retrospective. It did not spawn in their heyday of the 1970’s, as I was only 3 when 1980 rolled around. I do however, remember when I first saw Gene Simmons on the television screen, and I remember being completely transfixed. I also remember feeling incredibly guilty of being transfixed as I was raised in a strict Catholic upbringing, and really.. thought that I was witnessing the hypnotic powers of satan on television. Not only was I raised in a catholic home, but I was raised in a home that only listened to classical music and disco sounds (and the combination of the two), so hearing this heightened version of rock ‘n’ roll, .. well it peeled back the artichoke layers of my brain and opened my ears to a whole new form of sound.

KISS, to me, revolutionized the way I heard music, and the way music made me feel. Before KISS, I thought music was only for hearing, but this.. the words, guitar riffs, and catchy drum beats, spiraled my little youthful brain into a chaotic tempest of noise and feeling that I had never experienced before. It should be noted however, that these feelings terrified me because I did not understand them,… so for most of my childhood, I was terrified by them (and yet drew them consistently).

It wasn’t until my teens, where I revisited the icons of my past, where I acknowledged that what terrified me, were perhaps the most powerful spirits of my cognitive expansion. KISS, was at the forefront of this self discovery. I began to listen again to the lyrics, which were so different than when I first heard them. It was like I was reading a book for the 2nd time, and understanding it for the 1st time now that my brain fully comprehended the words. The lyrics were soothing sympathetic verses of not only being ‘misunderstood’ per se, but fully grabbing the reigns of being the ‘ginger sheep’ of the group, and holding power in knowing how to harness the idea of individuality. It was saying to me “Yeah, people may call you a freak, but you are, so rock on with your freak self”.

This is the 9th of the “Children of the 1980’s” Series, and 58th in the TENxTENxTEN collection. The title of this piece is called “Mickissey”

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“West Coast San Francisco Soul”, Metropolitan Series, No. 50

25 Mar

"San Francisco Soul"

“Dear San Francisco,

This is my love letter to you.

I am writing this from the back porch of my apartment that cozily has tucked itself into the industrial alleyways of your South of Market District. There are helicopters purring like a thousand pussycats with wings above your head, and fire engine sirens wailing songs of concern all around your ears tonight. Your citizens, the blood cells of your being, are marching in mass droves through the veins of your streets chanting phrases for equality today.. and I am so overwhelmed at your unending capacity to give us our voices and liberty.

I came to you in the early 2000’s, with a bruised truck full of clothes and a 1G computer full of music to an apartment in the Tenderloin. I was a wanderer, a vagabond, a man with no mission other than to find a home. For my whole life I sojourned along the Eastern seaboard desperately looking for a place to call my home. From Marietta, Athens, Atlanta, Savannah, Raleigh, and Philadelphia,  I desperately and consistently threw my anchor down to find creatures much like myself to call akin to, and nothing proved itself similar to a symbiotic relationship.

But you, you my dearest friend, met me with open arms, and gave me high priced (but well worth it) shelter for an experience that defined my very being. I spent years with you, in the Tenderloin, Upper Nob Hill, and Chinatown, figuring out myself, and you in turn taught me how to be an artist. And with a 1/4 angled golden taklon brush, I began to paint your citizens, one by one.. and I became everything I ever wanted… Because you not only gave me a chance to be a human being..

But you taught me how to be great.

After all these years, with me leaving you for Seattle and Los Angeles, you’ve taken me back in your arms without malice or regret, and have again… given me such great purpose in life.

So tonight, I’ve painted what I thought best of you, without your  tchotchke’s of golden gate bridges, parks, windmills, Coit towers, Transamerican glories, and various other landmarks. But I have painted you.., as you are, in geometric bliss. A lover, a city, and my best friend.

Yours Always,

10SC”

This is the 4th in the Metropolitan Series, and 57th in the entire collection. In this piece, Mickey is the radiating city of San Francisco, a perpetual sun in a massive glow shooting a spectrum of hope. On the outskirts of this painting are lines to represent the marine layer, fog, and bay. Above his head is a speech bubble that communicates the heart, speaking on love and liberty.

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“Ce N’est Pas Un Chapeau”, Contemporary Modern Series, No. 37

12 Nov

This piece entitled “Ce N’est Pas Un Chapeau”, is a part of the Contemporary Modern Series, and is in reference to Belgian surrealist, Rene Magritte. In order for me to fully understand the concept of pop, I wanted to research some of my predecessor’s predecessors. Magritte was one of the original pop movements influences (IE: Ruscha, Warhol, Johns) and in certain contexts he is considered to be the catalyst of the pop movement from his own ‘pop surrealism’ aesthetic.

I had never seen any of his work in person until my recent trip to The Metropolitan Museum in New York City. The piece that I had always wanted to see “Ceci Ne Pas Une Pipe” was displayed there (which funnily enough is normally at LACMA where it is permanently placed, but has been on tour I’m gathering forever). “Ceci Ne Pas Une Pipe” (translation: “This is not a Pipe”) or otherwise known as “La Trahison des Images” (The Treachery of Images, and/or “The Betrayal Of Images”) was a title that reflected the actuality of the painting, and in essence, all art where the titles reflected the nature of the work. The title was true, the image wasn’t an actual pipe, it was.. in fact a painting of a pipe. The statement of the work I thought was brilliant and to see the piece in person was fantastic.

This piece is in homage to his statement and aesthetic. It combines “Ceci Ne Pas Une Pipe” with his most noted piece “The Son of Man”, which Magritte paints an apple obscuring a man in a bowler hat’s face. Magritte mentions: “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.” In Mickey, the clouds, that are found in most of Magritte’s work, obscure his face. Some clouds obscure parts of the face, while resting underneath others (example, the cheek and smile), furthering manipulating dimension and multiplying unseen layers that Mickey holds. In the hat, the words say “Ce N’est Pas Un Chapeau”, which means “This is not a Hat” in reference to Magritte’s main points of his work.

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“I’m Soda Popular” Battle of the Senses Series, No. 20

16 Apr

Synesthesia is a very power subject that tends to rotate through my work on a consistent basis. Regardless of whatever genre I’m trying to penetrate, the idea of crossing of the senses is a repetitive one. I do this, because in order to communicate effectively, I have to rely on other senses to pull the right idea hue wise to create the right effect

Art is a country where color is the primary language spoken. Color is my secondary language because I can’t see it, so speaking in the country of art is often met with pauses in converting the language into a code or sense that I can understand. In this piece “I’m Soda Popular”, it is a communication piece based on taste converted into color. Some of these tastes range from the understood to the ridiculously absurd. This piece idea came from No. 21 “The Definition of Character” in where I had to place objects relating to the color into the appropriate color shards. I had made a can of blueberry soda in one of the blue sectors, and got the idea to spread this into an entire grid.

 

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“Mickey Emits Rainbow Burst”, Geometric Spectrum Series, No.1, 11/2011

18 Mar

“Mickey Emits Rainbow Burst” was the first piece that I did for the collection. The idea that was in my head at the time was that I was only allowed to do one to two pieces, and these (one to) two really had to count if I wanted to represent my style among the collective of other Disney Fine Artists who also were in the project. Previously with my work with DFA, I relied on geometric set ups to place my color choices. Everything is laid out to plan, kind of like a color by numbers grid, so that each pigment has a place. This is how colorblind people operate. If we cannot see the color, then we have to learn what color is by codes and words, and those codes and words are placed into purposely segmented areas to achieve a harmonious end result. In essence, the real art in a sense, is the communication from two different seeing color worlds (you from the world of color, and us from the world of codes and words).

Disney Fine Art retitled this “Mickey Emits Rainbows of Happiness” I believe.

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