Who Runs Bounty Town?

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Untitled-93

This one was inspired by a dream. I dreamt that I was in a post-apocalyptic future, dressed to the nines in the latest of canvas, leather and rubber found objects. Everything had been destroyed and then haphazardly attempted to have been reassembled with duct tape. The landscape looked like a Cormac McCarthy story setting. You get the picture, I hope.
I was with a group of similar vagabonds, traveling from destroyed area to destroyed area in search of what was now the most valuable objects in this new world. Could it be gasoline? Maybe uncontaminated water? Any sort of hope or reminder of a better world before? Actually, it was large caches of gleaming white rolls of Paper Towels. It turns out that when the entire infrastructure of the world crumbles to dust, normal everyday accidental spills are the battles that are still worth fighting.
The dream ended during a fight with another nomadic tribe of clumsy drinkers fighting us for a found pile of white cottony gold. I didn't get the satisfaction of knowing wether we were victorious and therefore free from a future of small puddles for a short time....

Stumps Instead of Hands...

Thursday, November 20, 2008



...back with actual words again very soon.

of Hair, Spinach and Children...

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

In October of '95 I took scissors to my hair, followed shortly by clippers.....and then a razor not long after that. I was 24 years old, going on 13.

But, lets back up some first.
One of the handful of early memories I've retained as I've gotten older is when I was a toddler and staying with my uncle Darwin and aunt Charlene for a short time. To be more precise, I remember a dinner we had together where my uncle blurted out in pure grown-up to child fashion, "Eat your spinach now....it'll put hair on your chest." Just for the record, I already had every intention of eating said spinach. I loved spinach, and no one needed to tell me to eat it as if it were a plateful of green, steaming shit. But, his words that night caused two things to happen: First, I instantly had a vision of the man we saw a day or so before at the pool who was one of those unfortunate males who can take off their shirt and make everyone wonder why they were wearing a sweater under it....Second, I didn't eat my spinach and got spanked. I wasn't able to eat spinach for years after that night.....even today I have to consciously remind myself that I like spinach in order to eat it.

I have written about this subject before...that is, about the fact that even the most mundane of utterances to a child can make a lifelong lasting impression.

Another memory of mine, this one vivid, is of looking at myself in the mirror when I was 6 years old. My brother had recently been born and I recall sessions of family members crowding around him in marvel and plotting out his life already. He'll be a doctor, a lawyer, a great man. I remember my father trying to console me, the first child, in case I felt neglected, by telling me that I was grown-up now and had to be an example for my brother. I stood looking at myself in that mirror, alone, and promised myself aloud that I would NEVER grow up. Screw my brother, let him suffer that fate!
Besides the little things that imprinted themselves into my psyche, there were also the larger things that help shape our view of the world and who we will become. I remember my mother repeatedly lying to me, knowing that she was lying to my face, and juxtaposing that with the time she told me that grown ups never lie.....as if they were a benevolent race that was unable to do so. I remember my father coming home from work too tired to even look in my direction. I remember being amazed at the lack of imagination adults had in general. I saw grown ups as a flawed species and harbored a contempt for them....as if they were Canadians. (c'mon...I haven't made an anti-canadian comment for a long time...allow me this one....and I suppose, let the hate mail flow once again)

Couple these together and we arrive at one of the strange quirks of my life. That is, ever since the first hair sprouted from my chest when I was a teen, I have made it a personal goal to remove them as fast as they would arrive. I think that in the back of my mind, I associated having chest hair as a part of being an adult, which I was not ready for. Insert routine and/or habit and you get the fact that I have been actively shaving my chest for over twenty years. That is, until a few months ago.

I decided to try a little experiment. I stopped shaving, and today I have a full chest of hair.....which I hate! It's itchy and strange and every now and again it'll get caught in my shirt, which is all alien to me. But, I have grown it out nonetheless, for whatever reason. Bah!
This brings me back to the fact of shaving my head. Like I said, I have been shaving it for over a decade now, ever since the first hint of receding. I have not seen the hair on my head, other than a week's growth worth, in all that time. By the way, here's a little of the remaining proof that I had a full head of hair at one point:





The second I believe was taken the night of the hair chop.....and apparently, I thought I was John Lennon.

The reason for all this is the fact that I have been struggling with the thought of a second experiment; how many kittens can I fit into a pickled egg jar? But that really has nothing to do with anything here. No. I have decided to again, stop shaving, to just let my hair grow and most likely destroy any lingering threat of being attractive to the opposite sex.
There are a few reasons that I have decided to try this: First, I am curious as to what I'll look like as a balding man and not just a bald man. Second, I have always considered that I would eventually do the 'George Carlin' look which consists of beard, ponytail, and bald head. And Last, I promised myself that at least once in my life I would try to grow a comb-over like that that Bill Murray sported in Kingpin.

Now, I make no promises as to the success of this endeavor. I could easily find myself two weeks into it and freak out, diving into a bath of Nair and razors.....but I WILL make the attempt. Plus, I hope to document it all with a daily pic from my webcam, that later I can string together as a hair-growth animation to the theme of the Dating Game (thank you Annie).

And, I apologize for the melancholy feel to this post. I have been writing this in short bursts throughout the day, having stayed home from work do to a severly pinched nerve in my shoulder/neck, which is a result of years of bad posture and time spent bent over a drawing board.....and, as both a doctor and a chiropractor has told me, something to look forward to more and more frequently as I get older.
I might be forced to admit that it's impossible to win against adulthood physically, but I still promise that in all other ways that make me who I am....I will NEVER grow up!

It's the Little Things the Ballpoint Screams...

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

For the longest time I have had a hatred of ballpoint pens. Not a seething hatred, mind you....it's not like I wanted to impose my will upon the ballpoint enthusiasts as if I was Tipper Gore the first time she heard the word "Fuck" come out of a set of speakers somewhere. It's been more like a general disdain for the instrument and what I saw as it's inferior functionality. I've always favored pens of the felt-tip persuasion mainly due to the fact that I tend to write really really small, almost to the point of being illegible, which I had a woman at a bookstore take it upon herself to inform me that was a sign of very low self esteem.....to which I responded by crying while curled in a ball.
So it has gone for many years that ballpoints and myself have kept our distances, with the occasional intruder being discovered and promptly being escorted back to the border, given a sandwich and a bus ticket and sent on its way. I never understood the ballpoints that found their way into my possession, because honestly, there were no job opportunities here. At least in their world there was
the promise of a full future signing checks, filling out tickets and/or guarding the bottoms of desk drawers. Within my boundaries they would only find their own slow death as their insides hardened through lack of use.

All of this was true until recently. I have to admit to finding a whole new love for ballpoints due to the down times at work, which I use to sketch most of the drawings I post to Crumbly Nevertheless
. It's even gone so far that I have found myself acquiring a small collection of variable ballpoints from different companies to compare their differences with one another. So far the winner is PaperMate, as if you care.

This brings me to what I actually intended to post about, that being the fact that I have posted a whole new batch of these little drawings to the Crumbly
site, with many waiting still to be scanned and then posted.



I'm still debating on what to do with these drawings. I have been asked a couple times now if I plan to sell any of these, so I have been experimenting with print options, but they would have to be very very limited runs.....because let's be honest, I'd be lucky to sell one or two of these folks here and there, so doing giclee' prints would put me in the red and force me back into a life of prostitution.....let's just pretend I didn't admit to that.
I've also been rescanning these at high resolutions with the thought that it would be fun to publish a book of them in the future....like a little coffee table book to make your visitors question their friendship with you. I don't know, just a thought.

Other than that little rant, I am looking forward to my given day off this Friday for a few reasons: First, I never have Friday off and am curious as to what Fridays are like; Second, I enjoy going to the Sputnik mid-day on a weekday because it's far less crowded and I get my grilled cheese quicker, which makes me happy; and Third, that night is the opening of a show of work for a local artist here, Andrew Warner, who, from what little I've had the chance to see, is a bad-ass painter and I can't wait to see a full body of work.



So, for those readers who are in the area, come on out to support this beard sportin' gentleman, and (as he puts it) bring your rich art-loving relatives.

Journal of Other’s Actions…

Monday, September 1, 2008

Untitled-82

Untitled-83

Untitled-84

These were some quick sketches for other drawings I had an idea for, but I like them and think that they fit here...

Histories from Rust and Mold...

Sunday, August 31, 2008

It's a very strange thing to learn that you've lost everything, or nearly everything, in any particular area of your life. Of course it comes with the feelings that you'd expect, anger and sadness in their various swings....but there is so much else that goes practically unseen, working beneath the surface.
It's been a little over a year since I officially "moved" to Denver...I say it that way because I have done what I think a lot of Denver transplants did, that is, visit here and then decided to stay. It's been near two years since I left Brooklyn....you can probably see the gap there. When I left Brooklyn I had no clear idea where it was that I would end up....I just knew at that time that New York was not going to work. So, my possessions went into storage.
It's been a little over a year since I officially lost the majority of my possessions to water damage while in storage....including most of my portfolio. Fifteen years of work gone in a weekend, and realized with one phone call.

For the better part of this year, I have really been unable to bring myself to draw in any real capacity. If I had to come up with an explanation, the best one would have to be that maybe I had this feeling of starting over, which is daunting. I spent most of the time writing, which is all I had left seeing as how all my writing DID make it through the disaster unscathed. The little drawing that I did do just felt forced and with results that I have to say I wasn't particularly fond of.

A few months ago I decided to finally organize my studio space. While going through things and figuring out where to put them I came across two drawings in progress that I forgot that I had hidden in a box of paper (that I was luck enough to have survive the water damage). The reason that I'm bringing any of this up at all is because of the fact that I have been in a drawing frenzy for the past few weeks, and I owe it to that discovery.
One of those drawings is the one I just completed for the Collaboration Show, the other is this mixed media drawing:


...which was the lone survivor of a short series of gestural drawings I was doing.

All of this brought the idea of history into my mind, and the conclusion that I'm just not satisfied with accepting that some past work is gone forever....which brings me to the current work portion of the promised posts. Below are some scans of deceased work that I have pulled up because I plan to re-draw them. I struggled with the idea of redoing past work, but like I said, I'm just not ready to chalk these up as casualties of war just yet, and feel the need to resurrect them.
Also, I intend to redo these large scale, around the same size as The Fork Communion that I just completed. Of course, I don't expect these to be finished any time soon, but I will try to post progress reports.
I'm also thinking about finishing the above drawing and maybe restarting that series again. I haven't decided as of yet, my mind seems to be all over the place lately (the writing within this blog should be a good indication of that fact).










I'm going to need more coffee.....

Does My Imaginary Butt look Fat?

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

I doubt that this is true for everyone, in fact..I know it isn't, but I do know that it's true for myself and for many that I call friend: Having a crush on somebody can be it's own incentive to accomplish certain things that you have been neglecting or lethargic about to some extent, an incentive that can't be found or equaled anywhere else.
I'm not talking about the little everyday crushes.....the ones where you find yourself thinking, "That person is cute...I wonder if they would like to shag and then never cross paths again?" No. I'm writing about those gut fucking wrenching crushes that you can't explain and won't leave your thoughts ever, whether you're awake or sleeping...usually involving a person you have no chance with either because they are already in a relationship, married, gay or already issued a restraining order against you.

Those are the crushes that kick my ass, where I find myself immersed in drawings or writing for whatever reason that I tend to do that. To be honest, I have to think that my reasons are of the 'distraction' sort, because let's face it: my chosen passions tends to be ones of a solitary existence. Going through a manic productive stage for me means that I become even more reclusive than I already am.

In any case, the fact still remains: a heart poisoning crush puts me at my most creative, which is a place that I would like to be in right now. The problem being, I have no crush to speak of.....actually, I haven't had one for a long, long time now. Years to be more to the point.....and I'm not entirely sure why. I wouldn't dare to say that I think I'm incapable of them anymore, because that would be like saying that I doubt I'll ever get another ticket on my car for having no front plate even though I do. I just think my unconscious is smart enough to leave well enough alone at the moment.

So, I decided to create a crush. An imaginary one that we'll name No.6 to keep it impersonal. I would describe her for you all if it weren't for the fact that I can't. The problem with having a make-believe infatuation for me is that my imagination tends to wander. At one point, No.6 was a brunette....at another point, a red head. She even had three arms for a short while because I thought that would help in her knitting, which she likes to do, but then she gave it up to raise legless otters. Of course she has a thick Russian accent, but for a short period she had the voice of Scott Baio in his Chachi days.....which really, really disturbed me and caused me to drink heavily that night!

Do I honestly think that manufacturing a person to obsess over will work at all? Of course not. The whole idea behind this came about from a night out with new friends over drinks at the Sputnik. At one point we brought up that we agreed it would be great if we could bottle that intensity a crush generates while leaving out all the negative side effects....like, oh I don't know....despair?
As you can tell, I genuinely like the whole idea....enough that it put the whole subject of crushes in my mind, and made me almost wish that I could feel that again. That is until I take a step back to witness all the violent ups and downs my friends seem to be going through with their significant others....and then I thank my unconscious for keeping that door closed for the time being.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think there's an imaginary lawyer at my door to issue me a phantom restraining order........

Flaws in the Holding Pattern…

Untitled-79

Who Runs Bounty Town?

Saturday, August 23, 2008

I've probably mentioned this before, but it's a rarity that I am actually lucky enough to remember my dreams...most likely due to the fact that I spend enough energy daydreaming that my mind thinks to itself, "why bother?". But every now and again a vivid enough dream breaks through to the memory of my waking life, as the one from last night did.

In short, I dreamt that I was in a post-apocalyptic future, dressed to the nines in the latest of canvas, leather and rubber found objects. Everything had been destroyed and then haphazardly attempted to have been reassembled with duct tape. The landscape looked like a Cormac McCarthy story setting. You get the picture, I hope.
I was with a group of similar vagabonds, traveling from destroyed area to destroyed area in search of what was now the most valuable objects in this new world. Could it be gasoline? Maybe uncontaminated water? Any sort of hope or reminder of a better world before? Actually, it was large caches of gleaming white rolls of Paper Towels. It turns out that when the entire infrastructure of the world crumbles to dust, normal everyday accidental spills are the battles that are still worth fighting.
The dream ended during a fight with another nomadic tribe of clumsy drinkers fighting us for a found pile of white cottony gold. I didn't get the satisfaction of knowing wether we were victorious and therefore free from a future of small puddles for a short time....but the dream made enough of an impression on myself that not only did I wake and immediately check my kitchen for paper towels (of which there are still several rolls...take that you Cruel Hand of Fate!!), but I was inspired to do a little inspired sketch at work for Crumbly Nevertheless
:



At this point I have a few hundred of these little drawings floating around my drawing table here....many of which I have already posted to the Crumbly Nevertheless Blog
.....many more I need to do so with this weekend.
What started as a way to pass some down time at work with a ballpoint pen and some paper has become a little obsession for me....and as the reader count of that little corner of the web grows, I have entertained thoughts of how fun it would be just to have a showing of these little guys, even in this time of fear of all that is NOT archival in the art world. Still, it's a cute thought.....who knows?
 

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