Dog Whistle

I cannot tell you how much I would like to see this project succeed- because I know it will be an amazing film.
I urge you all- even if you do not have the funds to help to please pass the word along.

Thank you.

Missing my Darkroom

I wish we had more than one bathroom in our apartment so I could dedicate one to being a darkroom. I used to use my parent's small bathroom when I moved back in with them after the Columbus life wasn't for me. The bathroom was so small, I was so cramped and it got so hot in there that I used to work in my underwear. Those were the days.

I enjoy being able to manipulate photos without the use of digital means. The process, the materials and the manipulation is all very gratifying to me. I think that's why analogue photography is one of my favourite art forms and I wish It wasn't so expensive and obsolete.

Now, if you'll excuse me I just killed a pot of Earl Grey tea and I need to piss like a racehorse.

Memories

Left/Right handed and probably drunken drawings from my friend Hannah and I.

More Older Color Photography

Greetings! As most of you know today is supposed to be the day of rapture. Even though this man cannot get his math straight- in fact this man should never do math, ever, again.
Now that those of you who are already well into the supposed time of rapture in other parts of the world- How'd it go? Was it neat?
I get to work a 14 hour shift today It's going to be super great fun.

Before I go cater a baby shower and High School Prom (ugh) I have a few more photos from the Portugal road trip.

This is in the village of Solveira, up in Northern Portugal. The eucalyptus forests do not grow here and it snows, alot, in the winter time.

This is also Solveira- right accross the dirt road from my vovó's neighborhood.
We had to make way for a burro (donkey) carrying a big trailer full of wood.

These stairs are not in use any more- but most of the village is still reminiscent of the wonderful stone work that is seen in most of Portugal's older buildings. This was also in Solveira.

This little house was perched on top of the beautiful mountains of Gerês. This town was wonderful and many people from Spain travel to Gerês and surrounding towns to gain work. Our server was a Spanish woman, her accent was wonderful.


That's all for now, have fun surviving the rapture!

Old Color Photography

Scrounging around my photo files and found some of my older photography. I believe this is from the summer of 2009 or '08.

These are a few photos I took during a road trip through Portugal. We travelled from Lisboa (actually, Alges- the city where my grandmother (avó or vovó) lived at the time) to the Northern village of Solveira where my vovó was born.

The following are photos of a beach in Cascais, right down the road from the heart of Lisbon. We stopped at this cafe and had some drinks and ate Caracoís (snails).

The girl with the dark hair and sunglasses staring back at the camera was drawing pictures of us. I got her back, on film instead of paper.

This is my vovó, Maria Alfonso. She is drinking a beverage called Sumol which I adored when I was a child. It's like orange soda but....different.

I saw this through my viewfinder and thought the composition was a fluke. click click, thats how I roll.

Zaftig Zen's Modis Operandi

I've been constantly working on a zine of artwork and other tidbits and it has been going slow. I have mainly just wanted to keep going because I have no inspiration of ZZ issue 15.

This zine will probably not be published and just continue to be a "Book of Look" for the rest of eternity.

Anyway this is one of the finished illustrations I have completed so far.

An Illustration

Kids in the Hall marathon with Jim last night lead to this.

2011 Watercolor and Ink.

(a)Head

Oh hi.
This is an update about my Maya Head. This thing is now finished and will live on top of my closet next to my other finished sculptures that I wish to never display in my own apartment.

This photo is the third step, after I had formed the head with paper pulp, tape and newspaper I paper mached the entire thing with newspaper and a elmer glue/modpodge and water mixture. After the newspaper was dry I coated the entire thing with a thin wash of plaster and let this cure. The surface started to gain tiny cracks which was a happy surprise for me!

After the plaster cured I painted the entire thing with greys and neutral browns and greens. I then attached pieces of fabric and newspaper to create a somewhat symmetrical head dress. I then painted the newspaper and left the fabric as-is.

The next step was to mimic the broad lines of the carvings and paintings at Palenque, Tikal and Bonampak. I used black to contrast next to the grey and as a reminder of the archaeological illustrations and line drawings of specific carvings- More specifically the carving of King Pakal on his sarcophagus lid which some believe (because of a few authors uneducated in Maya archaeology) That this was proof of the end of the world in which King Pakal is said to return to Earth.
Another theory is that this is actually depicting Ancient astronauts. However, according to the archaeologist that study nothing but Maya glyphs that is a dumb assumption. No seriously, Ancient astronauts flying into space without oxygen and foot peddles? I give them props for creativity but this carving is just showing King Pakal's journey from the natural world into the world of the supernatural.

Any way, I thought this story was super neat and how people interpret art in their own way no matter to what science has said. I also think it's hilarious that this guy probably had no idea that he would some day make millions of people plan a date for the end of the world when he was just dead. Just a dead king sitting in his clam shell on top of the jaws of the supernatural beast waiting to be a god and all these silly people from the 2nd millennium are writing books and fucking like rabbits because they don't want the world to end. Because k'atuns are like pringles- you just pop the top and once they're gone we all fucking die.
YEH. so I also added some Sun, jade and sky glyphs to this guy cause apparently they loved their sun and sky glyphs (AND FUCKING LOVED JADE) and put them all over the place. It was necessary to them, so it's necessary to my crappy art.

This is the final product. I crochet a pillow for the guys head to rest on and attached it via wire and eye hooks, placed it on top of a piece of distressed canvas which I gessoed and painted more sun and sky glyphs on because, well, see above.

After that I melted some paraffin wax and doused that mofo all up in wax because I decided I didn't like all that black.

Jim was kind enough to take this guy out to our parking lot and take pictures of it on the asphalt in the beautiful sun. Unfortunately he got paraffin wax all over his hands and the touch screen on his camera wouldn't recognize wax as "Jim's fingers"
THANKS YOU AMAZING MAN, YOU.

Photo Update

Hello all,
My updates have been few and far in between, I don't really apologize because I don't really think anyone reads these anyway. It's finals week and I have an exam in a half hour and a paper due tomorrow. After that I should remain pretty active.

These are just some photos to update with. The first two were taken after a few margaritas and Busch beers were consumed. party on.

This is Kait, she is mad because she is out of focus.

This is Lauren in her gold sparkling gem outfit with orange hat. Notice the ambiance of the ceiling fan.

The other day our pet crab, Zero, died. This was the first news I woke up to-however, we knew he was not looking so peppy this last week. Jim seems to think it was the new girl crab, Flora we brought home. Sorry Zero. I will miss your little crab claws.

Towards the beginning of the semester my friend, and grad student asked if I would create an illustration for the cover of the graduate studies handbook for the anthropology department. I was thrilled to help out and the above illustration is what I came up with.

The image above is from one of my favorite comic book artist's book Human Disastrophism by Gilbert Hernandez. I am looking forward to getting this permanently displayed on my body. I have been in love with the Hernandez Brother's work for years now and wish I was that talented.

Also I have been working on a paper on Neanderthal versus human genomes and I almost "ctrl s"-ed this blog update out of habit.
Silly me.