Farewell.

Farewell, Sarah Shuhart. Hello, Sarah Kaizar.

Bizurkis - Business Cards for Idea #1

Business card #1 - Back (left) and front (right)

Business card #2 - Front (right) and back (left)

   

Business card #3 - Back (right) and front (left)

I like the idea of a variety of business cards shuffled together.

Bizurkis - Idea # -5

Brainstorming for Bizurkis yielded this psychedelic little number ... yikes. 

Bizurkis - Idea #1

Remember the bird project? Here they are ---- now they're umbrellas for a crazy Mary-Poppins themed menu. Original illustrations through-out. 

This is idea #1 for Bizurkis.

Menu cover back (left) and front (right) - Idea #1

Menu inside - Idea #1

Menu inside detail (for the mock-up, I ripped the food items off of a Steven Starr menu ... sounds pretty good to me!)

Birds are coming

Bird 1 - Sketch

Bird 1 - Carved linoleum block, 6x9"

Bird 2 - Carved linoleum block, 5x7"

First birds of (hopefully) many; these carved blocks will be used to print a dense, shifting flock. 

Still on the swarms, flocks, herds, schools ---- this one will focus on movement in the mass.  

We'll see how it goes.

Newspaper Shoot

Newspaper shoot from a little while ago; Schyler, Mom, Me & Caroline

My Wedding Invitations!

A nice little Saturday

Sometimes John creates visual interpretations of current goings-on. Above, a map of what we did on Saturday. 

More Rorschach Mountains...

Mountains -- half drawn on the train again, then mirrored. Original drawing 11x14", completed 8/17/10

Mountains

Same as the wasp nest -- drawn on the train, then mirrored. 

Mountains - August 8, 2010 - Pencil

Sedge Island T-Shirt

Sedge Island T-Shirt -- August 7, 2010

Volunteer project for the ever-fabulous Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey. Check out what they do - www.conservewildlifenj.org. And adopt a species while you're at it!

Wasp Nest Sketch

Still haven't found words yet for the swarms, so I'll have to fill you in on that thought process later. But the swarms are still brewing ---- half of this sketch was created on the train this past week, then taken into photoshop and mirrored. sketch for a large painting? nothing?

raw sketch completed 7/30/2010  -   Pencil  -  11x17"

The jellyfish are coming ...

This sketch has been hanging out for awhile now, patiently waiting for me on the cork-board. In May, alongside the deer, the groundwork for the jellyfish was put together. The "fish in one day," or whatever it was called, was drawn over a photo-transfer layer of the ticker tape of the wall st. journal; the jellyfish will maneuver the real estate section and sheriff sale listings in bucks county. Instead of drawing the jellies, these will be rendered in a thick, slick layer of resin, acrylic, and nail polish. The reality of real-estate-land / foreclosure-land may or may not show through such distraction. In progress:

Jellyfish project officially kicked off in May 2010. 

Deer

I started the deer in the beginning of May, and unfortunately, no progress has been added since I've taken these photos. Hopefully I'll have more to share on this guy soon!

Deer    -    May 2010    -    Pen & Ink    -    size?

Happy Birthday, Alison!

Alison's Octopus     -     Pen & Ink     -     11x14"     -     May 20, 2010

The Snowman

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 

The Snowman   -   Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

Photo taken by the Delaware River, Bristol - February 2010

Flamingo {Bird Project 3}

Flamingo        -         11x14"      -     Ink        -      April 30, 2010

Macaw {Bird Project 2}

Macaw         -          11x14"       -       Ink       -      March 22, 2010

Earl

I don't know what's going on with the goats. I just keep drawing goats. I don't especially like actual goats, but I do really enjoy drawing them. 

Earl       -        11x14"     -       Ink      -      March 21, 2010

Pelican {Bird Project 1}

The bird illustrations are part of a bit of an experiment; these will soon be morphing into new things. Check back soon. 

Pelican     -     11x14"    -      Ink    -   March 19, 2010

Big-Eyed Trevally in One Day

Osprey

"Osprey" - 19x9" - Pen & Ink - March 25, 2010

Lloyd

"Lloyd" - pen & ink - 8x10 - March 24, 2010

Goal: no taxidermy

What a weird day. A chat with a sad neighbor ("What does it all mean?") to an email from a retiring professor  ("What did it mean?") and back to my fish ("What the hell am I doing?"). And of course, as things always go, everything else around was keeping theme ---- including my current book of choice! My choice at the moment is "Bluebeard" by Kurt Vonnegut. The narrator is Rabo Karabekian: an aged, rambling one-eyed veteran who is writing an autobiography of his life while sitting in a gargantuan, empty mansion. (Empty, save for the strange woman who decided to move in!)  Here, he reflects on his life as an artist, comparing his accomplishments to that of Dan Gregory, who he apprenticed for earlier in his life: 

     
     What kept him [Dan Gregory] from coming anywhere near to greatness, although no more marvelous technician ever lived? I have thought about this, and any answer I give refers to me, too. I was the best technician by far among the Abstract Expressionists, but I never amounted to a hill of beans, either, and couldn't have -- and I am not talking about my fiascos with Sateen Dura-Luxe. I had painted plenty of pictures before Sateen Dura-Luxe, and quite a few afterwards, but they were no damned good.
     But let's forget me for the moment, and focus on the works of Gregory. They were truthful about material things, but they lied about time. He celebrated moments, anything from a child's first meeting with a department store Santa Claus to the victory of a gladiator at the Circus Maximus, from the driving of the golden spike which completed a transcontinental railroad to a man's going on his knees to ask a woman to marry him. But he lacked the guts or the wisdom, or maybe just the talent, to indicate somehow that time was liquid, that one moment was no more important than any other, and that all moments quickly run away. 
     Let me put it another way: Dan Gregory was a taxidermist. He stuffed and mounted and varnished and mothproofed supposedly great moments, all of which turn out to be depressing dust-catchers, like a moosehead bought at a country auction or a sailfish on the wall of a dentist's office waiting room.
     Clear?
     Let me put it yet another way: life, by definition, is never still. Where is it going? From birth to death, with no stops on the way. Even a picture of a bowl of pears on a checkered tablecloth is liquid, if laid on canvas by the brush of a master. Yes, and by some miracle I was surely never able to achieve as a painter, nor was Don Gregory, but which was achieved by the best of the Abstract Expressionists, in the paintings which have greatness birth and death are always there.
     Birth and death were even on that old piece of beaverboard Terry Kitchen sprayed at seeming random so long ago. I don't know how he got them in there, and neither did he. 
     I sigh. "Ah, me," says old Rabo Karabekian.

Peregrine Falcon, Stomping Around ...

Peregrine Fledgling, Stomping Around

Pen & Ink --- 8x10 --- March 1st, 2010

The fish are coming...

Trip to Home Depot for a piece of masonite --- John chopped this down for me to 7 ft. by 3.75 ft., and I applied lots and lots of gesso. On top of the gesso I began to lay a ground of photo transfers ------ one day of stocks from the Wall Street Journal printed on heavy matte photo paper (Epson), torn into long strips and then photo-transfered onto the board. 

I lucked out --- most of the time, Petey found the board on the floor too scary to trespass. He'd keep me company and then tip-toe around the board to leave the room. 

Stock images were photo-transfered originally for archival reasons, but the transfer technique produced a great erratic, wild quality to the image --- worked out perfectly.

This is undoubtedly the most work I've ever put into a background.

With the ground work in, I'm now illustrating/painting a dense school of fish. The photo-transfer ground shows through the highlighted layers of the fish, and an interface layer catches light which creates a flickering effect through the school. Petey and John provide in-progress critique. 

Stay tuned, more to come!