June 30th, 2008

Here's what I made on this rainy Sunday...

The other day while drawing thumbnails on my bed I fell asleep...and I found myself unintentionally squeezing into this little bit of sunlight on my bed. Like a cat. Insert cat nap joke here.


I got this comic idea last fall, and just now remembered it! I was walking to work and saw a pigeon gorging himself on a box of donuts...and when I walked by the following day I half expected to see him dead and happy. I'm an animal lover I swear!


Cuddle puddle recipe: Add one part you to one part me...melt and stir, until ingredients are blended together. Enjoy.

Currently Reading: Tom Robbins...Still Life With Woodpecker

June 25th, 2008

Hooray! Happy pretty sunshiney-art!

I see the trees when I close my eyes. I got this idea while laying on a bench with Billy on our lunch break last week and looking up at the trees of Central Park. (See picture below) It was such a bright day that when I closed my eyes I still saw their silhouettes against the sky. (This concept of things falling from my eyes has come up before...with cherry blossoms and marble veins and tears)


This next drawing was especially tedious to make but I'm sorta in love with it...


I feel like all I've been doing the past few years in particular is trying out my keys in different locks, fumbling around trying everything out in an effort to see what actually works. It's the same with people... I'm trying my keys on different people and they're trying to fit my lock. It's this ongoing process of trial and error...but since there are endless combinations and possibilities I see this process as wonderfully optimistic albeit unstructured. I guess this is all any of us are doing...

Currently Listening: Coldplay...Vida La Vida

June 17th, 2008

Here's what I drew today...



This drawing is about duality. In New York I've met so many people who are in love with struggle...but I'm not. I suppose I'm in love with effort. I mean, I used to be struggle's bitch...I'd flail about and make everything harder as though it made me somehow nobler. But now the only risks I take are on an internally challenging level rather than the big external battles...Is that a sign of maturity or simply passivity? Anyway, I was thinking about it.

I saw this difference in perspectives visually....with the struggle side as black-and-white-extremes and the effort side as middle-of-the-road-shades-of-grey. But you have to wonder...are the hands clasped in aggression or comradery? I'm not telling.

Here are the the first and second versions of my other concept...


My friend Cole made a comment the other day about how right when he thinks he's letting someone further in (castle metaphor), he finds he's only building more moats. Totally relating to his problem, I decided to borrow his visual.

I didn't like how that first one turned out, so I remade it exactly how I saw it in my head initially..in a childish style referencing Erol Akyavas. (A Turkish artist I wrote about last month) But instead of moats there are simply walls.




Currently Listening: Emmylou Harris...All I Intended To Be

June 15th, 2008

This is the unbearable weight of potential. I've done my best to ignore most of the societal pressures of what I should be doing... but lately I've found myself strangely concerned more with what others think. So that flighty balloon, that pressure, has grown into this heavy boulder balloon. I know these are just shifts in my own head...so it's up to me to turn it back.


It bothers me when others reflect back things about me that I know are false. But it's with these people that I'm too closed off or I simply don't know them well enough to correct their perception. So it's not their fault they don't really know* me...because I don't let them. (*Of course, it's hard to say if it's possible for any person to truly know another person...but that's a whole other conversation!)

Currently Listening: Fleet Foxes....Fleet Foxes

June 11th, 2008

I've played around with a drawing style lately (like the Aya Sofya drawing from Istanbul) which was asking to be explored further. So these are all scenes from around where I live here in Chelsea.

This is a view of buildings from Chelsea Pier...


Midtown marble-madness chaos...


This is near Union Square (Recognize those triangular rooftops?)...


I like this technique because it forces me to draw quickly...I can't erase the lines once they're drawn...and it's just more playful. It's good for me.

Currently Listening: David Poe...Love is Red

June 11, 2008

The movie folks packed up our wireless router last week along with everything else, hence I have not posted any new art for a while. But after three weeks of apartment-occupation everything has been finally put back to normal. (Well, almost...) Here's Batch 1 of new art...

While I was working on this drawing at a cafe, the man next to me asked what I was drawing. I replied casually, "Hell." Because in my head, the seven rings of hell are rows of cubicles. So this one is for all you cubicle survivors!

Here are some silly collages...


This weekend I was in Boston visiting my friend Bonnie...we spent a fun evening playing with magazine clippings and rubber cement. Here were my two contributions to help fill up her empty wallspace! (I know, I know, the compositions are really similar...can I blame the wine?)

Currently reading: Joseph Campbell...The Power of Myth

June 5th, 2008

So, over the past two weeks my apartment has been used as a film set. It's been wild! You can read more/ see pictures of in all my other blog.

Expectedly, I had to draw about the experience...so here I am in the middle of the cloud of activity. I couldn't help but pick up the energy of what was going on all around me, like dust clinging to fly paper. Even though I had a door to separate me from everyone, I still felt surrounded by chaos. I'm glad they're now putting everything back to normal again, because living in a workplace for two weeks was starting to make me anxious...

June 3rd, 2008

Sooo I can't ride a bike. (Cue shocked expression and shaking heads) So Amanda is giving me lessons...we started this past Sunday and we'll continue once my bruises clear up a bit. (I'll post a separate blog with the photos, because it's pretty amusing!) In the park I saw a little girl also learning to ride a bike and felt simultaneous comradery and embarrassment.


In an email to my friend Jamie I wrote, "My heart never gets all fluttery anymore--it's been like this for a long time and I worry it'll become like a permanent state of un-flutteriness. How can I, someone who is so in touch with certain emotions, be so closed off about other ones?! I want someone to simply pull the pin out of my little heart grenade..." That pretty much sums this drawing up. I've tried pulling out pins over and over, but it doesn't do the trick...

Currently Listening: The Sundays...Reading, Writing and Arithmetic