Saturday Nights / Sunday Mornings

... The One

2011-12-02T23:56:00.001-05:00

"The One"

Inkjet Print

h: 11 x w: 14 inches

2011

The Combine

2011-09-23T16:42:00.002-04:00

The Combine: Mockup No1

2011-08-06T01:07:00.001-04:00

Day 3

2011-07-07T14:04:00.001-04:00

Leopards In The Temple

2011-07-07T13:58:00.003-04:00

"Leopards In The Temple"

Black and White Photocopy (Infinite Edition)

h: 11 x w: 8.5 inches each

2011

No Exit

2011-07-07T13:56:00.003-04:00

"No Exit"

Graphite on Paper

h: 8 x w: 6 inches each

2011

No Exit Pt2

2011-07-05T17:02:00.003-04:00

"No Exit Pt2"

Graphite On Paper

2011

Kalachakra Bag

2011-07-03T15:33:00.003-04:00

I made this bag to take to Kalachakra next week in Washington DC, isn't it pretty!

L'Oublie Day 2

2011-06-29T16:53:00.002-04:00

L'Oublie Day 1

2011-06-28T15:05:00.001-04:00

Where Is My Mind?

2011-06-17T19:16:00.002-04:00

"Where Is My Mind?"

Black & White Photograph

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

2011

The Hurricane

2011-06-17T19:06:00.002-04:00

"The Hurricane"

Iris Print, Marker on Cotton Rag

h: 25 x w: 30 inches

2011

Inside Of Me

2011-05-11T17:48:00.000-04:00

"Inside Of Me"

Army Blanket, Wool Yarn, Cotton Batting, Graphite, Paper, Push Pins

H: 96 x W: 204 x D: 106 inches

2011

Nevermind: transcribed

2011-04-25T17:28:00.002-04:00

"Nevermind"

Edition of 5 handmade artists books

h: 5.5 x w: 4 x d: .75 inches

2011

Spring 2011: No Heroes, No Villains

2011-04-19T21:04:00.003-04:00

Selections from my Spring 2011 Semester.

False Comfort

2011-04-19T19:01:00.004-04:00

"False Comfort"

Wool Army Blanket, Wool Yarn and Stuffing

H: 30 x W: 32 x D: 3 inches

2011

I Wish I Knew How It Would...

2011-04-17T18:07:00.003-04:00

"I Wish I Knew How It Would..."

Black & White Photograph

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

2011

Self-Portrait (Superstar No1)

2011-04-16T16:25:00.002-04:00

"Self-Portrait (Superstar No1)"

Oil Stick, Glitter on Panel

h: 40 x w: 24 inches

2011

Contagious

2011-04-03T07:28:00.002-04:00

"Contagious"

Black & White Archival Print

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

2011

Nevermind: an Installation

2011-02-26T13:58:00.002-05:00

Nevermind: Installation Views

2011-02-25T18:50:00.002-05:00

20 years of magical thinking

2011-02-23T18:28:00.004-05:00

"20 years of magical thinking"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 40 x w: 24 inches

2011

The Kids [Are] Alrite No 5

2011-02-12T20:14:00.001-05:00

"The Kids [Are] Alrite No 5"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 38 x w: 50 inches

2011

The Kids [Are] Alrite

2011-02-12T15:13:00.002-05:00

"The Kids [Are] Alrite"

Graphite Wall Drawing

Variable Dimensions

2011

Mama Said N°1

2011-02-10T19:28:00.001-05:00

"Mama Said N°1"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 7 x w: 5 inches

2011

Mother N°1

2011-02-09T10:34:00.002-05:00

"Mother N°1"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 7 x w: 5 inches

2011

Always See Your Face

2011-02-07T19:10:00.001-05:00

"Always See Your Face"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 7 x w: 5 inches

2011

Odyssey

2011-02-07T17:51:00.002-05:00

"Odyssey"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 7 x w: 5 inches

2011

Desperation N°3

2011-02-06T05:10:00.002-05:00

"Desperation N°3"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 7 x w: 5 inches

2011

Sells Like Teen Spirit N°3

2011-02-06T05:06:00.003-05:00

"Sells Like Teen Spirit N°3"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 7 x w: 5 inches

2011

My dreams are reoccuring on the television screen

2011-02-05T16:50:00.002-05:00

"My dreams are reoccuring on the television screen"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 7 x w: 5 inches

2011

Rxcovery

2011-02-05T10:12:00.002-05:00

"Rxcovery"

Acrylic on Paper

H: 75 x W: 85 inches

2011

ANATOMY / ACADEMY

2011-02-04T04:52:00.002-05:00

Kids In America

2011-01-19T18:59:00.002-05:00

"Kids In America"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 83 x w: 136 inches

2011

Kids In America: a work in progress pt 2

2011-01-17T15:22:00.000-05:00

EAT!

2011-01-13T14:07:00.003-05:00

"EAT!"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 12 x w: 18 inches

2011

Kids In America: a work in progress pt 1

2011-01-12T14:29:00.001-05:00

Recent Drawings

2011-01-05T18:25:00.002-05:00

Imitation of Life: Dash Snow Revisited

2010-12-28T17:28:00.006-05:00

“See, people they don't understand.
No, girlfriends, they can't understand.
Your Grandsons, they won't understand.
On top of this, I ain't ever gonna understand...”

So sang the coda to the life of one Dash Snow, a life of privilege and a life short on days but not on nights. Dash Snow, along with Dan Colen and Ryan Mcginley, came in the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century to be synonymous with everything full of life and energy. The art they made meant, and maybe still means, a great deal to people of a certain age, time and place. Whether in 10, 15 or fifty years, it will still carry that weight, many would say it will not, matters not to those who were there, those to whom their art was a rush of blood to a near dead heart. The art of the previous decade was neither full of passion nor weight, although it was preoccupied with both. The art of Damien Hirst, Takeshi Murakami and Post Minimalists like Felix Gonzalez-Torres was many things, Austere, Jubilant, Decadent, Professional, Precise, Calculated etc. But one thing it wasn’t was alive. Whether you loved the mess that Dash, Dan and Ryan made or you hated it, you would never, ever mistake it for art made by “professional” artists in a studio with assistants and deadlines. No, Dash et al didn’t make art that was auction ready. They didn’t make art with the white walled Mausoleum (né the Museum) in mind. A lot of artists like to say that they make art because they HAVE to. These guys made art that actually looked like they had to. This was not over-thought, over-wrought art by committee, a product of an MFA Finishing School fast tracked to a Chelsea gallerist; this was art that was tossed off because those who made it felt like making it and if you didn’t like it than you could go fuck off, who cared what you thought. The fact that, at the time, A LOT of people did care didn’t and doesn’t change the outcome or the meaning, not one bit. Again, in fifty years will anyone remember Dash Snow, who knows but that wasn’t the point, now was it?

Cacophony of Freedom's Cry

2010-12-22T17:48:00.003-05:00

My Submission to Stephen Colbert's Art Contest

Kids

2010-12-22T13:46:00.002-05:00

"Kids"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 12 x w: 18 inches

2010

Philly Fights STDs Condom Wrapper Design Contest Submission

2010-12-16T17:59:00.001-05:00

Echoes Pt 5

2010-12-12T20:19:00.002-05:00

"Echoes Pt 5"

Graphite on Linen Paper

h: 6 x w: 11 inches

2010

Echoes Pt 4

2010-12-12T19:04:00.002-05:00

"Echoes Pt 4"

35mm Photograph

2010

We'll Always Have Paris

2010-12-07T13:36:00.002-05:00

"We'll Always Have Paris"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 38 x w: 50 inches

2010

Happyness

2010-11-28T09:30:00.002-05:00

"Happyness"

h: 5 x w: 7 inches

Mixed Media on Paper

2010

Drawings From Thanksgiving 2010

2010-11-25T21:07:00.001-05:00

Drawings From Mark Blavat's Studio (11/24)

2010-11-24T17:39:00.002-05:00

Anticipation

2010-11-23T17:13:00.002-05:00

"Anticipation"

Oil Paint on Canvas

h: 24 x w: 18 inches

2010

℞EDEMPTION: Installation View

2010-11-22T12:13:00.002-05:00

Golden

2010-11-21T15:45:00.002-05:00

"Golden"

Acrylic On Paper

h: 50 x w: 38 inches

2010

Giorno

2010-11-10T15:45:00.002-05:00

"Giorno"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

2010

℞EDEMPTION

2010-11-06T13:16:00.005-04:00

"℞EDEMPTION"

h: 8 x w: 11 feet

Acrylic On Paper

2010

℞EDEMPTION: a work in progress pt. 3

2010-11-04T18:09:00.001-04:00

"℞EDEMPTION"

h: 8 x w: 11 feet

Acrylic On Paper

2010

The Legend of the Zodiac

2010-11-03T19:03:00.005-04:00

When I was a kid a friend of mine lived in a newly built development that was on hill in the woods. The developers had clear cut the hill and taken all the remnants of this dense forest and put it in an old quarry. My friend and I used to go exploring in the briar patch of tree branches and shrubs and weeds. We invested this detritus with it's own mythology that we called "The Legend of the Zodiac" Earlier today I attempted to recreate this plaything from my childhood in the woods outside of Philadelphia in miniature.

℞EDEMPTION: a work in progress pt. 2

2010-11-01T16:30:00.001-04:00

"℞EDEMPTION"

h: 8 x w: 11 feet

Acrylic On Paper

2010

Narcissus In The Studio: a work in process

2010-11-01T06:23:00.007-04:00

"Come See Me Paint a Self-Portrait!" As Part of the

Narcissus In The Studio Exhibit at The Pennsylvania

Academy of the Fine Arts in the Fischer Brooks Gallery

at The Hamilton Building I Will Be Painting My Self-

Portrait on the Afternoons of November 10th & 12th

from 1 to 3 pm. If you can't make it then, my painting

will be on display for the duration of the exhibit...

℞EDEMPTION: a work in progress pt. 1

2010-10-31T19:47:00.001-04:00

"℞EDEMPTION"

h: 8 x w: 11 feet

Acrylic On Paper

2010

31 and done

2010-10-22T12:07:00.004-04:00

"31 and done"

Mixed Media on Paper Scroll

h: 84 x w: 84 inches

2010

31 and done: a work in progress Pt 2

2010-10-18T16:42:00.002-04:00

31 and done: a work in progress Pt 1

2010-10-17T19:45:00.002-04:00

Do I Even Want to Be Happy?

2010-10-14T17:06:00.003-04:00

"Do I Even Want to Be Happy?"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 50 x w: 38 inches

2010

With Sound and Fury: Or, With Fear and Loathing The Master Meets His Match

2010-10-11T20:07:00.001-04:00

If Pablo Picasso was right when he said that, “Art is a lie that gives life to truth.” Then what can be said about a man who could give life to death? Picasso built a career on a pugnacious zeal for life. His drive for success was matched if not passed by his passion for all the profane things that life could offer. There was never enough food, wine nor women for the great Spaniard. He may not have created modernism, but more than anyone he both epitomized as well as championed it. He was quite possibly the most singular artist since Leonardo Da Vinci. His determination brought about cubism, neo-expressionism, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and Guernica in a long list of achievements. But Picasso, the Master of Modernism with a capitol M, could not out maneuver everyone. Eventually there would come for him a foe more dangerous than even Dora Maar. This foe is, of course, time. The great champion of the new would eventually become old, and how he would face his inevitable demise tells us more about this Old Master than any of his youthful masterpieces ever could. In 1972, Picasso is less than a year away from his death at the age of 91. His great love, Francoise Gilot has long since left him and he has settled into his golden years, Jacqueline at his side. He is a has-been, his child Modernity has been supplanted by the newer, younger and fresher Post-Modernity. He is relic, a dinosaur of a bygone age. America, and more specifically New York City are where it is at. Paris is obsolete, and the south of France even more so. This Old Master can’t possibly have something more to teach us, could he? Well, yes it turns out he could. One of his last works also stands up there with some of his greatest. In ‘72 Picasso does a simple little drawing, mixed media on paper. In his youth he probably would have discarded it as too sincere, not brash enough. But in old age he is able to see the value of sincerity. When we first glance upon it we are drawn to the eyes, of course. Picasso’s eyes were always strong, imposing. They were like pools of ink, large and dark, as immovable as the sphinx. But not here, no here they convey something else entirely. They convey rage and fury yes, but also fear, fear and terror and anguish. This is the self-portrait of a man, about to meet a maker he has never given much credence to. A man who has loved life but now sees that he is nearing it’s end and there is not a thing he can do about it. Picasso was a man accustomed to getting his way, who now finds himself losing an argument of which he can not win. The simultaneous frustration and soul collapsing dread that this realization elicits within him is palpable when he looks at the drawing. He is dying and he can do nothing about it. The intentionality and deliberateness with which he makes his marks on the surface mirrors a man signing the last check he will ever cash, certain to make his mark right. For all the fear in this drawing there is not a hint of ambiguity in it. There is resigned certainty, he knows his fate and although he has fear in his heart he will go out the way he went in, with sound and fury.

What Am I Doing

2010-10-07T15:54:00.002-04:00

"What Am I Doing"

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 50 x w: 38 inches

2010

Time Is Not On Our Side

2010-09-29T14:54:00.002-04:00

Oil Stick on Paper

h: 18 x w: 22 inches

2010

Sugar Kane: Or, When I Was 9 I Wished I Had Never Been Born

2010-09-27T16:44:00.001-04:00

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 50 x w: 38 inches

2010

Blackhole Sun: Or, When I Was 8 I Started Seeing Things That Weren't Really There

2010-09-27T16:41:00.001-04:00

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 50 x w: 38 inches

2010

Get Up, Get Up and Get Down… 9/11 is a Joke in Your Town

2010-09-23T19:49:00.002-04:00

A Discourse on The Semiotics of War in the 21st Century:

Or “Get Up, Get Up and Get Down… 9/11 is a Joke in Your Town”

Brian James Spies

Today Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, spoke before the United Nations General Assembly. The contents of his speech are of no matter, we have heard it before, “America Bad, Israel Evil, Holocaust Didn’t Happen, Etc Etc Etc…” The ramblings of a crazy man, be he a head of state or not, are of no consequence to me. What is beginning to be of concern, or more specifically annoyance, is America and it’s media and populace’s seeming indignation. The news tonite trotted out the typical mock rage… “How could he say such things, and so close to the site and anniversary of 9/11.” Really, we’re still shocked and outraged at the words of a psychopathic dictator. Now, I’m not suggesting America’s nerves should be deadened by this point; I’m a reasonable man whose grown accustomed to this nation’s diva like behaviour. No, what I’m frustrated by is this great nation’s inability to understand the basic concept of cause and effect. Not two weeks ago citizens in our country both threatened to and actually went through with the burning of Islam’s holiest book. How did you think an already paranoid and unbalanced man who treats that book as sacred would react the first time someone put a pedestal, a microphone and a camera in front of him. Do we not understand that by storming out of his speech we’re enabling this small, sick, little man? I thought Barack Obama was supposed to bring a new age of reason and discourse to this country. Surprise, America didn’t want one. Unfortunately, The President for some reason feels compelled to play along, when asked for comment President Obama issued the same nonsense agitprop that he was supposed to bring an end to. Don’t get me wrong I love Obama and I love America but I’ve grown tired of both the President and the country’s juvenile behaviour. We act, with regards to 9/11, like it is the worst travesty ever committed against a nation. Fuck, we’ve done worse in the past 60 years. Where were the tears and theatrics for Baghdad when we spent a week bombing it into the stone-age during Operation: Shock & Awe. Where was the call to arms when we have repeatedly used drones to attack civilian targets in Afghanistan. Just earlier this week it was reported that American service members have been killing Afghani civilians for sport! Where is the rage, America? Furthermore, on the subject of the military, can we please stop referring to American service members committing atrocities as bad apples. These aren’t rotten apples, they’re a poisonous fruit. I don’t blame them necessarily, this is war; it’s not pretty. Human beings aren’t supposed to kill other human beings and then pretend that nothing happened. War demands that its participants behave in a manor that in any other situation modern psychiatry would consider pathological. War pretends that we are werewolves, that we can behave like animals and then magically transform back into civilized creatures and productive members of society. Sorry, but the universe doesn’t work that way. Moreover, let us not forget; these so called “brave patriots” volunteered to go kill other human beings. They woke up one day and decided that killing people was a good idea. For me, the absence of the draft totally obliterates any pass I might be willing to give these men and women. They are not defending Freedom or securing our Liberty. They are, by choice, volunteering for any myriad of reasons to go half way across the world and kill people. This is not heroic, it is bestial and inhuman; Mao was wrong, Freedom doesn’t come from the barrel of a gun. It comes from the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women who find within themselves the desire and innate right of freedom. A government can infringe upon what I speak, what I read and the actions I take but what our founding father’s meant when they said that no government shall infringe upon man’s inalienable right to Liberty is that even with those rights taken I am free because I choose, in my heart, to be free. No government shall ever infringe upon this belief, this deeply held conviction that I am free. This was the belief that nourished Mandela in prison, assthat an assassin’s bullet could not strip from Dr King and that has given hope to every oppressed person the world over. No, freedom isn’t free but it’s cost is not a human life but instead a bullet through the silence of oppression in favour of the cry of dissent. Liberty is already the property of all peoples, as long as they are willing to voice it. It is this that America must remember; liberty doesn’t come from a gun. Liberty comes like a beacon through the act of dissent. Until we remember this we aren’t actually free. We’re just occupants of Plato’s cave marveling at shadow puppets while the real world passes us by.

Mine; 2am

2010-09-22T13:37:00.001-04:00

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 18 x w: 22 inches

2010

Lithium: Or, When I Was 13 I Lost My Mind

2010-09-17T16:33:00.006-04:00

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 50 x w: 38 inches

2010

Lithium: a work in progress Pt 2

2010-09-14T16:09:00.003-04:00

Lithium: a work in progress Pt 1

2010-09-02T18:14:00.003-04:00

Vuitton X Hermes Tote

2010-08-06T21:50:00.005-04:00

Vuitton X Hermes

Hand Silkscreened Tote

100% Cotton Canvas

and Gold Silkscreen Ink

h: 13 x w: 14 x d: 3 inches

(Text Reads: I've Got More Baggage Louis Vuitton But I'm Worth More Than a Berkin)

I've Got More Baggage Than Louis Vuitton But I'm Worth More Than a Birkin No. 2

2010-08-02T17:16:00.003-04:00

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 16.5 x w: 12 inches

I've Got More Baggage Than Louis Vuitton But I'm Worth More Than a Birkin No 1

2010-07-28T20:00:00.003-04:00

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 16.5 x w: 12 inches

A Man Alone

2010-07-22T12:04:00.001-04:00

I've been thinking more and more as of late about the notion of love; it's no secret that for better half of my 20s I was of the mind that love was at best a child's game and at worst an all consuming and entirely destructive endeavor. Either way it was of no interest to me. However, recent experiences in both my life and work have compelled me to revisit this matter that had previously been thought on my part to be a closed case. Without going into all the maudlin details I have over the past 10 or so months begun to reconsider my opinion on love. While I still am of the mind that love, unrequited, can be an all consuming and entirely destructive sensation I have begun to view love to being akin to Orlando or a good whiskey. Too much and you might find yourself delirious but none at all and one can find themselves to be without a pulse. Although I have no pleasant memories of the happiest place on earth the sheer horror memories of it evoke in me acts as a sort of baseline reading of everything I detest and loathe and in that way is by no means without merit. Much in the same way I have begun to develop an appreciation for love, even unrequited, as although the sensation it evokes in me is by no means pleasant it is nonetheless invigorating, like free fall, it reminds us that we are alive. And it is this wellspring of passion that love evokes that is it's true redemptive power. For it is by approaching our mortality, whether real or imagined, that we are compelled to live. You see, the old saying had it all wrong. It isn't better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all but rather that without love, whether lost or not, one cannot know if they ever lived at all. Love is our baseline, love tells us that we are alive in the first place. Have you ever mourned the loss of someone whose existence mustered only ambivalence in you? Love allows for loss by giving life value in the first place. This is what we mean when we speak of the redemptive power of love.

Max at Eighteen

2010-07-06T08:46:00.002-04:00

Mixed Media on Canvas
h: 14 x w: 11 inches

Olivia at Eighteen

2010-07-04T19:16:00.003-04:00

Mixed Media on Canvas
h: 14 x w: 11 inches

Heaven

2010-06-20T07:54:00.001-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

Girl With Hazel Eyes

2010-06-17T08:20:00.001-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

You Can't Erase My Love

2010-06-14T14:50:00.001-04:00

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

Everything Nice

2010-06-11T16:42:00.002-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

Polka Dots and Dinobots

2010-06-10T18:49:00.002-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

Love Love Love

2010-06-10T18:47:00.002-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

You Will Die Alone and Unloved

2010-06-05T15:57:00.002-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

I've Got More Baggage Than Louis Vuitton

2010-06-02T20:28:00.002-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

Spent My Youth Wishin I'd Never Been Born

2010-05-31T18:53:00.002-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

The Messenger Is Not The Message

2010-05-30T08:46:00.003-04:00

“I wasn’t trying to be like Bono,” ... “He’s not from Africa — I’m from there. I’m tired of pop stars who say, ‘Give peace a chance.’ I’d rather say, ‘Give war a chance.”

M.I.A.

The above quote is from The New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story on the pop star and political agitator M.I.A. The article as well as the firestorm it has created got me thinking about our collective difficulty in distinguishing between the message and the messenger. M.I.A. is not the first, nor will she be the last, pop star to piss off people by mixing pop culture with a healthy does of political rhetoric. Like, most notably, John Lennon and Joe Strummer before her M.I.A. can’t help but have her reality as a reasonably well off pop star intrude upon her efforts to address real world problems via pop music. Why does the messenger impact our reception to the message? Can a culture that asks for authenticity from its artists be excused for dismissing the authentic voices it receives?

Take, for example, John Lennon’s call for a generation to abandon material concerns and live together in peace and harmony. Does it matter that it was recorded in an aristocratic English manner house? Mark David Chapman thought it did. Although I’m not suggesting that the opinions of a mentally disturbed assassin shed fair light upon the rest of us there is, in Mr. Chapman’s disillusionment, some truth to be found. I remember vividly John arguing on TV with pundits at the time who dismissed his forays into politics as naïve and misguided, who as John said, wished he’d go back to mop tops and I Wanna Hold Your Hand. This notion of “leave the politics to the big boys and just make your pretty little pop songs” was a pervasive one that although not nearly as virulent today, nonetheless, still persists. Why do we react with such hostility to notion that for someone from the privileged world of pop stars can’t speak authentically to the plight of third world people? It is as if we believe in the authenticity of the artistic voice so much that we will only connect with a message of 3^rd world blight if one of those kids in the charity ads on television turns to the camera and starts an impromptu serenade about her reality.

The notion that an artist should only speak of their experiences and must retain a connection with those experiences or else risk being a sort of dilatant is a fabulously naïve assumption. The merely ability to make art is a sign of immense privilege. To have the luxury of both the time to reflect upon ones reality and the resources to create work that expresses that reality is something that very few people have. The arts arose, historically out of privilege. The rise of agriculture allowed for the creation of the leisure class that in turn created the resources for human beings to begin to truly express themselves as well as a marketplace to support them. All artists exist within this leisure class and to believe otherwise is merely to fall into the trap of the artist as self-mythologizer. Kurt Cobain wasn’t the teenage runaway he sang about. Joe Strummer grew up the sire of the post-colonial world that he raged against. These facts don’t make Territorial Pissing or White Man in Hammersmith Palais any less powerful or compelling, if anything they strengthen the hold these songs have on us by allowing these contradictions to inform our reading of these works we are gifted with a much more complex experience.

It is with this in mind that I believe a stronger and deeper reading of M.I.A.’s music can be accomplished. The contradictions of a child from a war torn country making music that expresses her frustration with first world assumptions while living in a Brentwood mansion is a much richer narrative than the one dimensional notion of a pop star amongst the rubble of Sri-Lanka’s civil war. Art not only thrives on ambiguity and contradiction it requires it. Without these contradictions you have no tension, this escape from a harsh reality allows for a mournful tone and from that comes a whole spectrum of emotion that without you would have not a work of art but a U.N. position paper. M.I.A.’s ability to draw on the contradictions of her reality, both past and present, makes for some damn compelling poetry of which I continue to be a fan.

I Feel Like Happyness Is Asking Too Much

2010-05-25T14:04:00.004-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

Contact Me to Purchase

No One Hurts Me Like You Do

2010-05-20T19:23:00.002-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

Contact Me to Purchase

I Just Wanna Be Loved

2010-05-18T19:04:00.003-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

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The Post-Bacc Commencement Show: a slideshow

2010-05-14T07:51:00.000-04:00

You Don't Deserve to be Happy

2010-05-10T16:39:00.004-04:00

Acrylic on Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

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No One Will Ever Love You

2010-05-09T20:25:00.003-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

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And He Hit Me

2010-05-06T16:38:00.003-04:00

Acrylic on Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

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Because I Can't Forget

2010-05-04T22:46:00.003-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

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I Hate My Life

2010-05-04T22:41:00.003-04:00

Acrylic On Paper

h: 14 x w: 11 inches

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Where I'm Going Is Where I've Been but Not Quite The Same Way

2010-05-02T09:02:00.002-04:00

I feel like my work has grown so much in the past year, I can't quite fathom how I've gotten to place I'm at but I have a really good idea where I'm going. One of the things I'm planning on exploring is taking a more deliberate and plotted approach to creating my work. I plan on doing this by starting out with more specific drawings and then using an opaque projector to transfer the drawings to the surface. I'm also planning on utilizing masking to create harder lines in some portions of the work. I've created hard lines in the past but in this case I'm going to be strategic in where I'm creating these hard lines so as to have them integrate with the content more successfully. I hope this new avenue that I'm opening up will lead to a more concise dialogue between myself and the work. This is my first sketch for this new body of work. The piece, once completed, will be 8 feet high by 12 feet wide and be titled, "The Lost Phoenix Saga."

Ditto

2010-04-22T15:11:00.003-04:00

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 50 x w: 38 inches

$300.00 + Shipping

Neon Sirens

2010-04-20T21:53:00.003-04:00

Mixed Media on Paper

h: 50 x w: 38 inches

$500.00 + Shipping