An Education: Jenny: Reverie

I love the idea of a listening room and wish they would bring them back to record stores.
Then again, what record stores? The 21st century listening rooms are in our own heads, plugged into the music, and that's no way to share.  In this composite of scenes from the film An Education, A wiser and sadder Jenny appears (through juxtaposition) to recall an earlier, happier and in retrospect–foolish– time in her life.

Marienbad 1

Cow Parade (in progress)

Dealing with space, greatly condensed

Depth of Field

The shadow and the texture of the ground are my favorite things.

Eternal Sunshine 1

I've always been interested in memory, layers (both literal and figurative) and ghostly images.  I love movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Last Year at Marienbad because of their ambiguous, ambivalent, plot lines and endings.  What do we choose to remember? Can we erase bad memories at will, and if so, what happens to the good memories? Is it possible to forget that you made such a big decision as falling in love, and must be reminded by a stranger, who is actually your intended? I am embarking on a series of drawings inspired by these themes and questions. The idea is to move away from the film stills, but they are as always, a good place to start.

In Progress: Group (Out of Body Experience)

Group: Out of Body Experience, 2010

Charcoal on Paper.  Based on my friend Krissy's junior high lunch photograph. I'm not sure where it's going yet, but the lunch table could be the same shape as a hoop that a magician levitates a girl through, maybe the dark haired girl in the front?

Detail

It's been a while since I've worked in charcoal and it definitely took some getting used to.  I'm thinking this will be a diptych at least. I just checked out the John Baldessari monograph by Coosje van Bruggen from the Decker Library...it's the same copy I used as an student in art school, but some idiot in the years since has written through it in ballpoint pen. Not over the images, fortunately, but still.

Detail

Mad Men Season 4: Peggy

Peggy, 1964

Peggy's got a brand new hairdo. Marker on watercolor paper. 2010.

Mrs. Gideon's Spontaneous Amnesia of Howard Moon

Here, Vince, ever the best friend, uses a cue card in lieu of Mrs. Gideon's nonexistent memory.

One of the running jokes in Series 1 of The Mighty Boosh involves Mrs. Gideon, Snake Keeper at the Zooniverse where Howard Moon and Vince Noir are also employed as zookeepers. Howard pines for Mrs. Gideon, but this affection is unrequited. Even worse, Mrs. Gideon can never seem to remember Howard: not his name, his face or the fact that they have had to be reintroduced every time they meet, much to Howard's distress.

Vince turns to the Camera as Ghost Howard stares on in a monkey suit (not a tux)

The only way I have been able to survive database maintenance this week has been to watch Disc 1 Series 1 of the hilarious The Mighty Boosh (2004).  Unfortunately, it is too good a distraction, and I end up watching it instead of updating fields, like any sane person.  The British get away with so much in their comedies, which end up being a weird mix of high and low humor.  Suspension of disbelief is par for the course.  It's like looking directly into the imagination of a precocious, snarky, impressively literate teenage boy with a proclivity towards musical numbers, mod culture, the strangest and most creative insults ever with occasional witty repartee, and touching moments of real emotion thrown in here and there.

Dailies: Community: In Progress

Seconds after Abed's "Don Draper, from Mad Men" impersonation. ("I liked it!"–Annie) 
 graphite on watercolor paper

Dailies: On Memory: Abre Los Ojos

Shawn Kelly circa 1992. graphite on watercolor paper

So I have exactly one photograph of Shawn Kelly circa 1992, a polaroid that I took,  from when we were both students at Pensacola Junior College and he dropped in to visit me in the Halftones to Jubilee office where I was student editor. He was about to transfer to the Atlanta College of Art; I was on my way to MICA.   His eyes are closed in the photograph, and you don't really know what somebody looks like until he opens his eyes.  I approximated, and if memory serves me right, this is a pretty good representation.

Dailies: Blink: LarrySallyDiptych

I have a few more stills from Blink that I want to resolve.

 

Larry_Sally diptych. graphite on watercolor paper.

                                                                        

Dailies: Blink 6

 

In Progress: Holding Hands and The Doctor's Elbow. graphite on watercolor paper

Dailies: Liminal Spaces: Agent Cooper and Donna Heyward

2010. Graphite on watercolor paper (moleskine journal)

I am fascinated with layers of memory, the overlap of action, and inspired by the lag/delay in a television picture, where if you take a photograph of the screen, you can catch the shift as it happens (here, in the Twin Peaks pilot).

On Memory: Hampden Court, Lakeview East

July 27

July 14

In Progress: On memory and finding the apartment building I lived in during my last 6 months in Chicago 2002. graphite on watercolor paper

Dailies: Blink 5

More conferring between Sally and Larry, while the coast is clear (for the moment).

Dailies: Blink 4

After handing her dossier on The Weeping Angels to the Doctor (for use when he gets stuck in 1969), Sally sees Larry in new light.

Dailies: Blink 3

Larry and Sally try to match the transcript to the DVD Easter Egg of the Doctor's one-sided conversation.

Dailies: Blink 2

Here, Sally Sparrow filches back the key to the Tardis (though at the time she doesn't know what it opens), stolen by the Weeping Angels.

Dailies: Nora and Koi

Today, I met up with my friend Colleen and her daughter Nora at Seneca Park and Water Tower Place in Chicago. I worked on the drawing over lunch. Then I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art to see the Calder show, where I also glimpsed the Koi in the pond on the ground floor. Nora's gaze and the empty spaces in the composition overlapped with the fish, and it made perfect sense on the page together.

Dailies: Party Down

Ken Marino (Ron) and Adam Scott (Henry), Scene from Rob Thomas' insanely funny (and recently cancelled) series Party Down, about a hapless catering company staffed by aspiring and/or failed actors and future soup restaurant franchise owners.

Dailies: Blink

My friend and fellow MICA alum Alex D was telling me about his installation of gnomes in the upcoming Baltimore Artscape.  Gnomes are sort of cheesy/cute, but he was hoping to make them creepy/er. This reminded me of how I'm convinced those classical plaster casts in the Main Building Court move around at night when nobody's looking, which reminded me of the Dr. Who episode "Blink". I mentioned this to Alex, who had never heard of Dr. Who, much less this episode (my favorite), in which requisitely creepy statues called The Weeping Angels steal people's lives, feeding on lost time, and try to wreak this havoc on heroes Sally Sparrow and Larry Nightingale. The catch: The Weeping Angels can't move, as long as someone is looking at them, but if and when you blink, then...

Dailies: Ray Bradbury: "Banshee"

Ray Bradbury was my favorite writer when I was a kid, and a recent conversation with Michelle LaPerriere reminded me of this.  At the MICA library I checked out a copy of Bradbury Stories, a collection of 100 selected tales, of which "Banshee" is one of the best and most satisfying. 

Bradbury is a master at the art of description and imagery, and while the film version (created for the 1980s HBO series Ray Bradbury Theater, which hasn't aged very well, I'm afraid) gets some of the details right, there were other things I would have changed. The Banshee is the best thing about the film, but even she could have been made more ethereal and otherworldly.  Peter O'Toole is the playboy movie director, and the object of the Banshee's affection/loathing; In my version,  thought it would be interesting to "cast" a younger version of O'Toole as Doug (many of Bradbury's stories have a hero named Douglas) the screenwriter protagonist whom the director cruelly insults and teases and then dares to go out into the woods to meet the woman with a "face of snow...dressed in a long, moon-colored dress...nothing in the world would ever frighten her again." I think my favorite elements are the wisp of the Banshee's shawl on the left and the trapezoid of orange light from the house on Doug's face.

Dailies: MOVIES: Inside the Closet of Board Games: The Royal Tenenbaums

It's like a mini-museum of Board Games from the 70s on, and the perfect place for a confrontation.

Dailies: MOVIES: Inside the Closet of Board Games 2: The Javelina

 

Q: Pagoda, Where's my Javelina?

A: Here you are.

MOVIES: The Royal Tenenbaums: Margot and Richie camp out at Archer Avenue

" I think were' just going to have to be secretly in love and leave it at that."

Dailies: MOVIES: Marie and Dan (Dan in Real Life)

 Scene: seconds after Dan (Steve Carell) is accused of being a "murderer...of love!" by his daughter, for sending her lovesick boyfriend away.
Dan: Love isn't a feeling: it's an ability.
Marie (Juliette Binoche), observing the spectacle in  awe: Well, if that's true, then you have one gifted daughter.

Work in Progress: Difficult Thoughts (The Three Lindas)

Graphite on paper, 2009-10, approximately 30"x 24"

Details:

Poster Gallery: MICA Pre-College 2010

This was the mock-up I did when the lightbulb went on above my head.

Dailies: Double hat portrait

My brother Ronnie and I tried on kid's animal hats on a recent trip to Michael's. Due to both of our cell phone camera batteries dying at the same time, he was kind enough to buy me the bee hat for later documentation.

Lost/Last#3

My favorite part of the drawing: the orange blood dripping down Jack's neck in the top panel.