Edel Rodriguez

POLITICS 08 Exhibition

2008-10-03T14:06:13+00:00

Here are some pictures from the POLITICS 08 opening and exhibition. The show's last day is this Saturday, Oct. 4th. I wanted to thank all of the artists that particitated, along with the staff at S.I. that helped hang the exhibit. Kate Feirtag, Anelle Miller, Tim O'Brien and the rest of the museum comittee were a lot of help throughout the Summer as I tried to put the exhibit together. Kate will soon be creating a spot on the S.I. website that shows all of the artwork, I'll let you know when it's all up there.

A couple of weeks ago, the Society brought in students from LaGuardia and Art and Design high schools, along with students from Parsons. Stephen Kroninger and I spoke with them about the exhibit, political illustration, and the editorial side of the businesss. It was good to have them there, as I think that art students need to be more aware of this type of work.

The Society has printed this set of postcards of images from the show. E-mail tara@societyillustrators.org if you'd like one. $15 and comes with a 'vote' button.

Barry does it again

2008-09-30T02:48:16+00:00

This week's New Yorker cover by Barry Blitt is another great one, playing off the classic Saul Steinberg New Yorker's view of the world. Discussion over at Huffington Post here.

David Foster Wallace

2008-09-27T14:47:23+00:00

This is an image I did which accompanied an article in The Wall Street Journal about David Foster Wallace the week after his passing. I thought his words were a good, thoughtful read, especially for artists. David Foster Wallace was a great voice which will be terribly missed. Here is a link to the story on the WSJ website.

SERGIO weighs in on the economy

2008-09-26T21:45:45+00:00

This is Sergio's page in this week's Washington Post page for kids. Sergio will be closely monitoring tonight's debate while he ponders jumping into the race on the Flightless Bird ticket.

SERGIO '08 !!!

Beer label for Deschutes Brewery

2008-09-26T20:01:59+00:00

This is an illustration I did for a label for "the dissident" a new beer from Deschutes Brewery in Bend, Oregon. The beer took about a year to brew and I finally got a bottle this week. I hadn't done a beer label before so it was fun to work on this new format. Audelino Moreno was the art director on the project.

There is an article about the brew HERE at Beer Advocate:

"To give The Dissident its characteristic sour taste, the brewery used a wild yeast strain called Brettanomyces (also known as Brett) during fermentation. Known throughout the wine world for creating earthy undertones found in many European wines, Brett is used in the beer fermentation process to create strong flavors typically associated with Belgian beers. Unlike English varieties that use traditional inoculated yeasts in the fermentation process, beers made with Brett take much longer to ferment and require additional barrel finishing time to balance the sour flavoring. In The Dissident's case, this meant aging a portion of it in Pinot noir and Cabernet barrels for more than three months. Another key flavor component comes from the Central Washington cherries that were added 12 months ago.
     Due to the wild yeast, The Dissident required special treatment and was held in isolation under lock and key apart from the rest of the brewery's beers to avoid any cross-contamination. A secondary bottling line was also brought in from an outside contractor to facilitate The Dissident's bottling and ensure the beer and wild yeast never touched the brewery's machinery.
     With a beer this wild and truly unique, Deschutes needed a special label to alert consumers to what lay inside. The resulting image immediately sets The Dissident apart from the other Deschutes Brewery beers, even the Reserve Series beers.
     A very limited amount of The Dissident will be available at the end of August as part of the brewery's Reserve Series in hand-waxed 22-ounce bottles and on draft at select establishments. MSRP for a 22-ounce bottle is $9.99."

The top of the beer has this dripped wax element, which gives the package a nice look. It's a Flanders style brown ale.

These are some drawings I did of crows while sketching ideas for the label.

Click HERE to go to the Deschutes website for more info.

Toronto Gallery Show

2008-09-20T04:52:41+00:00

The exhibit of my work at Lonsdale Gallery in Toronto has been extended until this Sunday, September 21, check it out if you're in town. Thanks to everyone that came out to the opening last month. For those that couldn't make it up north, scroll down to see the work and photos from the exhibit. Please e-mail or call the gallery about availability of the work, sizes, medium, etc., thanks:

Lonsdale Gallery 410 Spadina Road, Toronto, ON Canada M5P 2W2, tel: (416) 487-8733

e-mail: info@lonsdalegallery.com, Gallery director: Alejandro Cardona

Please click HERE for an online review of the exhibit. The work will also be part of the Toronto International Art Fair from October 2-6.

What a week

2008-09-19T16:59:21+00:00

This is for an article about embracing the economic doldrums. Have a nice weekend!

CLICK HERE for a fun vintage Alka-Seltzer ad.

SERGIO in The Washington Post!

2008-09-16T15:07:54+00:00

Sergio was offered a unique opportunity to explain the issues of the 2008 election to children in The Washington Post. For the next seven weeks until the election, Sergio will be featured in the KidsPost page of The Washington Post every Tuesday, reacting to issues such as the environment, the economy, education, energy, etc. This week's page is the environment and global warming. He made it to the cover of today's paper! (see above) The interior layouts are below.

The economy for Businessweek Magazine

2008-09-16T02:34:46+00:00

For about a year, I've been illustrating regularly for Businessweek on a number of subjects concerning the horrible economy—bad loans, investment banks, unemployment, etc. Some of the illustrations are below, along with an article from today by TIME's Joe Klein. He discusses John McCain's inability to deal with all of this.

September 15, 2008

Their Brand is Collapse

Posted by Joe Klein | Comments (146) | Permalink | Trackbacks (0) | Email This

John McCain is up with an ad touting his "experience" to deal with the financial crisis. But no specific experience is cited--which is attributable to the fact that McCain has been a happily orthodox Republican when it comes to financial regulation these past 26 years. He's against it. He's against Washington telling you how to run your business. The unseen hand of the market and all that...

This has been the long-standing Republican bait and switch--scaring small businesses with the threat of new regulations if the Democrats win, commiserating with larger businesses about the evils of environmental and plant safety rules, while lifting as many regulations as possible governing the financial titans whose credit should be at the heart of new economic development. But that hasn't been happening: the financial titans have been going for the quick buck rather than the sound one. Money and creativity have been redirected during the Reagan-Bush era away from substantive loans to real businesses into a Ponzi scheme of borrowing by investment bankers, so they could engage in the most irresponsible, if lucrative (for them) speculative lending imaginable...In this sense, the mortgage crisis was a perfect metaphor for Republican financial governance: Investment banks like Lehman--R.I.P.--took loans to invest money in...bad loans. In this case, the loans were bad mortgages. This is called throwing good money after bad.

Actually, John McCain has excellent experience--a ringside seat--in the vagaries of this experiment in greed and anarchy. He was a member of the Keating Five. This was the signature scandal of the Savings and Loan crisis, twenty years ago. It concerned the insider help that five Senators gave Charles Keating and his Lincoln Savings and Loan, in return for contributions and gifts. The deregulation of S&Ls--community banks dedicated to local mortgages (like George Bailey's bank in "It's A Wonderful Life")--enabled slick operators like Keating to make reckless loans in new areas where they had no expertise. The final tab to the taxpayers was $165 billion.

McCain wasn't the worst offender in the scandal. He was included in the Five to make it bipartisan (the other four were Democrats). But he knew Keating, partied with him, made inquiries on his behalf. He once told me that his role in the scandal was harder on him, in some ways, than being a prisoner of war "Because my honor was called into question."

After an experience like that, you might think Senator Honorable would have devoted himself to preventing other such crises--to making sure the Big Wall Street Casino was operating according to rules that wouldn't screw the small investors and, more to the point, the taxpayers. But he walked the anti-regulatory party line, with only occasional exceptions...and tried to lay down a smokescreen of righteousness by campaigning against small potato[e!]s like legislative earmarks--money to study the mating habits of, uh, crabs, in, uh, Alaska (proposed by Governor Honorable).

What we are seeing on Wall Street today is the result of an ideology gone amok. There was call to loosen and change the antiquated regulations governing investment back in 1980. But the Republican era has seen that loosening go to the point of near-cataclysm. Banks are failing, markets dropping. We are in the midst of a slow-motion economic crash. What happens next is an economic contraction: loans aren't available, so businesses can't expand. A crash comes at the beginning of a period of economic trouble.

John McCain, after his political near-death experience, could have made the responsible regulation of markets one of his great causes. He didn't. And today he said, once again, "The fundamentals of our economy are strong." I hope he's right, but it's entirely possible that he knows as much about our economy as Sarah Palin knows about The Bush Doctrine.

ENOUGH!

2008-09-10T20:04:40+00:00

Click HERE for video of Obama on the 'lipstick on a pig' phony media controversy o' the day.

SPD.org features discussion with artists in the POLITICS 08 exhibition

2008-09-06T03:29:18+00:00

Newsweek's Amid Capeci (former AD at Rolling Stone and Esquire) has hosted an online roundtable discussion with Philip Burke, Steve Brodner, Dan Adel, and Victor Juhasz at the Society of Publication Designers website. It's a great read and gives a lot of information about the work in the show, how the artists work, and the state of political caricature today.

Please check it out at the new SPD.org blog site HERE.

While you're there, wonder around the new website, it has a lot of interesting articles, worth checking it often. Many thanks to Amid for getting in touch and putting this together, he's always been a big fan of illustration.

Recent work for TIME magazine

2008-09-05T14:51:05+00:00

I've worked on a number of recent assignments for my former colleagues at TIME magazine and thought I'd put them up as a group. It's always nice to get a call from them.

This one was for a column by Michael Kinsley about voting for candidates based on their bios (McCain's time in Vietnam, Biden's loss of his wife and daughter in a car accident, etc.), and how campaigns take advantage of these kinds of voters by repeating the stories over and over.

This was for a column that discussed ways that the Olympics could change China's oppressive tendencies of the past and open up the country to the rest of the world.

Rudy Giuliani, by Hanoch Piven

2008-09-04T02:06:24+00:00

Giuliani is speaking at the Republican convention this evening. Tune in for his special brand of fear mongering which was nicely captured in this portrait by Hanoch Piven!
It is one of five portraits by Hanoch which are part of the POLITICS 08 show. This piece was published on the cover of The Progressive magazine.

PAL?N

2008-08-30T03:55:11+00:00

These are some quickie sketches I did this afternoon for Leanne Shapton at The New York Times Op Ed on the day's events—Obama stadium speech wind down/Palin VP selection. In the end we went with the image below, the intersection of events being a turning point for both parties.
Sarah Palin of Alaska, huh? This election gets more and more interesting all the time.
The letters and art are online HERE.

Barack Obama, by Philip Burke

2008-08-29T01:59:17+00:00

On this important day in American history, I wanted to post a portrait of Barack Obama. This painting by the great Philip Burke will be part of the upcoming POLITICS 08 show at The Society of Illustrators. The original art is on canvas and is 4 feet by 5 feet tall.

POLITICS 08, Opening reception, Friday September 12, 6-9pm, Society of Illustrators

2008-08-28T18:52:25+00:00

The Politics show I've been organizing is coming together.
The opening reception for the artists is Friday, September 12, 6-9pm.
FREE and open to the public.
Please come to the reception and bring your friends.
A list of the artists in the show is below,
thanks to all for taking part in this important exhibition.

Show at Lonsdale Gallery in Toronto, Opening this Saturday, August 16th, 1-4pm

2008-08-12T15:45:58+00:00

I'm part of a two person show in Toronto from August 16th to September 7th at Lonsdale Gallery. I'll be showing all of the drawings and paintings done for Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre, along with many of my Cuba drawings. A total of 50 works.

I'll be up in Toronto for the opening, please drop by on Saturday, August, 16th, 1-4pm, if you're in the city. Some of the works in the show are below. A number of the Cuba drawings were part of TIME magazine's feature here. This is the first time they will be for sale.

Please contact the gallery for pricing and availability:

Lonsdale Gallery
410 Spadina Road
Toronto, Ontario
e-mail: info@lonsdalegallery.com
tel: (416) 487-9604

'A Dog in a Hat' book cover

2008-08-05T01:37:07+00:00

This is a cover I did recently for a book about the world of cycling in Belgium. It's titled "A Dog in a Hat, an American Bike Racer's Story of Mud, Drugs, Blood, Betrayal, and Beauty in Belgium". Thought I'd post it up for all my fellow Drawger bicyclists. The book is available online here.

Work for Terra Magazine on troubled youth

2008-08-04T17:44:02+00:00

I worked on a cover and several interior images for Terra, a research magazine published by Oregon State University. They were highlighting a study on prisoners, looking at their childhood, teenage years, and what led them to gangs and violence. It also discussed ways to keep men from returning to prison once they were out.
The cover is above and the interiors below. I wanted something to bring together the interior images and thought of using the same shape, a red bandana/tie, to show the different stages—boy scout, gang member, and a businessperson. The art director is Santiago Uceda.

Work selected for Communication Arts Illustration Annual

2008-07-24T02:36:55+00:00

I had good luck this year with CA and got a nice number of images in the annual. I wanted to give thanks to the designers and A.D.'s I worked with for sending me these great projects.
The images selected were the series of Soulpepper theater posters (which also got into the upcoming CA design annual and received a Gold award from the 3x3 annual, Selected for Applied Arts Magazine, Coupe Magazine Awards, and Art Director's Club of Canada ) Anthony Swaneveld was the art director on those. Also selected were the Iraq War series, a portrait of Ray Barretto for The New Yorker, and the Celia Cruz image. All the images are below.
Great that the Celia the Queen poster was selected because it's for an independent film company, I really got to know the guys making the film and we talked a lot back and forth about what they wanted to convey. They were very happy it got into CA. The film is being shown again this Friday, July 25, as part of the New York Latino film Festival, Director's Guild Theater, 110 West 57th Street. Info on tickets here.
A lot of other Drawgers are in the CA annual as well—Taxali, O'Brien, Zina, Campbell, Stauffer, Hundley, Kunz, Buzelli, Burckhardt, Nabaum, Hendrix, Allen, Parada, Bakal, Rogers, Stephanos. Check it out at the newsstand, looks good.

Op-Eds for the NY Times

2008-07-22T01:21:19+00:00

Has Brian Rea left NYC yet? Whenever I think I've worked on the last assignment with Brian, he calls with a new one. This one is for Today's Op-Ed titled "The Risk of Too Much Oversight" about how all the numerous Congressional committees restrict and get in the way of the Homeland Security department's ability to defend the country. I had a number of ideas and Brian ended up going with this one which I liked. The article is here.
Below are some other recent jobs for the Op Ed page on a variety of subjects. I've worked with Kim Bost, Brian's assistant on some of those. It's been a pleasure working with Brian over the years. He's always been patient, smart, and cool under a lot of pressure.

POLITICS '08

2008-07-21T19:40:36+00:00

I'm curating a show for the Society of Illustrators about the 2008 election. The show will open right after the Democratic and Republican conventions, on September 4, and run through October 4. The opening reception is Friday, September 12, mark your calendars!
Most of the work is coming together and it's looking great. A press release is below:

"The Way of the World", poster for Soulpepper Theatre

2008-07-21T01:27:05+00:00

This is the art for a play titled "The Way of the World" by William Congreve. The show opened at Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto on July 2 and runs through August 2. Here is a description from the theatre's catalogue:

"William Congreve's Restoration masterpiece is one of the wittiest, sauciest, and most loved of English language comedies. Peopled with a wonderful variety of characters, the play is particularly distinguished in its creation of the unforgettably assertive women. A rare commodity: a very sexy, very smart and very funny play."

Here's to Tom Trapnell

2008-07-17T02:32:53+00:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Los Angeles for the first time. There were a lot of people and places I wanted to see, but at the top of the list was an attempt to meet someone I had only known as a soothing voice on the phone for years. That person is Tom Trapnell.
I was somewhere near the ocean in L.A., got in my car, and thought I’d drive to the L.A. Times downtown and surprise Tom. It really takes a long time to get anywhere in L.A., but I eventually got to the Times building, found my way up to the Opinion section, and got to meet Tom. He’s a warm and inviting guy in person, and very interested in all of us and what we do. I could tell he is an avid reader of Drawger because he was on top of the latest discussions at the site here.
Tom is probably the calmest and most reassuring art director I’ve ever worked with. The deadlines are usually one to two day turnarounds, but he never loses his cool. This is the kind of person that makes you want to work harder and stay up later than usual.
Yesterday, many of us got a message from Tom that he was being let go by the L.A. Times as part of their downsizing. It’s very unfortunate and upsetting news, but I know that an art director of such talent and grace will go on to even bigger and better things. If you’ve worked with Tom, it would be great to hear some of your stories. Here’s to Trapnell!
------------------------------
Below are a few of my illustrations that were art directed by Tom Trapnell for the L.A. Times over the years.

12 things I learned at ICON5

2008-07-08T03:31:41+00:00

Zimm at ICON

2008-07-05T06:25:51+00:00

Zimm interviewed by Julia Breckenreid at ICON5 on Friday. Some snippets below. What a riot! Fun times.

Zimm video #1 CLICK HERE

Zimm video #2 CLICK HERE

ICON5, Day 2

2008-07-04T07:01:44+00:00

ICON5 NYC, Day 1

2008-07-03T18:18:32+00:00

ICON Limited edition poster signing

2008-07-01T18:30:17+00:00

If you're an art director and would like to get your hands on a free limited edition print of my ICON poster, drop by the Roadshow portfolio review event going on this Wednesday as part of the illustration conference. The posters are printed on heavyweight Mohawk fine paper, ready for framing.

When: Tomorrow, Wednesday, July 2, 5-6pm
Where: Roosevelt Hotel, Madison Avenue and 45th Street, NYC

More info about the ICON Roadshow here. A great place to meet illustrators face to face and see their recent work. A mix of new and established illustrators, check out the link above for the full list.

I'm just back from the American Library Association convention in L.A., a fun and crazy event with about 15,000 librarians, publishers, kids, etc. I've got my signing hand on ice for the day and will be back to 100% signing capacity by tomorrow evening!

Great to have met the Drawgers on the West Coast on Saturday. More to come....

"'Night, Mother", Poster for Soulpepper Theatre

2008-06-21T02:08:38+00:00

This is part of the series of posters I've done for Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto. The performance runs through this week.
'Night Mother is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Drama Desk, and Four Tony Awards, and deals with the difficult relationship between a mother and daughter. It takes place during one sitting as the mother and daughter discuss their life, the mother knits, and the daughter threatens suicide. I wanted to work with a red knitting thread in some way to hint at the idea of the family's complicated and violent story unraveling before the audience.

All About My Father

2008-06-15T05:32:26+00:00

Last month, I had some memorable times with my father when he flew up for a film premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. I’ve been meaning to write about it and thought father’s day would be a good time to do so.

Cesareo Rodriguez was born in Havana, Cuba, in 1938. Back then c-section births were a rare occurrence. This being the doctor’s first such operation, he asked my grandmother to name the kid Cesareo, and that’s how he got his name. In his childhood, a cousin began to call him “Tato”, (the name is pronounced like the phrase “some say patatoe, I say po-Tato”) and the new name stuck. He’s been “Tato” ever since. I call him “Pipo”.
My dad grew up in a farm in the countryside of the province of Havana until 1944, when a hurricane razed the house and the family moved to El Gabriel, a tiny speck of a town, surrounded by vibrant red earth and sugar cane fields. He went to school, but admits to being dense and not being very interested in the whole enterprise. He left school after the 5th grade to work in the fields and in the town’s various bodegas.
As a teenager in the 50’s, he began taking trips to the big city, Havana, with his friends. He was a huge music fan and delighted in going to the many live radio shows that were going on at the time. He met and spoke with many of the musicians and singers of the time. Things were very informal and the musicians were very accessible. One of the many singers he met was Celia Cruz, one of his favorites.

My parents met in 1961, two years after the Cuban revolution. My father was 23 and my mom a mature 15… She likes to say that she was living on a desolate farm, the youngest of seven sisters and was looking for a way out, and this skinny kid showed up and swept her away. They married in 1965 and my sister was born later that year to what has been described to me by my parents as extreme poverty. I was born six years later, in 1971, at a time when we were supposedly “rich” by comparison. “Rich” meaning that we had an egg on our plate every night.
My dad was apparently a hard drinking, smoking, and dancing party guy in his youth. I say apparently, because around the time I was born he made a promise to stop smoking and drinking and live a life that would be a good example to his kids. I’ve never seen him put a beer bottle or a cigarette to his lips, it’s hard to even imagine such a thing. He kept on dancing though.

The 1970s were a time in Cuba when the Russians were very involved in the country’s industries. Sugar harvest goals were set and more construction materials came into the farm towns to build housing for the people working in the sugar harvest. My dad (always the businessman), became very adept at working the black market to get materials to build our small house. A delivery of sand for some bananas, 30 concrete blocks for a sack of mangoes and so on. This became the way of life in the country. You woke up every day trying to figure out how you could get food, with whom you would trade, and how to avoid getting caught by the Communists. During the construction of our house, my dad was blinded in one eye by a piece of wood from a table saw, that’s why many of the pictures from the time show him wearing dark glasses. He regained some peripheral vision later on.

My dad had been thinking about leaving Cuba since the Russians got involved in the country’s affairs. The sneaking around, being spied on by neighbors, the pressures to fit into the ideals of the revolution and the general economic and political situation had progressively become too much to bear. The country required military service of all boys and many were being sent to fight revolutions in Africa and Central America. My dad did not want me to be sent off to fight for a country whose political ideals he detested, so he got to work on ways to get us out of the country. One way was asking for asylum in a country like Spain. In the late 70’s, we went ahead and did that, made the applications, got our passports, and began the waiting process. I was already 8 years old, and he was determined to get us out before I turned 14, when it became harder, due to the upcoming military service requirements. No one of military age was allowed to leave the country. We were now, officially, a family that had announced its opposition to the Revolution.

In the Spring of 1980, an opportunity to leave the country presented itself—The Mariel Boatlift. Some of our family from the U.S. had chartered a shrimp boat, owned by a couple of guys from Jamaica, to go down to Cuba and pick us up. My parents had to make a decision of whether to wait several more years and hope to have the opportunity to take a plane to Spain, or follow through on the more dangerous option of taking a boat across the Straits of Florida to Key West. My mother had always been very cautious about putting her kids at risk, but my father always wanted to move forward, to give his kids opportunities that he never had. The situation in Cuba was deteriorating, at any time my father could be jailed by the government, so they decided the boat was a risk that had to be taken.
Immediately, our house and its contents were confiscated, and we were taken away by the military, with only a quick goodbye to our grandparents and neighbors. We mistakenly thought that we were being taken to our awaiting boat immediately. Instead, we were interned in a detention camp for the next week. This was a very complicated time, which I would like to write more about in the future. The relevant point at this time is the things my father did at the camp that I will never forget. There was very little food. He only ate bread and water the entire week, and gave all of his rations to myself and my sister.   He kept the extended family together and constantly questioned the camp guards about our status until the day we boarded a bus to our departing boat.

Once on the boat, we met the cousins from Miami that came to get us and met the boat owners from Jamaica. We were also introduced to the dozens of criminals that Castro’s government had dumped on our boat. My father knew what was going on and took charge of the boat, dividing it into sections for family, prisoners, and those from insane asylums. Fortunately, the trip went well, we landed in Key West the following morning and were full of joy to have made it through the entire ordeal.

Once in Miami, my father and mother worked tirelessly just to meet the basic bills of the new country. My dad worked construction during the day, security at night, and sold things at the flea market on the weekend—all the time saying how great this country was. How the freedom was priceless.
Eventually, he got into towing cars for a living. He bought a pickup truck, welded a steel beam to the back and hung a hand pulled hook mechanism from the back and began towing cars for junk yards. My parents were both working during the Summers and didn’t know where to put me. So, from the time I was 8, I was at my dad’s side every Summer. The truck and the junk yards was my version of Summer camp I guess. My dad and I didn’t talk about much at home, but on the truck, everything was discussed. I think it had something to do with the fact that we didn’t have to look at each other. We just looked at the road ahead and talked about all sorts of things—history, politics, the family, girls.   We used to drive into a lot of crime ridden areas of Miami to pick up cars. I knew when we were in a bad part of town when he would say “stay in the truck” and he would pull out a thick piece of cut electrical wire from the back and place it on his seat. “Dad, we need a gun, not a piece of wire” I would say. He would give me a look and say “ I could never kill somebody, so what’s the purpose of having a gun around here”. Then he would walk off, a saint on a gold chain around his neck as his only protector.

Since I helped keep my dad’s books, the truck is where I learned most of the basics about business. He used to pay me $1 a week for a long time. I negotiated that to $10 a week, and then to $10 a day in junior high. My dad would always say that the client was #1, that he had to come through, be on time, be fair on pricing and I always paid attention to his advice.   My dad also had a low tolerance for B.S., and loved his freelance status, so he would tell certain clients to beat it if they were bugging him too much or not paying on time. His business grew steadily into the 90’s and eventually got to own three trucks and employed a couple of people.

Every single day, as we rode, my dad would tell me to study and go to school, so I wouldn’t have to work on a truck for a living. The hotter the summer got, the more I paid attention to his advice. By the time I finished high school I didn’t want anything to do with a truck. I decided to go off to college and to go to New York, I had never even been on a plane before.   My mother wanted me to stay in Miami, to stay with the family. It was a very difficult time as I tried to work through all of this with my parents. In the end, it was my dad that took me to the airport, by himself. He put $200 in my pocket, hugged and kissed me, and wished me luck.

So, it was with great joy that I was able to involve my dad in the Celia Cruz film I worked on recently. He appeared in an interview in the film, in his truck, discussing his time as a teenager in Havana, meeting Celia Cruz, his passion for her music, his love of his son, and how he passed on Celia’s music to me.
He flew up to New York at the end of April, walked the red carpet, was interviewed by the press, and got to meet some of his favorite music stars which were in attendance at the premiere.   We went to the after party and he danced up a storm as everyone looked on. Any and all energy and enthusiasm for music I have was passed on from the old man.   At the end of the night, he was beside himself at how far we had come and what had become of us, those people on that boat back in 1980.

I never thought that my dad would retire and leave his truck behind. Next month, he turns 70, and he says he’s ready to leave it all behind. He’s selling the truck and giving all of his clients away. It’s really taken me aback. While he was on that truck, he seemed ageless, like he would last forever. Moving on to the next phase of his life has made me realize that my dad is not Superman, that every day that goes by is one day closer to the day I won’t have him around anymore. It makes me appreciate the time we have together even more.

When I started working at TIME magazine, my dad kept copies of TIME in his truck.   Whenever he picked someone up, he would excitedly tell them that his son worked at TIME magazine. He would open up the magazine to the staff list and show them my name. He’s my biggest fan and greatest cheerleader.   He’s so happy for me, and I’m forever greatful to him for having brought me to this country, for having taken me to the airport that day I went off to college, and for giving me the opportunity to express myself through my work. Freedom is priceless indeed.

Feliz Dia de los Padres, Pipo. Te quiere, tu hijo, Edel

More art for ICON5

2008-06-11T14:22:01+00:00

In addition to the ICON5 poster, I worked on a number of things for the sponsor booklet, bag, t-shirts, etc. Most of these were done with brush and ink and are more gestural than the final poster.
Some were done as additional concepts for the poster, and others were done specifically for the sponsor booklet, a printed piece that ICON sends out in advance to sponsors which includes information about the conference and asks them to contribute to the event.

This is a set of cards that Xerox is printing up and handing out to all attendees at the conference.

Poster for ICON5, The Illustration Conference

2008-06-05T02:20:26+00:00

Last summer I was asked by Whitney Sherman, the president of ICON5 to create the poster and artwork for the illustration conference. I was able to do whatever I wanted for the poster and this is what I came up with. A bunch of illustration freaks invading New York City and the locals typically going about their business. One of the memorable things from the carnivals I went to as a kid were images of people walking around with large paper maché heads bobbing from side to side as they danced through the parade. This was one of the inspirations for this image.

Some of the past posters were heavy on the typography so I wanted this one to be more about the illustration. I decided on doing the type as a subway sign at the top and have it be part of the art. Dave Plunkert and his firm, SPUR Design, are doing all of the design and production work for the conference and he has been very helpful throughout this big project. I believe they sent out about 5,000 posters in the mail, they should have arrived by now. The art will also be on a number of street light banners in NYC, on the program cover, and on a set of playing cards that Xerox is putting together to hand out at the conference.

Thanks to Whitney, Dave, and the rest of the ICON Board (including Drawger's own Don Kilpatrick and Nancy Stahl) for letting me do whatever I wanted with this poster. The Board has been working hard on this conference and I appreciate their work. I've spent a lot of time on this image and a number of other illustrations for the program, banners, and sponsor brochure, and realize how much work goes into ICON. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone at The Roosevelt Hotel in NYC, July 2-5!

I'll be doing a signing of these posters on Wednesday, July 2, 5-6pm at the Roadshow portfolio review event. Go to the website here to sign up for the conference and read more about it.

A larger view of the art here, some details and a pencil study below:

SERGIO @ Books of Wonder & other stuff

2008-05-29T13:00:55+00:00

I'll be signing copies of SERGIO Makes a Splash! this Saturday, May 31, at Books of Wonder in NYC, 12-2pm. 18 West 18th Street, NY, NY 10011 (212) 989-3270. This is a picture book event with other authors and artists all presenting our new picture books (Dianne Goode, Deb Lucke, Raina Moore, Kelly Murpy, Nancy Tufari, and Matthew Van Fleet). Please Drop by if you're in the area.

In other news, I just found out that Sergio will be published in French! A book publisher in Paris is picking it up for Spring 2009, looking forward to getting a copy of that.

I've been having a lot of fun at book events. It feels great to hear the kids laughing at the story and to see them draw their own version of the character. Some pictures and drawings from a recent visit to my daughter's school are below. The entire class was terrific!

Scenes from a parade.

2008-05-26T20:34:40+00:00

Arthur Russell portrait for The New Yorker

2008-05-22T01:25:13+00:00

This is a recent portrait of the musician and composer Arthur Russell for The New Yorker.

From the magazine—"Matt Wolf’s documentary, “Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell,” reconstructs the emergence and all too quick dissolve of the musician and composer, who died of AIDS in 1992—as well as the rise and fall of the downtown New York community that nurtured him..." More online here.

A selection from the documentary is below. I wasn't familiar with his work until now, but think people here might know his music so I thought I'd mention the documentary that has been put together. Some of my sketches are below.

Documentary clip:

Today's Op-Ed: Myanmar

2008-05-19T18:33:52+00:00

I got a call on Friday afternoon from Brian at the Op-Ed page. He needed a final....that afternoon. Okay! I got to work and did a number of quick sketches which are below. The final art above was printed today, it's a combination of ink washes and oil based ink line.
The subject of the Op-Ed are the sanitation problems that will likely arise in Myanmar due to the cyclone that has devastated the area's plumbing systems. Cholera and other diseases could cause more deaths than the initial storm. The article is titled "Send in the Latrines" and can be read online here.

New York Times Book Review Cover

2008-05-19T00:49:57+00:00

This illustration is on the cover of today's New York Times Book Review. The featured book is titled "Netherland" by Joseph O'Neill. For a larger view of the art, click here. Nicholas Blechman is the art director and it's always a pleasure working with him.

The full review is at the NY Times site here. The storyline is a complex mix of life in New York after 9/11 and the solace the main character finds in the world of cricket players in NYC. Here are some quotes from the review:

"The plot in “Netherland” runs on two tracks. The first tells the story of a family. The narrator, Hans van den Broek, is a Dutch-born equities analyst (he compares himself, in terms of influence if not infamy, to Henry Bldget) who lives in a TriBeCa loft with his British-born wife, Rachel, and their son. When 9/11 forces them to flee farther uptown, they end up living, almost by accident, in the shabby-glamorous Chelsea Hotel, and it is there that their marriage slowly cracks apart.Rachel wants to take their son back to London and her family. He’ll be safer there, far from George Bush and the United States, a country she has begun to think of as “ideologically diseased.” Hans, unsure of his feelings, starts to believe he is “a political-ethical idiot.” O’Neill writes beautifully about what it sometimes felt like in the months after 9/11, when you couldn’t attend a dinner party unless you were intellectually armed for hours of bitter debate."

"The book’s second story line, and perhaps its more resonant one, is about the solace Hans finds in the vibrant subculture of cricket in New York, where he is among the few white men to be found on the hundreds of largely West Indian teams in the city, teams that fan out, in the hazy summertime, across scrabby, lesser-known public parks."

“All people, Americans, whoever, are at their most civilized when they’re playing cricket,” he explains. “What’s the first thing that happens when Pakistan and India make peace? They play a cricket match. Cricket is instructive, Hans. It has a moral angle. ... I say, we want to have something in common with Hindus and Muslims? Chuck Ramkissoon is going to make it happen. With the New York Cricket Club, we could start a whole new chapter in U.S. history. Why not?”

SERGIO news and pics

2008-05-16T05:33:04+00:00

I'll be at the Children's Museum of Manhattan Playworks exhibit this Saturday at 11 a.m. signing SERGIO Makes A Splash! and drawing with the kids. Drop by if you're in the area.

Below are some pictures from a recent signing at Barnes and Noble in Morris Plains. It's a lot of fun and rewarding to see kids interact with the book. I read, they asked questions, and they drew their own versions of Sergio! That was pretty cool. Even fellow Drawger Mike Moran showed up and got in on the drawing action.

Sergio is a bit of a procrastinator and hasn't finished his snazzy website. In the meantime sergiothepenguin.com is being forwarded over to my original post here which will be updated with info and pics until the official site is finished, probably around 2028...

Sergio received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly. I've been told that's a very good thing. Here's the Publisher's Weekly review:

Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review):
"Sergio the penguin isn't afraid of all water—just “the very deep kind.” But with the help of floaties, a snorkel, a life preserver, he discovers that taking the plunge isn't so bad after all. A penguin with a fear of swimming is both a comic and a useful premise—plenty of similarly haunted readers will want to laugh at Rodriguez's (Float Like a Butterfly) sympathetic presentation, and his illustrations guarantee that they'll be able to share the fun, too. Rendered in a minimalist, three-color palette (aqua, midnight blue and orange), these mostly full-spread images each pack a poster-like punch (Rodriguez is an acclaimed poster designer as well as a former Time art director). He finds occasions for jokes (on the walls of Sergio's bedroom hang framed portraits of other black-and-white creatures: cow, Dalmatian, panda, zebra, soccer player), creates dynamic vignettes and makes even Sergio's back look expressive. One of those rare books that doesn't sacrifice child appeal in its embrace of up-to-the-minute visual techniques. Ages 3–6.

Mike Moran's Sergio is pretty neat!

NY Times Week in Review cover

2008-05-14T01:05:33+00:00

This was the cover I illustrated for last week's Week in Review cover. The subject is race, the Democratic Party, and how the current split in the party between Hillary and Obama supporters could have lasting effects for the party. Aviva Michaelov is the art director for this section. I've done a few of these covers and it's always fun working with her.

Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art until May 18th

2008-05-09T01:30:00+00:00

I'm heading down to Philly to check out the Frida Kahlo exhibition which closes on May 18th. It was at the Walker Art Center before and will go to The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in June. The exhibit will only be shown at these three venues. 42 paintings and 100 photographs.
Kahlo is one of my favorite artists and it's hard to let this show go by without seeing it. Check it out if you are in the area. Info here on the show. A review by Peter Schjeldahl from The New Yorker here.
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"Organized in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth, Frida Kahlo is the first major Kahlo exhibition in the United States in nearly fifteen years. It presents over forty of the artist's most important self-portraits, still lifes, and portraits from the beginning of her career in 1926 until her death in 1954. Rendered in vivid colors and realistic detail, Kahlo's jewel-like paintings are filled with complex symbolism, often relating to specific incidents in her life. In her iconic self-portraits the artist continually reinvented herself. Paintings like The Two Kahlos (1939) demonstrate her penchant for self-examination, and works like Henry Ford Hospital (1932) and The Broken Column (1944) express her struggles with illness throughout her life. "

Today's Op-Ed: "Dungeons & Austrians"

2008-05-02T14:23:37+00:00

Article by John Wray for the NY Times begins....
"AUSTRIA, that lovely little Alpine republic on the banks of the Danube, has a new and deeply lamentable claim to international notoriety: As of this past weekend, we officially lead the free world in the abduction and confinement of young girls in soundproof, subterranean apartments......" The rest of the article is at the Times website here. It's a good read on a horrible subject which seems to have just gotten tabloid headlines so far.
I wanted to show a quiet and peaceful Austrian landscape (rendered like one of those paintings a tourist would buy at a shop) with the horrors going on below the surface. Some details below.

Author Appearance Schedule for "Sergio Makes a Splash!"

2008-04-28T02:15:31+00:00

I'll be doing a series of talks, book signings, and readings of my new children's book, Sergio Makes a Splash! The Children's Museum of Manhattan date will also include a drawing demonstration. The schedule is below, hope to see you there—bring the kids!
Thanks for the nice responses to the book. I've even heard from some adults that are still afraid to swim. Maybe I've struck a chord. A kids' book with a built-in adult audience!

Here are the current author appearance dates, more events may be added over the Summer:

Tuesday, April 19 - Princeton, NJ
4:30 PM
Barnes & Noble
3535 US Route 1, Princeton, NJ 08540
(609) 897-9250
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Saturday, May 3 – Morris Plains, NJ
11:00 AM
Barnes & Noble – Storytime Event
1940 Route 10 West, Morris Plains, NJ 07950
(973) 644-9482
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Saturday, May 17 – New York City
11:00 AM
Children’s Museum of Manhattan
212 West 83rd Street, NY, NY 10024
(212) 721-1223
(Reading/drawing demonstration will take place in the PlayWorks Exhibit for Early Childhood)
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Thursday, July 10 – New York City
12:00 PM
Barnes & Noble – Summer in the Square
33 East 17th Street, NY, NY 10003
(212) 253-0819