posted: August 27, 2010

Brother Brodner is right, as usual, in his post about the stabbing this week of a Muslim taxi driver in NYC. These are weird times, and there’s plenty of hate to go around; the controversy around Lower Manhattan Muslim Community Center, the on-going war in Afghanistan, the anniversary of Katrina, and the recent BP blowout, and now, Saturday, we have this . . . Glenn Beck at The Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech. Beck thinks he’s the guy to be “Restoring Honor” to our country. Wow. I wonder if he knows what Dr. King stood for.  There’s an interesting article by David Swerdlick on The Root that spells out that MLK’s views were Pro-Labor, Anti War, Pro Affirmative Action, Anti-Poverty, and he would be, most certainly, Pro-Obama.
 
Beck’s said some crazy things leading up to this event, it’ll be interesting to see what is said on Saturday.

posted: August 9, 2010

That whirring sound you hear is probably coming from the grave of Stuart Davis.
 
A good friend of mine just finished rehabbing a building near my studio and he asked me for a painting that could be hung in the entry stairwell. The only kind of painting I can do is done with tape and flat colors, and a lot of touch-up.
Lately, I’ve been looking at Stuart Davis’ paintings and reading about his life and ideas. His work appeals to the graphic designer in me, and it seems to me to be an accurate reflection of American urban life. It also seems to me that Davis developed a style of painting that has been largely forgotten, and that I could maybe extend it a bit.  So my idea was to use Davis’ vocabulary and make a picture of the Pasadena neighborhood. There’s a pawnshop on one side of the building and a porn shop on the other. Main Stem is a jazz phrase that means any main drag of any town. The main street here is called Colorado. Davis put the words “lines thicken” in one of his paintings.

posted: August 2, 2010

Six drawings per movie,in sequence,no movie stars

Name That Movie

posted: July 28, 2010

There are still some magazines out here using illustrators for covers. The Saturday Evening Post called for an image to accompany an optimistic article about the American Economic Recovery. They had the idea of an updated Rosie-the-Riveter-style worker with a big “Made In America” rubber stamp. Even when a client has a clear idea of what they want, I’ll try sending over some other concepts too, to look at some other options and maybe move the idea forward. The silhouetted figure filled with industrial scenes was too focused on building, and the Jean Carlu glove idea didn’t fit the article or the Post’s brand as well as the smiling Rosie with a row of workers marching forward. So, my main task was to re-create a classic WPA poster style, sometimes style and concept are the same thing.
I didn’t know the issue was on the stands until my mom called to tell me a friend of hers bought a copy at the grocery store and spotted my name. For a minute there, I felt just like Norman Rockwell.

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