The Texture & Specificity of Life

In 2006, the summer after I graduated from college, I was working and living in Santa Cruz, Ca, when I broke my collarbone while skateboarding and talking on the cell phone, two great tastes that dont always go so well together.  These are the drawings I made during the rest of the summer, with my left hand.  It was really interesting how direct and figurative they turned out, and I think all my work since then has been about balancing the intuitive symbolic/representational figurative vision of my right brain (as expressed in this work) with the analytic, deconstructive, and calculating elaborations and experiments of my left brain.  The darkly comic political catoons in this series reflect the sense of malaise and techno-nhilism, and search for hope and meaning despite this, of a West Coast Leftie after a term and a half of the disatrous Bush II presidency. "A Finger Points To The Moon" (R.D. Laing), 2006, ink and colored pencil on paper, 11 x 14 inches ...

As you may or may not know, for the past few years I've been deeply involved in the developement of a brand of site-specific temporary gallery spaces created and curated for various art and cutural events.  I called this project the Branches Mobile Gallery , as a continuation of  Branches Gallery  that began in my loft appartment in Oakland's Jingletown distrtrict in 2009.  Last weekend I did my last event with the group and will be focusing on my studio and design practice while I continue to let my back heal and enjoy living slowly and thinking deeply and enjoying life until the apocalypse comes.  Here's a couple shots from our pop-up at last Friday's Oakland Art Murmur .