Roots Design: Art and Architecture for the People

"...we're prone to overestimate our own agency in nature....Our grammar might teach us to divide the world into active subjects and passive objects, but in a coevolutionary relationship every subject is also an object, every object a subject." Michael Pollan, in The Botany of Desire Lately I've found myself engaged again and again in contemplation, analysis, meditation on what constitutes "nature" and "the natural".    This is, of course, the ancient philosophic question of "the good".  In visual art, it is that play between the geometrically perfect conception, a drafted representation of a thing in itself, and the shaky, sloppy, imperfect movements that more accurately record and express the psychic and physical being of the artist, his mutability, his reality,  that I feel characterizes all "great" art.  What is it "the struggle of the artist against his limitations" Vonnegut said... It is the search, the strugg...

It's a hard thing not to be overwhelmed by fear and sadness and anger at the apparent injustice of the universe.  It's hard to believe the universe has gone through all the trouble to develop our consciousness and left that terrible design flaw that borders it, and it's seemingly arbitrary application (hello, mister death). The studio process is a way for me to make something beautiful and honest and true out of those emotions of frustration, sadness and anger.  It is a way of seeking understanding, and acceptance, and hope.  It seems nature possesses a fundamental understanding of itself, it is terrible economy and strict logic that balances inside and outside, up and down, left and right. Compared to the amorphous nature of emotion and meaning in our subjective experience, there is strong cool comfort in a horizon, a load path, light and shade and shadow.  In painting, I seek to negotiate a balance between the inner and outer spaces of my being.  I always b...

I remember the afternoon I knew I was an artist.  I was nineteen, homeless and broke and probably stoned, laying in the grass staring up at the palm trees near the beach in Santa Barbara.  It was getting dark and the trees had darkened into silhouettes swaying and dancing in the wind.  They looked like something from a Dr. Sues book: magical, ominous and beautiful.  Somehow both silly and important at the same time.  I drew them while the shadows reached out to drink in the mountains, and art helped keep the darkness at bay. I like the rhythm of making artwork.  The way image and mark, material and support, concept and intuition all relate and connect reminds me of mythology.  I often mine mythological narratives for content in my work.  My goal is for people to be able to look at my art after living with it for years and still feel as if they are discovering new meanings and experiences through it. Sometimes my work turns out ugly or dar...

In conjunction with my studio practice, I have developed a passion for producing events and organizing exhibitions of my fellow contemporary artists.  I love to curate a show because it's like mixing records for a dance floor, you take discreet elements' energies and turn them into a new thing.   My latest project as a curator will be a group show called The New Mystics: West Coast Painters.  It will run Nov 1-Dec 7th at Jellyfish Gallery in San Francisco. Thomas Christopher Haag is preparing to pull up stakes. I recently caught up with Thomas Christopher Haag, one of the New Mystics and talked a little about his process, the art hustle, and the mystical experience we call life.  He had informed me via email that he was preparing to enter a new phase in his life and wanted to meet to talk about his participation this fall.  Thomas has been a working artist for the past ten years, living and showing in Seattle, Alberquerque, and Oakland, and is planning ...

getupstandup, oil/graphite on panel, 21 x 27 inches getupstandup detail                                       progression 1, oil on panel, 10 x 12 inches                                          progressions 2, oil on panel, 10 x 12 inches                                 progressions 3, oil on panel, 10 x 12 inches                                 Been five months since I ruptured a disc in my spine.  Worst injury I've ever sustained in my life so far.  I made these during the dark days of April and May, working for fifteen or twenty minute stretches, until the pain became unbearable a...