Roots Design: Art and Architecture for the People

So I did get back surgery, almost ten weeks ago, at the end of August.  It was a successful operation, but the recovery process has been arduously slow, and intitally very painful. During the first few weeks of the recovery period, doctor's order's were "frequent short walks", and rest.  Luckily, my grandmother's house has the best backyard in the world for walking around in circles in. The first week home from the hospital I noticed a change taking place in the majestic old live oak tree that presides over the space at the far side of my circuit.  The foliage appeared to be thinning, and there was a faint popping and clicking I began to notice when standing under it, barely audible over the normal rustle of the wind in the boughs, but if I held real still (keeping those core muscles engaged...) It began in the higher branches, but after a few weeks, the lower branches began to loose their leaves as well and when I inspected I discovered that there were thou...

Nomad, 2012, oil on panel, 24 x 30 inches, framed. Available  Mama Fukushima, 2013, mixed media on reclaimed shelving, 13.5 x 24 x .75 inches. Available  $425 Native State, 2013, mixed media on birch ply, 8.5 x 11.5 x.5 inches. Available  $145 City Roots: Singapore, 2013, ink, graphite, colored pencil on birch ply, 8.75 x 24 x .75 inches. Sold. City Roots: LA, 2013, ink, graphite on maple, 9 x 24 x .75 inches. Sold. Organipocalypse, NY, 2013, ink, graphite on maple ply, 10 x 24 x .75 inches, available. $395 City Roots: Empire, 2013, graphite on maple ply, 10.75 x 18 x .75 inches, available. $345 City Roots Hong Kong, 2013, graphite, ink on birch, 7.75 x 9.25 x .5 inches, available, $250. City Roots Dubai, 2013, graphite, ink on birch, 8.75 x 9.25 x .5 inches, available, $250  

JQ City Roots Timelapse Pt 2 from Jordan Quintero on Vimeo . "After watching the (excellent) film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road" last night, I realize that basically all the art I have ever made has been about the Apocalypse. Not the Apocalypse of St John, but rather the environmental and nuclear and genocidal apocalypse that is currently happening, right now. It is the background to my entire life, and in my work especially, the relationship betweeen background and foreground, subject and object, content and form are symbiotic, amorphous and continually in flux. I've been working on describing my work, and if I had to pin down a theme, well, how could anybody working right now make art about anything else? It seems to be important, as an artist, to document these goings on, and their effects on subjectivity, consciousness. If any intelligence might be around to look at stuff later, it would be good for them, poignant and stuff, for the...

Structure: To my mind, the moment and them memory are the mysterious quanta at the forefront of human understanding that need to be analyzed, cogitated, measured, and theorized in much the same way as Max Plank's quantic energies of a century ago.  (as explained by Mr. Richard Fyneman) Meaning and Artwork: Labor is important in my notion of artwork because of my interest in meaning (semiotics).  In architecture, also, codes and meaning, responsibility for "every mark made on the page", is an a priori supposition. In woodworking: if every move you make is a pain in the ass, you make sure it's the right move first. Also in painting. But, there is the notion that all thought is only precursor or corollary to intuition.  So my paintings are trying to hold both analysis and intuition, calculation and feeling, and are often about that struggle.  Art is the place where message and metaphor flow into each other, content and form embrace fully, and th...