Double Double: part 2

So this is the installation.  Christina Lopez and I would like to thank Barlett Events for all their support and for the wonderful opportunity.  I couldn't be more pleased with the final result. Be sure to check out more of my art at my official website.

inside

Happy Cloud

Sad Sun

Indifferent Cactus

Family

machine

welcome.

Double Double

 So I missed last week and now I've got about 3 weeks worth of content.  But you, lucky reader, get it in two installments in a blog rock block.  Here you can see the scale model next to the rough carved block.  You'll see below how I converted my foyer into something out of American Psycho.  I taped the doorways and covered the entryway in plastic.  My building was nice enough to let me sand in the loading dock.

 Do you like Huey Lewis and the News?

Craziness

6hrs of clean-up

Thank you loading dock

Belly

so smooth

Covered in plaster

wait, crap, I don't have a place to sand plaster effectively

Batting on the back

Fuzzy wuzzy

Hard Front, soft back

Softy

Stencils

Sad Sun

Laying concrete

Perfect fit

Snug as a bug

Perfect fit

All set

Shadow base

Zoidberg?

Big News Public Art

 So this is a big week.  It’s been one year since I said that I would try to put out a blog post every Tuesday.  With 40+ posts since, I’d say I’ve done alright.  But the real big news is the public artwork I am working on with Christina Lopez for Bartlett Events in Roxbury.  For those of you who don’t know Bartlett yard is an abandoned bus depot in Roxbury that is under new ownership.  There, several artists have been selected to paint murals and install artwork.  The space is intended to help revitalize a community plagued by crime and neglect.  Ultimately, the whole bus depot will be torn down to make way for affordable living spaces for people in the community and artists.  The opening event is this Saturday and should be a pretty great time with artists painting as well as food trucks and other activities.

 Christina and I are privileged to be given the only interior space on site for our work.  To Draw attention to the intrinsic beauty of the urban decay Christina decided to paint all of the fixtures exuberant colors.  Together we went over every doo-dad and fixture.  This week I will be white washing the walls and installing a fiberglass sculpture in the center of the space.  I know what you’re thinking, “You’re going to make a six foot resin sculpture in under a week?” and I say unto you, “yes.”  Madness.

This sculpture will eventually be white with gray tones.  This is the 1/10th scale model I'm working from

Sexy, no?

 So i drove to Egypt to buy styrofoam in a very large block.  Turned out it was such a large block that it didn't fit in the rental SUV  so they had to cut it... 4 times!

This resulted in the most lengthy part of this entire process: glueing the stupid thing back together again.

Mapping out the grid

I made a new hot wire using my trusty old Lionel train transformer, PVC, an extension cord and some guitar string.

The guitar string wasn't quite long enough to cut the block all at once, so I had to cut at an angle.

This is where it stands thus far.

I'll be updating as the week goes on

Stormy Seas, Dirty Water

This past week has been pretty hectic.  Filled with terrible things that I had a lot of time to think about while locked down with my little family.  Growing up over seas this sort of thing wasn't the norm, but the threat was always there.  Because of that I look at so many situations and imagine how I would get me or my family out of them if disaster strikes.  It's a subconscious tic I guess.  It doesn't consume me, but it's how I think.  I'm glad I didn't stay home on that day because I'm sure I would have pushed us out the door and made sure we were somewhere interesting.

As I've told many of my friends, I find it heartening that these sorts of things don't happen more often.  They aren't hard to commit and since they happen relatively rarely in the US compared to the rest of the world it's somewhat reassuring that there are so few people out there who are ready to do terrible things to further their misplaced beliefs.  I'm fine.  We're fine.  

I've been in New England coming on 3 years now and this is the first time I've been commissioned to do a boat painting.  Although doing paintings of photographs isn't my favorite thing, I usually consider it a technical challenge and a nice way to pad the inside of my wallet.  The original photo was pretty neat and I wanted to capture the essence of it.  I was given certain directions, but I was generally told I could do what I wanted with it.

I roughed the image out thinking I would just Bob Ross it and get it all done in one shot.... 

As I have never really painted the ocean this proved a little more complex than expected and I left the painting at this point for quite some time.  I waited to paint the mast and sail because I feel like that's "putting the ears on Batman" so to speak.   If you can make a figure look like batman without the ears then you've really captured it.  Note too the horizon line I tilted for maximum action in a static shot.

My second sitting I was frustrated with my use of local color everywhere so I threw down a layer of burnt sienna and let that dry.  For realistic painting I prefer to on a toned surface anyway.  It keeps me from jumping right to bright whites. inspired again and I did a lot of hatching brushstrokes with a flat brush

Since the figures in the photo where nearly impossible to see I opted to do more detail work on them.  Keep in mind this is roughly the size of a pin head.

I'm a big fan of this sail.  I think it came out quite nice.

This picture doesn't quite do it justice, but you get the idea.

Next week... Should be interesting