Dwellers (AND WESBSITE IS UP!)

Finished four paintings (Dwellers), three of which were featured in the 'All and Sundry' exhibition in the ISB Gallery at RISD. Cool! These were basically an excuse to experiment with my painting practice and do some slightly large scale work than I had over the summer. (These four are 40x40" each.) All are for sale.

Other exciting news- I finally have gotten my website up an running. Give it a look at anartwebsite!

Looking forward to recording songs with Colin for the new Single Lash album over the next few weeks. I'll keep you posted on that.

'Swelling' EP by Single Lash

Hey everyone! It's been a busy few months since I last posted! Lot's of fun new stuff to come, but for now, here's the five-song EP my band- Single Lash- put out last month. If you like what you hear- you can follow the link and download it for just five bucks! Later.

B R O S

New Portraits!

Speaking of...

Come check out my show next week. I'll have paintings, prints and drawing for sale and will be performing music as Single Lash. I'm excited!

Ask Schedel

'Ask Schedel'
Oil, 24" x 36"

New paintings showing at the ArmonArt Studio
1414 S. Alamo St. Suite 103
San Antonio, Tx 78210

AS220 Poster

Here's a poster I printed up for my show later this month. Like my music itself lately, it's really just an excuse to get a little crazy. All I have left of my junior year are some final portfolio reviews and cleaning out my studio. The latter is actually a bit daunting, though. 

More Drawing About Town

Sitting outside drawing from life in the early spring. Does it get any better?

On the Canal

Here is a view from in front of the Design Center at RISD. The weather is finally warm and clear enough to sit outside and sketch for a few hours. I did this drawing while waiting for my friend to get off work (instead of working on my actual assignments!) and had great fun doing it.

Nephilim

Heroes 6- Kevin Shields

I'm ending my Heroes series with a two-color print of the mastermind of one of my absolute favorite bands- My Bloody Valentine. I'm happy with the way this one turned out, but honestly, I am glad to be completing this series; the "hero worship" was starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth. Speaking of, I've relegated my plate-and-sandwich symbol to the bottom right corner in an acknowledgment of the increasingly peripheral role it has been taking in the progressing images. In the second image you can see the terrible secret that I've digitally rectified above- yes, with my sixth and final image I have finally gotten the lettering backwards! Oh well, I guess it had to happen eventually. I've enjoyed the experience of printing in color, so you can expect things to brighten up around here at least a little bit in the near future. Watch this space!

Heroes 5- Uncle Ernie

   Over the course of this "Heroes" project, I've really been pushed hard to consider what the idea of a "hero" really means. Sure, people like David Bowie and Edward Gorey have/had a huge dose of talent, but is that really the prime criteria for herodom? I will always have an inherent respect for people who are good at what they do, and being an artist myself, I'm definitely skewed in my attentions to people of a creative persuasion. Note the series' lack of presidents or generals. But like the first entry in my Mt. Rushmore of sandwich-eaters, my father, this next figure is someone that I know personally and have always admired for their innate goodness and generous spirit. My uncle Ernie is an unselfish and truly spiritual man- a priest for the past 50 years. My difficulty with this print is manyfold: it does appear somehow perverse to juxtapose a sandwich with a priest giving a man the last rites and grieving women. A sandwich is something with connotations of frivolity. What message are we meant to glean from this pairing of a man of the cloth and a turkey sandwich? This odd couple then meets head-on with the current public prejudice against priests, thus predisposing my audience to interpret the image in an untoward fashion. In my personal admiration of my uncle, I fear I did not take the necessary steps in the composition to counteract these forces and am left with with what may be a weirdly inappropriate print. I include it here, however, so that you may judge for yourself.

Heroes 3 and 4- The Two Edwards

I'm starting to think of these pieces less in terms of caricature/portraiture and more as self-contained designs, where no element is subservient to the human element. This shift is largely due to a disastrously ill-conceived first draft of Edward Gorey. Ed Wood, whom I depicted a few days later is admittedly a bit of a mess compositionally, but I'm pleased with my more liberating, experimental conception of his piece. And honestly, how else can one portray his mad genius without being a bit chaotic?

                           

Au Lecteur

To the Reader

Foolishness, error, sin, niggardliness, 

Occupy our minds and work on our bodies, 

And we feed our mild remorse, 

As beggars nourish their vermin.

Our sins are insistent, our repentings are limp;

We pay ourselves richly for our admissions,

And we gaily go once more on the filthy path

Believing that by cheap fears we shall wash away all our sins.

On the pillow of evil it is Satan Trismegistus

Who soothes a long while our bewitched mind,

And the rich metal of our determination

Is made vapor by that learned chemist.

It is the Devil who holds the reins which make us go!

In repulsive objects we find something charming;

Each day we take one more step towards Hell — 

Without being horrified — across darknesses that stink.

Like a beggarly sensualist who kisses and eats

The martyred breast of an ancient strumpet, 

We steal where we may a furtive pleasure 

Which we handle forcefully like an old orange.

Tight, swarming, like a million worms,

A population of Demons carries on in our brains,

And, when we breathe, Death into our lungs

Goes down, an invisible river, with thick complaints.

If rape, poison, the dagger, arson,

Have not as yet embroidered with their pleasing designs

The recurrent canvas of our pitiable destinies,

It is that our spirit, alas, is not brave enough.

But among the jackals, the panthers, the bitch-hounds, 

The apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents, 

The monsters screeching, howling, grumbling, creeping,

In the infamous menagerie of our vices,

There is one uglier, wickeder, more shameless!

Although he makes no large gestures nor loud cries

He willingly would make rubbish of the earth

And with a yawn swallow the world;

He is Ennui! — His eye filled with an unwished-for tear,

He dreams of scaffolds while puffing at his hookah.

You know him, reader, this exquisite monster,

— Hypocrite reader, — my likeness, — my brother!

                          -Baudelaire (Translated by Eli Siegal)

Heroes 2- David Bowie

This is the second in my "Heroes" series. Here we have David Bowie as he appeared on the cover of his album "Heroes". I thought long and hard about what sort of sandwich his Bowiness would prefer and ultimately arrived at something simple and quintessentially English- the cheese sandwich. However, this humble staple needed just a touch more refinement and so I arrived at the toasted brie sandwich. 

Heroes 1

I've just started taking a printmaking class and already I'm finding it quite enjoyable. The concept of multiples opens up a whole new world to me. I really relish the subtle differences between prints caused by simple printing mistakes.

I'm working on a series of prints called "Heroes" in which I depict people whom I admire eating hero sandwiches. The first of the group depicts my dad eating his favorite sandwich.

Substance 2

I'd like to expound upon the somewhat inept explanations of my first post to discuss in brief some of the basic principles according to which I am painting. I would like to make clear that these ideas are applied only to my painting work. I had some trouble in the past few months attempting to apply them to my illustration projects, but came to understand that it could not be done successfully. First my flexible guiding principle which states that subject matter is essentially arbitrary. There are a number of reasons for this. One, both within the visual realm and the metaphors of paint, all objects are exactly the same thing- be it reflected light or marks on canvas. The difference between objects in their visual qualities then becomes merely a formal exercise to reproduce. True, society lays various judgements and implications on different objects, but it is my belief that at this point in painting's history, all objects in being rendered bear a base level of cliche. I believe that the stylistic manner in which an object is depicted is therefore more important that the object itself. However, this realm too is greatly fraught with cliche. Above this admitedly half-baked notion is the firmer idea that "abstract painting" as such is a non-existant and arbitrary distiction. This is true for the reasons already discussed. Because all renderings are necesarilly abstract, this label hinges upon individual reception and artist intentionallity, two hopeleslly tangled concepts. For example, if a viewer fails to recognize Monet's waterlilies as such, the work may now become abstract. They would have to be aware of the intentions of Monet himself to understand that he meant for the work to be a "literal" translation. However, I would enter the "intentions" of the artist, even as indicated in a title, such as in this case, as invalid. Few people consider Pollocks "Blue Poles" to be a "literal" image- certainly not a painting of blue poles! However, Pollock was known to sometimes create his images from accumulations of crude drawings in paint. These would eventually obscure one another and become unreadable. Did Pollock intend for this to be the case? Perhaps someone would read one of his images as a representational view of a specific wall. Maybe the paint is a metaphor for mold or rust. Or maybe it is paint. For me, the distiction between abstract and representational work is so slippery and subjective as to be entirely invalid. And this is something that I am always conscious of while creating my own work.

Distance

I've been spending much of my time lately preparing for a performance on Thursday. This is the song I'll be opening with.

The Plague

Flesh Peddler

Flesh Petal
Flesh Pedal
Flesh Peddle