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.