Almost Friday
When this happened, I chuckled. Know why? Because I didn’t understand it. I am in a constant state of thinking or drawing or moving or writing or anything else. Work doesn’t stop because the box on the calendar is moved over.
20 years of Self-Portraits UPDATED
I pawed through some archives and managed to fill the collage out a bit more. I’ve added years 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2004. In addition, I’ve added the year to each image to make it a bit more viewer friendly. Some of these are not “actual” self portraits…in that, they may have been done for a strip or an illustration… but the evolution still holds.
To me, these images are more telling than photos. Sure, a photo can convey some emotion, but a photo can’t tell me about line. For example: 1999. The lines used on that portrait are pretty uniform. There is some hatching in the hair and beard but for the most part the lines are tentative. There is nothing that I was sure about in drawing that. In fact, maybe by not getting into detail, I was hiding something. What that something may have been isn’t too clear.
2000 finds me confused. Am I supposed to be doing this?
2001 makes it seem as though I was happy… if only for a brief moment. I’m not absolutely certain of when in 2001 this was drawn, but it’s a same bet to assume it was before September.
Between 2005 and 2008 and possibly into 2009 I’m trying to figure out who I was not only as a person but as an artist. Am I supposed to be a cartoonist or so I want to be a “fine artist”? This was the period where I was living in a tight rope… my marriage was starting and ending, life changed for me… grad school and a new life. New life means a new face and int he process, trying to figure out what the old face was.
By 2010, with an MFA on my wall, I had myself all figured out. Sort of.
Wonder what the next 20 will look like.
I will try and fill the gaps in this collage as I find them. 1993, 1996-1998 and 2002.
90’s snow sculpture
This is a post from Bob’s SQUIRRELOSOPHY that I’ve cross-posted here.
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Rome Daily Sentinel, February 17, 1990
A fan of Frank’s reminded him of something last night. The year was 1990. George H.W. Bush was President. Gas was cheap and M.C. Hammer was beginning his reign on the pop charts. Frank was in 9th grade.
As part of an art project that encompassed all the 9th grade art classes, they were going to do a snow sculpture. To decide what they were going to do, each student in Studio Art would do a mini clay sculpture and all the classes would
Frank still has the sculpture from 1990!
vote on which one they’d immortalize in snow. Frank was on an Albert Einstein kick at that point (don’t ALL 9th grade boys go through that?) so he did a little Einstein head. Surprisingly (especially to Frank) the head won. So, for an entire day, each art class spent their class time piling snow, sculpting snow and packing snow. Frank had art as the first class of the day… so all he got to do was shovel snow into a pile… which he could have done at home.
By the end of the day, there was a giant Einstein head in the school’s courtyard. The teachers called the newspaper and snapped the picture you see above. Notice how Frank was striking a very New Kids on the Block pose?
Three weeks later, the snow had melted beyond recognition. Although, Frank says it was the spitting image of a pile of ice and snow.
This was WAY before me… way before Frank’s beard came in, way before a lot of things I know. I don’t know if this one moment made him want to head down the path he eventually did, but it sure was a fork. At the very least, it probably gave him a bit of a confidence boost.
There’s no real SQUIRRELOSOPHY to this one, I just thought it was a cool story. That, and…I wanted to embarrass Frank by showing him in Reeboks.