Somewhat Art

Burning Face

2011-07-06T04:39:00.000-07:00

14" x 20" acrylic.

Re-Genesis From a Papaya-Half

2010-12-28T22:28:00.000-08:00

As seen sitting on my kitchen counter, with cheese grater. Darkness bursts from the center of a papaya, orgasms, & ejaculates all fauna, including humans and gods.

Tree + Roots

2010-07-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

Done with watercolor pencils provided at an art workshop at the Union Hotel where I live. I must have been obsessing about roots that day.

Birthday Designs

2008-09-15T19:49:00.000-07:00

This is a series of designs I made on Photoshop three years ago for my daughter's 24th birthday. They play on the numbers from 1 to 24 in order.

My Blue Friend

2008-06-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

A painting I made for home. My Blue Friend decorates my room; he peers out over my left shoulder when I sit at the computer. He's acrylic, 16" by 20".

Hangdog

2008-02-15T12:45:00.000-08:00

How I see myself sometimes, usually when I'm feeling dejected. The second of two cards (see previous post) done with black ballpoint pen.

Baroque Bird

2008-02-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

I have used various versions of the Red Bird as signatures from time to time. This is a black and white ink version that is tending toward the baroque. I did it in 2002 on one of two cards for my daughter.

Madonna & Child

2008-02-01T14:20:00.001-08:00

[I'm looking for a better JPG of this. When I find it I'll switch this one out with it.]

In early November 1995 Real Change was planning to make the next December's issue about women. On the other hand, it would be the Christmas season. Plus, we were going to run a poem by Anitra Freeman called Quantum States of Mary. So Director Tim Harris said he wanted a Madonna and Child image for the cover.

I jumped in and said that 12 years earlier, during my worst bout of homelessness, at Blessed Sacrament Church in Seattle, I had looked over the shoulder of a Korean woman as she held her baby and saw him smile and reach for her lips. The image had seared into my mind and I'd wanted to paint it all these years, and now I felt I was ready. So Tim said go for it, but don't take too long because if I can't use what you give me I'll have to find something else.

It took less than a week. The basic model for the baby was one of my own baby pictures. The mother was done from memory. It was acrylic on 9" by 12" canvas board.

The original sold before I could scan it. In the original the mother's cloak was approximately the color shown, the background was blue and gold, the baby's blanket was China red, and the faces and hands were tinted. We couldn't do that many colors back then so Tim converted the blue, gold, and red to the two shades of blue, and did the faces and hands in gray scale. The image above is what resulted before the Real Change logo and front page headlines were added (in the space deliberately provided in the design.)

Hat Man

2007-11-21T23:05:00.001-08:00

Hat Man was inspired by an old man I saw walking down the main street of Ayer, Massachusetts, when I was a child in the 50s. I've always thought that he was dead to the times he was living in. He was a man of the 30s and the 30s were dead, so he was walking-dead. The bird is his soul; it's dead too. His pipe is dead. His hat is dead. But he keeps on walking.

Bird Dancer

2007-09-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

Fantasy inspired by a film I saw featuring a Polynesian dance and song in honor of a bird that courts in the air. Originally it was an 8 inch by 10 inch black and white acrylic painting on canvasboard. Anitra scanned it and used it to liven up pamphlets promoting her writing workshop, StreetWrites. The original was sold long ago. This image was scanned anew from one of those pamphlets, which explains the grainy texture.

Birds in Trees

2007-09-19T21:57:00.001-07:00

Bugs

2007-09-19T21:54:00.000-07:00

Ink Tiger

2007-09-19T21:46:00.000-07:00

Pen & ink tiger based on an newspaper ad for a circus. If you click on it, it will be shown twice its actual size. I used to do drawings like this when I was driving a cab in the 80s, usually with metal dip pens, but sometimes with ballpoint. This looks like ballpoint to me.

Plumbing

2007-04-12T00:15:00.000-07:00

Elvis

2007-04-09T22:53:00.000-07:00

Mikey: A Class Act

2007-04-08T03:23:00.000-07:00

Mikey is such a classy guy he offers to light your cigarette first, with his Bic. He's smoking GPCs, of course. Based on a real guy I shared a house with for a while. I had been homeless and landed a room in the house, resembling the one in the background here. This image was used full-color for a cover of Real Change. I believe it was the September 1st 1997 issue.

Tiger

2007-04-07T01:22:00.000-07:00

Mad April Hares

2007-04-03T02:14:00.000-07:00

Click on the image for the full scene. Use BACK to return.

Arches

2007-03-16T22:20:00.000-07:00

I love the arcs and the colors of this one. They bounce.

Crow

2007-03-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

Crow with yellow ochre background.

Soul Map: Home

2007-03-14T18:40:00.000-07:00

A soul map for the place I live in now, East Pioneer Square District, Seattle.

Soul Map: Fort Devens

2007-03-14T18:22:00.000-07:00

I lived about six years as a child at Fort Devens, MA. I like to let places I've lived inspire me to make maps that show my feelings about them. I call the resulting images soul maps.

Pele

2007-03-05T13:46:00.000-08:00

I painted this over Memorial Day weekend of 1992. I attended the Seattle Folk Life Festival that weekend for the first time ever. This was right about when I was overcoming eight years of agoraphobia and finally able to get out in crowds. I watched a performance of excerpts from The Coming of Pele (Holo Mai Pele) which is a long series of chants, songs, and traditional dances accompanied by drums that tell the story of the arrival of Pele, the volcano goddess, in Hawai'i, and of her rivalry with her sister Hi'iaka. One of the performances that stood out in my mind was a solo dance by a young woman. She was actually performing in the role of Hi'iaka, but when I painted her from memory a couple of hours later I felt the image would be best attached to Pele. The painting was used for the first cover of Real Change in August 1994. The original painting was later sold. This image was created from the black & white photo used to create the cover. I replaced the grays with a red close to the original clay red of the painting. Red, especially clay red, represents for me both Hawai'ian soil and soul.

Balls!

2007-02-28T04:45:00.000-08:00

Here's a recipe for making these kinds of Photoshop Christmas Tree ornaments. Start with a 5 by 5 inch RGB square, say, optionally at twice the resolution you intend to end up with (see final comment below); Do a colorful circular gradient WITH DITHER OFF (very important); Do 5 Sharpen Mores (Filter/Sharpen) or about twice as many regular Sharpens -- you can try different numbers; Do an interpolated de-interlace (Filter/Video); rotate 90 degrees clockwise; repeat the de-interlace filter.

If you want a result that doesn't become washed out when viewed at the wrong size or resolution follow the option of beginning with twice the intended resolution, then at the end use Image Size to halve it. So for these I started with 144 pixels/inch and at the end I switched it to the more web normal 72 pixels/inch.

Pretty Bird

2007-02-25T04:54:00.000-08:00

Photoshop RGB doodle.

Sit, Pixels

2007-02-16T05:00:00.000-08:00

I like painting in Photoshop. Real paints give me headaches. Electronic paints are brighter and stay where you put them.

Flyer Doodles

2007-02-10T02:13:00.000-08:00

These flyers were all over the place at a poetry reading I attended. So I had something somewhat artlike to do between readings.

Notepad Images

2007-02-09T01:16:00.000-08:00

Death of Maui

2007-02-09T01:09:00.000-08:00

Maui died inside Death. To end Death's curse on life, he entered her while she was asleep. But she woke up and crushed him in her innards.

Haole/Hanai Mandala

2007-02-09T01:06:00.000-08:00

The Jumping Off Tree

2007-02-09T00:39:00.000-08:00

This painting resides in my room. It tells of Jumping Off Places. When you die, your soul goes wandering, looking for a Jumping Off Place. It might be a tree or a cliff. Once, though I was not then dead yet, it was a jungle gym, for me. You know you've found a Jumping Off Place when you've seen the spirits of dead children around it. The childrens' spirits will try to get you to jump the wrong way, for the fun of it. There will also be the broken souls of other dead people who were tricked by the childrens' spirits into jumping the wrong way. If you jump off the Jumping Off Place in the right direction, the Earth will open up for you and you will fall into your own personal heaven. If you jump the wrong way, your soul will shatter, and you will wish you were alive. Good luck.

Fiji Woman

2007-02-08T23:14:00.000-08:00

Cat

2007-02-08T23:04:00.000-08:00

Faux Weave

2007-02-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

Redbird

2007-02-08T21:34:00.000-08:00

Carrot Man

2007-02-08T21:18:00.000-08:00