mio deserto arte moda

Various pieces from my Mio Deserto days (2006-2009).

Top- 2007 Giovanni's snake with butterfly wings that I made playing god with a photocopier and Dover book.
Middle-2006 business card made by gluing cutout letters on another business card and making a print of it.
Bottom-2006 Flyer for our first show at the house on Via Degli Alfani

2007- Deconstructed poster from our shop on Via Fiesolana "MIO DESERTO ARTE MODA CULT SHOP"

2008-Garibaldi poster on an economics book with "mio deserto" in Japanese script by Kaol.

Poster Detail

"Cruise" 2007 Mio Deserto shop poster printed on a map. 

2007- I used a French font source book and a couple of rub transfer font sheets from the 70's to create this logo. This is about the time hipsters started to bother me.

a detail of the color breakdown of the font. This example is printed on  an old history book.

   

This poster was printed with lesbians in mind, It combined the new font with imagery taken from an Italian elementary school geography book.

    

A brain storming sheet in one of my sketch books, I really liked 100% Italian hand job. It also has the third  generation of our label, It was a stamp made from a print made from a sewn label. It was the ultimate in feedback loop.

The last incarnation of the label during my tenure was a Gothic high German  font with a  medieval skeleton in the middle. I designed this logo to go with the We are all 1 prints in 2009. The bottom photo was the back room of the Mio Deserto shop on Via Fiesolana showing Garibaldi flag, one of my murals, and various other sight specific art works.

sketchville 2 the electric boogaloo

 When keeping a sketchbook I tend to just open a page and work on it. It really does not matter if there is something else drawn or written. I respond to and create images that are richly layered and organically formulated.This volume ended in a little after I moved to Italy and includes some amendments as well a copious amounts of cock.

Steak fingers and gravy (one families genetic curse)

(prolapse) Why do all the drawings you do look so similar??

Feel Better

horse hung

your bob keeps stabbing me in the side of the face

mild resurrections

Doe eyes and knocked knees.

She single?

italian knitwear

Happy Birthday

working girl

I made this print in 2010, It was part of a series called "The Meat Chaser". In particular my grandmothers first job in Saudi Arabia after she left my grandfather.  

Around the same time I co-founded a production studio with cousin Davide called co and co.  This is the final logo. It is a composit of transfer letters vinyl tape and stamp. On the left is the logo before being turned into the single color print on the right. I made a few photocopies to explore  placement of the production studio script, those photocopies ended up in my studio.

and then I started printing

 untill the ink  and or paper is done.
I fully endorse a humans right to cover or uncover their body in any way they deem  fit and or sacred. 

life in sketchville 2004

When keeping a sketchbook I tend to just open a page and work on it. It really does not matter if there is something else drawn or written. I respond to and create images that are richly layered and organically formulated.

Smile the world Hates you!

Bath Time

Summer of blood 2004

Pirate was the trend, people smelled like old vintage, 2004.

coven (prostetic heads)

Spectors

confronting ideals (I wish I was as cool as you)

€25,000

Steal her personality before she steals your man

Lucky crapface (notes on a crackhead)

I was living upstairs from a lesbian crackhead.

Maprons for Mandy

Who's your daddy?

I am getting older, an inescapable fact. I cannot help but see lines starting to form on my face and damage that I have done to my self. Burned skin red and peeling, I was struck by the fact of how abusive we are to our sacred vessel. Our food is processed, we imbibe chemicals, radioactive metals, we smoke, we drink and poison ourselves. We are surrounded by negativity. Douche bags waiting for the end of the world because that world makes it easier to treat ourselves, others and our planet like shit.

The irony is an inability to accept our collective responsibility. We tell everyone what they do wrong, how they are harming the planet, and how its us against them. I want to tell the people of occupy wall street to get over themselves as much as I want to tell the stockbrokers.
 
1. Protesting with signs is reactionary and serves only to strengthen the opposition. the people who have been stealing the manpower (production capacity) of the United States don't care.
2. Dress better. People tend to listen to smartly dressed individuals. If a homeless fat lady can take whore baths in the 42nd street subway station then I am sure its not that hard for you to take a shower at your moms house in Westchester.
3. Realize that the ability for you to voice your opinion is not in spite of the United States but because of it.
4. Any thoroughly successful revolution is  by the heart and not the fist
These kids should start companies.  The only way to change a world you don't like is to become a reflection of it. Reflections are the same but opposite. We will recognize the order, form and functionality. This is not a quick process, it has its roots in thousands of years of human progress.

A Mapron for Mandy copyright J.E.V. COSIMO

                    I ask is it more effective to be repeatedly arrested for chaining yourself to pine trees than operate within and change an industry that has destroyed so many forests?. Most people are weak, not hero's, go sign another petition on the Internet. It will make you feel better about all the shopping and driving you do sipping your fair trade gmo free organic latte.

"Masics" We are all made of stars.

For Hadis

I have always been (re)searching. My life is a dazzling array of action and reaction that brings me to now and beyond. In early 1999 proclivity for the occult and religion inspired me to send a friend in Jerusalem a prayer to be placed at the wailing wall . In it I asked our Divine creator to give me the strength and energy to fulfill my lifes destiny. It didn't arrive. I sent another letter it arrived shredded, a wet mass of paper pulp unable to be slipped between the sacred stones and touch the heart of god on earth. I gave up, there was obviously something that did not want my prayer anywhere near the last remains of Solomons temple. 

In summer 2000 I received a postcard from my friend telling me the first letter had miraculously re-appeared, I was not condemned after all. 

When a  relationship ended in 2009 a dear friend began sending me emails of spiritual guidance from the cabala center in New York. Those emails gave me an inspired outlook on the world prompting me to buy a copy of the Zohar. I had given in, pop religion has always left a bitterness in my soul but cabala was mailable enough to interpret my own devices. 

Solomon made a covenant with G**. In accordance G** granted him eternal wisdom.  From his temple, the elevated knowledge of the ages was dispersed among the believers of  monotheistic divinity. Reading ancient holy texts we begin to understand the layers of meaning our forebears laced within them. 

Stola Dei

The seal of Solomon had mystical powers to capture demons and inter them in copper bottles.  A pictogram of the idea what is here on earth is a reflection of what is in heaven. "As above so Below." Two intersecting triangles that form a polygon. 

 Graphically this image works very effectively. It is a smarter version of that star shit ravers would wear in the late nineties. I also respond to the idea of it forming a geometric pattern that at the same time is a representation of  elevated ideas on multiple levels.

I used 12 diffrent colors of blue and green to give
 a varied but regular color block repeat.

There are multiple color groupings working here. When I laid out the original Seal of Solomon the negative space changed slightly as the cluster went from two to four to eight. To adjust for the distortion I made the color break down on a different numeration. This also allows for more variation in the color selection for printing.

This Printing was done on a basic white cotton Indian Sari. I love the lightness of this cloth, the way it hangs and feels against the skin. I am also attracted to using this most ancient textile with an ancient symbol

This four meter sari becomes a representation of
 the stole dei that  is worn by solomon in the graphic.

This pictogram is about our ennoblement to be better people. An visual idea to tell us we are a map of heaven, to think we are a reflection of all that is can pacify our fears. Instead of fighting everything, protesting and battling  we can be more effective by just living our lives. Not being sucked into what others tell us our stories are. I love this symbol because it gives us hope and something to esteem. We are vast and eternal parts of a vast and eternal part. We are all made of stars.

Speculative "Masics"

We are all made of stars.

When I begin working on an idea there is always a preference to allow them to cook slowly and come to conclusions by gathering the most amount of evidence. I look at everything I can to reinforce them. I could post photos of all the graphic design tragedies that litter our lives today or get over it and try to make our visual world a lot better. 

 I am tired of Audry Hepburn's anorexic face glaring out at me from the front of a not anorexic young lady. I am bored seeing skulls everywhere, they are not interesting. If you want to see some real skulls go to the catacombs in Paris, that's interesting. What we wear and purchase revolves around a need for us to display to the outside world something visual that identifies us. So are you ironic, edgy, nervous, there are style sheets for those. Are you desperate for attention or less attention? There are style sheets for those too.

 What do you wear when you want to say "I have been up all night having sex with my astral lover in a dream scape similar to an Egyptian temple, now I want a coffee." I might have some answers.

                                                        

I have a certain fetish for architectural detail. It forms part of my living triplicate of food, clothing, and shelter. Most of my work comes from and goes to these three functions. They are both the source and the ultimate destination of my ideas. Those three things are the bulk of what creates our experience on planet earth and makes us who we are.

There is still a belief in the notion of powerful images representing complex ideas. Walking down Broadway on the UWS, gawking at the Ansonia I stumbled on the Level club located on west 73rd street; It is an incredible structure, a breathtaking a tour de force of Masonic symbolic. 

 Which leads me to ask; If masonic images where at one point and time so celebrated, then why have they become suppressed and secretive? I have several friends who get very nervous when I talk about this as trend. They  have reservations about how the brotherhood would react. My response is  fashion students wearing a Freemason apron is great P.R. Better than a guy shooting and killing Norwegian kids showing up on the news dressed in full Masonic regalia.

                        Here are some "Masics" to what you may be seeing.

   The Eye of god that is all knowing 

judging on public actions not private lives.

                              An hourglass presents a relation to the the

                        past and the future. It is a testament to the fleeting

                    construct we allow to be placed on our existence.

    A Square and compass represent "builders" of our world and an idea

          accuracy of moral and ethical measurement creates a solid foundation for humanity.            

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Level_Club