sketchville

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

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.

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  

SPQR (getting nailed by romans)

Pride of the Romans

and a little surprise

etsy account

When we see a movie about ancient Rome we should ask ourselves were’s the cock? We have a double ended image of ancient Rome, on one tip we have Spartacus, on the other we have Caligula, but we forget there is a lot of sliding space in between, that cock worship was a VERY important part of our culture for as long as we have had culture. Young fresh brides would give their virginity to the gods before getting married. Straddling a penis fetish, making sure their hymen was broken the day before their wedding. A sacred act, you didn't want to get married if you didn't know the love of a god first. Our modern virginal bride in white is dull and incredible by comparison. Pretending to be like Mary will not make your son like Jesus.

As the catholic church rose to dominance penises on roman statues where chiseled off in a collective societal castration ritual. Roman popular beliefs in an over sized engorged throbbing phallus as a sign of good luck were not shared by early clergy. Culturally we are left thinking that fig leaves and Ken's bump are the proper public perceptions of male anatomy, penis is shame full.The irony is inescapable.

waiting for the thrust of modernity

We love our orgasms but few can admit it, they help remind us we are bound the creative cycles of this reality. We are bridle trained from an early age to be ashamed of our our bits and pieces. We are not taught how being able copulate like rabbits and not procreate like them is what makes our sex lives different from other creatures. We have collective imperative in the western world to get over our frigidity recognizing all of the gifts we have been given. We need to actualize a little of the temple prostitute within us.

http://joshuacosimo.com/section/286911_THE_RAPE_OF_EUROPA.html

I have always had a graphic tendency towards phallus. They fill the tight gap between skulls and pinup girls nicely. They are subtle, natural, and traditional.
I take interns to do different jobs with me, a few years ago I had a delicate young lady who was eager to learn and please. I asked her to draw me a couple of dongs to use as cow horns in a design. Her first attempts were vestal, flaccid, and unpalatable. Her second attempts were more aroused and carnal. I finally told her to go out and do some hands on research.

The studio where I produce my work had a student who did a series of prints using curse words and body parts. There are two rules of thumb we should use to judge these types emissions. First, you should ask yourself if what you are saying with the curse words is penetrating. Second, if you're going to use schlong in your art at least make it regal, respectful, and beautiful. My biggest problem with their work was not the use of cocks, nor the use of curse words, rather the unattractiveness of the imagery. Visually you can produce whatever you want if it's insightful and well executed. Everything else is just pollution.

Screw the black bloc, I want the cock bloc

Bizarre collective social memory

                                           

There are fewer visual taboos. We have traversed a vast frontier of what is acceptable and unacceptable in our everyday lives. It is acceptable to show a picture of an aborted fetus to a group of preschoolers but if you pee outside behind a dumpster at four in the morning you can get arrested for indecent exposure. When I think about visual taboo, graphics, discussions, and religions I am affronted with the same conclusion. Cock has one of the deepest and longest decorative histories, but has become socially difficult to swallow.
As the womyn's rights movement slides forward. Phallic imagery has become crouchingly more passive.

Look what I made.

Egyptian gay porn stars

 Dongs have  been traditional a symbols of good luck, fertility, and joy, the life force spitting forth the seeds of new creation. Everybody loves cock. Everybody.
Why have ideas of penis symbolology become so enmeshed with domination and control that
they have become socially flacid, off putting and unacceptable.
Our history is swollen with dick stories. 
In ancient egypt for example the myth of Osiris's death, divine Necrophilia, and resurrection. Isis impregnating herself with his prostetic golden phallus inspired an architectural development of the obelisk and column. Look around at these erections and remember their concept came from worshiping a dead gods member.  The fruit of their union, Horus, had a quasi beastiality homo love affair with dog headed Set complete with a hand job, cum, vegetarianism, incest and a-sexual reproduction. With stories like these the tactile history of schlong just gets more and more penetrating.

hey humanity, whos your daddy?

Things going in and things going out. Our visual and written language has facinatingly always been related to either taking it or giving it. There is sexiness oozing out all over our world, but it is easier to imagine a porn star screwing than the idea of our grand-parents, parents or children making love. Every generation thinks they invented it, and inversely every generation gets more externally open and internally repressive. Having dinner with a couple of retired Trannie prostitutes in their late 50s will give you the idea quickly and first hand.

Visual Mythologies: Asspiratons

Know Your Limits.

I began this new adventure one year ago after meeting with a gallerist organized by an Italian television actor. She was very receptive to my work, half of my work.  She was entranced by those Paintings that dripped with life, an archaic beauty that is organic and flowing. This is the work that I consider prayer. It comes through me but is not of me, and is only half of my explorations.  The half of my work she did not respond to was that which found imagery played a major role. She finally told me she would meet with me to discuss handling my work but if she did I should not and could not do any work where the penmanship was not my own. Hmmm

Wall in Piazza Puccini Firenze Italia

When I began seriously studying printmaking my obsession was with ideas of automatic reproduction. Silk screening became a reflection of that for me. I would cull the streets for imagery then reprint that imagery or glue it directly to the canvass. Cutting and pasting I attempted to reproduce the effect of the surfaces that surround me daily.

One beauty of being an artist is that you can put your thoughts forward and by controlling them slightly, arouse within the viewer insights that are both personal and plural. When I see an advertisement I always ask myself what it is saying to me. When I see layers of messages together conclusions become different, muddled, and confusing, it becomes visual static.

Judgement Day

Last year I created a series called "Asspirations" inspired by Piazza Puccini in Firenze. The space is dominated by a huge fascist cigarette factory cascading billboards heavy with conversation flanking its sides. Huge breasted, puffy lipped trannie prostitutes decorate it. Piazza Puccini is the best example of contemporary urban planning in Florence. Its capacity as an unpretencious artistic space that develoups organically is devine. It is a modern funhouse reflection of the ancient religious wall frescos in Florences numerous churches. The Piazza is richly layered, its messages in turn become dissjointed and surreal.

Highness

 The whole atmosphere is thought provoking, I tell the girls "buon lavoro" when I pass, they smile waving excitedly to see a familiar face. It is very sweet and  very ambitious. All these visual elements allow for the creation of  moment, feeling, and that place.

Hollywood Divorce

 "Asspirations" was about creating a surface layered with imagery that related to one idea. Tearing and cutting  parts of information away then creates more complex statements.
This experience has taught me all these personal explorations are valid and necessary. They part of my visual journey through this world. It is my artistic prerogative and imperative to draw upon what I feel is the best possible vernacular to convey a statement. If I choose to use my own hand or reprocess the work of others it does not devalue the end result. I did however respond to her demands and began to enmesh my distinct voice with plurality that is found in automatic reproductive media.