Friday, January 27, 2012

Singularities


Desert of the Future (acrylic, aerosol on canvas)



Untitled/Mushrooms (mixed media on canvas)


Yo! Here are a couple pieces of the pieces I'm showing for the first time at the Finesse Home Living gallery (4210 Gateway Blvd) here in Edmonton, starting Feb 1st. They're part of a series that is a proposition on the potential aesthetics of a singularity event - come check out the show to see more of what I've been up to, I'm really proud of this series and the new directions it represents! I've just recently finished up with a few big parts of the March for Understanding campaign for the Centre for Race and Culture, and have submitted my piece for the Wall at the 5 Artists 1 Love show at the AGA this year, and am having another piece framed by my lovely and ever supportive girlfriend Leah just in time for the show! Stoked! See you next week!

Saturday, January 21, 2012

African-American Express


African-American Express (watercolour and acrylic on paper)


Greetings!! I'm back again to get it crackin' with a quick piece that came out of one of my classes last semester. Our assignment was to illustrate a lyric - I chose a part from Kanye's 'Last Call' from the album College Dropout, where he's talking about being at the mall blowing all his money and being approached by a girl asking about his credit card.
The song goes like (or click here to go listen to it, the lyric drops at 3:12):

Girl at the Mall: "Oh my God, is that a black card"
Kanye: I turned around and replied "Why yes, but I prefer the term African-American Express".

A black card is the highest limit American-Express credit card, available by invite only. I think this lyric is a succinct and interesting example of Ye's work to redefine the Black image in popular culture, and it spoke to me on a variety of levels. I chose to take a very literal approach in illustrating it because I thought the lyric itself had many layers of meaning, and I wanted to showcase the content already inherent. For the most part I was fairly happy with the execution on this piece, but the typography, which is usually not one of my weaknesses, fell apart a bit in a few places. I also took the opportunity to bump up the contrast a little digitally, which I think helped the overall impact. Thanks for coming thru, and shoutout to Yeezy for the fresh lyric!

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Stressin'



Don’t stress homies, be easy! So… I probably need to take my own advice this week. I’m in my last semester of school, and as always am doing a ton outside of school, including a show at the AGA, a solo show at Finesse furniture gallery, this year’s Center for Race and Culture March campaign (including a big bus ad that I’m pumped about!), and a few other projects besides. Needless to say, I’m stressed! I created this series of digital illustrations for an article on recognizing and managing stress and its symptoms, and I definitely went through all three of these three responses to stress at least once over this week – I’m sure some of y’all can relate!
The first is referred to by psychologist Connie Lillas as the angry, agitated response to stress, and involves being heated up, overly emotional, and unable to sit still. I imagined this character getting all steamed up, and literally blowing his top. Another potential response to stress is a withdrawn or depressed response – here you shut down, space out, worry a ton, and let the stress drain your batteries. The third most common way to respond to stress is a tense, frozen response. We literally ‘freeze’ under pressure and can’t get anything done – we seem paralyzed but under the surface remain intense and agitated. Here’s the original source for the article in case you want to find out about some of the ways to deal with stress http://www.helpguide.org/mental/stress_signs.htm . Me? I don’t have time to read that, I have way to much to do. Just joking. Check it out, there’s some good advice! Thanks for comin’ to kick it, and I’ll see you soon!

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Catching Up






Yo! What's good! Welcome to 2012. I've got some serious catching up to do - I've been so busy working I haven't had a chance to make a post in a minute! Here's a mini mural I did for Ihuman's new home a couple of months ago, and finally got around to grabbing a few photos of. Ihuman is a really dope local organization that provides artistic opportunities for at-risk youth from about 12-24 - check them out at www.ihuman.org to find out more. They just moved offices and needed some fresh coats of paint, nah' mean? As always, I was more than happy to oblige. I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with many of the kids from the program and some of the work they produce is mad ill, I had to grip a piece last Artwalk along with a fly grey Ihuman hoodie. This piece lives in the stairwell that leads to the music studio downstairs, which mainly produces music in the Hiphop spectrum, and that's my ish right there. See you soon!