After voicing my opinion of a past faculty art poster, it was inferred that I wanted to (should?) do the next one (let this be a warning to all of you with opinions). Below is what I came up with. With the exception of the logos and the small text at the bottom, it was all painted in acrylic. The background was a high res scan from an old, beat-up “Art Dictionary” in my office. Textures were added digitally.
The eighth ring of hell is reserved for those who commit fraud. Perhaps I could have found an environmental degradation that corresponded to fraud, but fraud is so ubiquitous to our time and culture that I decided to allow fraud to be fraud. I show here a scan of a dollar bill. I selected sections from it and then removed those sections, digitally, from the drawing I did of Manhattan so that Manhattan is eroded by the dollar. The architectural textures that resulted appealed to me since the damage was, after all, structural. With all of the protests in Chicago looking a lot like Seattle, this image seems appropriate. This drawing was also personal to me since the buildings are those that I saw for years everyday on the way to and from work.
Last summer, an artist residency program on Isle Royale provided an opportunity for me to spend two weeks in a national park that carries the “wilderness” categorization by the federal government, one of the few areas in the country that still carries that designation. During that time I walked over sixty-five miles. I also filled a sketchbook. Below are some selections from that sketchbook. I will be posting more about Isle Royale in the future. Most of these sketches are executed in acrylic, inks, and watercolor. Most were started on location and completed in the cabin on Scoville Point. I am currently sketching toward a finished painting that will eventually go to the Isle Royale Park Center in Houghton, MI.
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The half-life of PU-240 is 6,560 years. The half-life of PU-239 is 24,110 years. Waste materials remain radioactive for 24,110 years after they have been stored in the ground. After about five to six thousand years, they have decomposed to represent weapons grade plutonium. The United States’ government’s plan for dealing with this problem, as of now, is to develop a better plan before several thousands of years pass. I included the standard warning sign for radioactive waste material storage areas, which seems to be saying, run.
King of the Currumpaw 