Commission This Week

I will be spending most of the week crosshatching - I've accepted a commission and the deadline is looming. The job consists of four telephone pole drawings similar to the series I made in 20011. As I calculate it there are just enough hours to complete the drawings and overnight them to New York by next Monday. The limiting factor may be my hand, will it hold up over hours of intense hatching with a tiny technical pen. I have finished one and I am reminded of what I was after with these drawings; the ordering of something very visually complex, and the rhythms and shapes in the flatten images of urban life. It suggests to me a form of notation, like music or dance. Pictured if the first completed drawing, the dimensions are 13 x 18 inches and the media is technical pen on bristol board.

Labels

Now that the postings are mounting, I wanted to mention how helpful the labels can be to look at a specific subject. For example if you are looking for India Ink drawings, be sure to click on the label 'india Ink' and all of the posts with that link attached to it should pop up. Some helpful labels might be: Chicago, panorama, drawing... They appear at the bottom of each post. I will include them all here. Give it a try, don't be afraid.

The Last Telephone Pole Drawing?

I have plowed my way through nine drawings in the 'Telephone Pole' series. Pictured is the ninth, and for now, the last drawing in the series. The drawings became a little more complex as the series progressed as I searched for more, and then more, over-burdened telephone poles in and around the north-side of Chicago. I would take my bike and camera out on a warmish fall days and ride up and down the alleys of Lakeview and Uptown. Neighborhoods with dense housing stock and a population of internet and cable users made for good hunting grounds. The cross hatching did not get any easier as I moved through the nine drawings; The large, inky areas generally went quickly but I sitll had anxiety when faced with all those long, thin, telephone lines. One slip and....

No plans to show the drawings at this time. The still need to be trimmed and signed. It feels good to have a series finished and in the bag, now I need to determine just the right context in which to show them. You can see the rest of them in a couple earlier postings. Use the labels at the bottom to see posts by catagories, in this case click on telephone poles. They deserved to be framed and I'll have to save up some cash to make that happen. I see them in a three by three grid, in perhaps natural wood frames. No rush.

What's On My Wall

I use the wall in my livingroom as a place to comtemplate visual art. New work will get taped up on the painted concrete for me to ponder upon. Different light, different times of day, different states of mind, all give me a chance to look at my own work with a fresh view. I like to catch my self off guard looking at the work as if I wasn't the creator. Often I see something I hadn't anticipated during the process of making the piece.
I hope to post a photograph regularly, (once a week may be too often, if doesn't change that quickly), to show what is currently on my mind and what I have been producing recently.
Can you spot: my new telephone pole drawings, the Soskin Holiday card, Virginia Hurley life drawing on scratch board, an old city panorama, the devil left over from Halloween, test prints from the 'Houseing Project' series....?

Telephone Pole Drawings

I'm working on a new series of drawings this month. I know the image of the telephone pole in silhouette is a bit of a cliche but I am intrigued by the chaos of these ubiquitous totems with the addition of cable and internet to our lives. We are so overwhelmed by information in all forms now, and the drawings, based on photos, and created by cross hatching with a technical pen, are one response to the overload.