Track Lighting

This is the really beautiful sketchbook that my roommate and best friend made for me. It's got neon salmon-colored pages. So it looks a lot like a watermelon in some sense, which I thoroughly enjoy:

I'm starting a little zine because I feel like it's finally the right time. (Funny that now is the "right time", given I've only got a little over two months to make work for my BFA hahah...ahhh) There will inevitably be some overlap between what turns up in there, and what I post here. That in mind I wanted to preview a small section of writing I made to include in my first issue. I think I often worry that my writing is to confessional. I guess I shouldn't spend too much time thinking about that.

I sat alone in the dark for a long time that night. I smacked my lips and said my own name out loud. I turned my stale gum inside out and snapped it across my front teeth. It tasted sour and spent. I stared off the porch, into the street, and past the houses just across the way. A train went by just beyond them and I welcomed the low shrieking of the wheels as it came and went in steady swells. A bead of sweat broke from my forehead and cut quickly down across my open eye. The salty stream burned as I tried to blink the dirty water free. I noticed the weathered rubber tips of your sneakers against the dry dead grass at my own feet. Lid closed, I massaged the corner of my left eye with the heal of my soiled palm. You asked my why I was still crying. I said, “fuck you” out loud and spit the small tacky wad I’d been grinding between my teeth at your worn black chucks. Nothing echoed and I didn’t look up. You put your foot down where my gum had landed and flattened it absent-mindedly across the pavement.

Lunch break

40" x 50" collage for class

graphite and cut paper on American Masters

(Tokyo Police Club)

"The present is diverse beyond knowing, history is never completely on anyone's side, and what we ignore today will be excavated later and held against us the way we hold previous oversights against past generations" - Roberta Smith The New York Times

'you are a little bit happier than I am'

"We felt compassion, and the compassion tricked us..." -Tao Lin

Introduction paragraph and drawing stills.

We've started really basic writing for our thesis papers. The first draft of our introduction paragraphs were due in class this past Monday, and mine will likely have to undergo some serious changes. I am, however, undeniably fond of the narrative quality of my first and wanted to share it here before I scrap it and start fresh. Dig in:

A Twenty-six mile long stretch of road down Interstate seventy-one connects the only two places I’ve ever really known. Between the small suburb of Medina and the city of Cleveland there is little about the landscape that begs special attention. Northeastern Ohio is a flat, stagnant shade of lazy grey for a solid period of at least six months each year, and in a lot of ways this ceaseless, stable hue speaks for the monotony of twenty-one consecutive years of calling the Midwestern United States “home”. There are very few places within this landscape that have genuinely captured my attention, and although they may seem scarce they are not altogether absent. Ohio is littered with an abundant amount of old industrial giants, and it is this type of architecture that has piqued my interest. It pops against the familiar field of hazy grey to capture my attention in a way I’ve never quite fully been able to comprehend. In doing so these forms have come to mean a lot of things to me. These buildings are no longer cold titans of industry, but rather old familiar faces. They are unique and precious in and of themselves, and have likewise begun to symbolize specific relationships, individuals, and events that have come to pass over my extended stay here in the Midwest.

(Unflattering iphoto still of "Rococo Couch")

(Unflattering iphoto still of "motel doodle")

strong as i feel

I caught your reflection as it passed over the surface of the semi-translucent window to my right. I noticed the same raised cheekbones and delicate square jaw I'd seen in the mirror less than an hour before, as I powdered on my 'natural' complexion and exaggerated my tiny almond shaped eyelids. For a moment I wondered if they only thing I'd ever seen in you was symmetry. I wondered if all that time I was only ever just trying to love myself. I bought a 2 dollar beer and turned right again. I examined my own face in the foggy glass. You passed down the hallway over my shoulder. I stepped out for a smoke.