past, present and future.

for the past four years, i have been teaching at portfolio preparatory school, vision 21 art and design. i have a student who asked if they could see my portfolio i submitted for art school. As requested, here is my work from the summer of 2003:

at the time, i was attending adult classes at the california college of art (back then known as CCAC). if i had to crit my own work, i would say..

looking back on my work, i had a strong observational eye, thus, greater attention to detail. but i had no concept of proportion.

the woman’s neck in the picture above, and the woman’s hand in the picture below are incredibly small. the bartender’s breasts are also very flat.

again, fair attention to detail, but horrible proportions. this poor woman has some nice features but i drew her with small and ugly feet.

this man’s face is pretty flat.actually, a little of everything is flat.

the sketch for this drawing is better than the final product. this is just not a good piece.

apparently in this painting, this is a world without good lighting, shadows, and contrast.  and all the fruits are wonky and flat.

this painting was the only conceptual piece i had, about where we have over come and where we are going, and if it’s enough for a productive future. the message is good, the artwork is ugly.

then i showed my kids my work from college. here is my senior thesis:

my thesis was on the commodification of cultural imagery. i was asking, do symbols hold sacred meaning, or are they just pictures.

in this painting, che guevara is remembered as a revolutionary leader against capitalism, yet his image became fad and pop culture reduced him into capital.

in this painting above, i am arguing that the rising sun graphic from world war ii is as arguably offensive as the swastika. stalin and hitler were responsible for the millions of deaths, and japanese were responsible for hundreds of thousands. the number between the german leaders and japanese are vastly different, but the genocide of millions happened in the matter of years, and the japanese killed in the matter of weeks. even though the numbers are different, the number of killings happened in a concentrated period of time. this is the first painting i sold in los angeles. it made me realize that people are intrigued by art that is interesting in composition and meaning.

this is my work post-college, from my first show i shared with mia araujo in 2008.

i sold this to ed rack, a super nice guy i met at syrup desserts in downtown la.

this painting was shown in venice in 2009. at that same showing, i met someone who wanted me to do work for harley-davidson.

this was intended for the traveling show with lebasse gallery in 2009.

one of the better pieces I’ve made for my first solo in long beach. the show is about the satirical image of women in media. i called the show “girls poo flowers: statical images of women”, which i now realize was a very gutsy name to use for a showing.

this is the direction of my work i want to strive towards