Ham Flavored Blog

Fries & A Coke

2011-11-23T00:39:00.002-05:00

The students in Mrs. Waterman's first grade class at Crosby Elementary in Garden Grove, California, sat rigid in their little desks, eyeing one another through weary sidelong glances, wondering which two among them would be brave or foolish enough to make their way to the front of the classroom and take on the challenge. Two large circles had been drawn next to each other, and the assignment we had been given was for two volunteers to each use one of those circles as the starting point to make a drawing of whatever we could think of. Mrs. Waterman, about whom I can't remember much (except that I really liked her because she was always smiling and seemed to genuinely like us), would judge the drawings, awarding a prize (about which I also don't recall much) to the student who used the simple shape in the most imaginative way.
I don't recall what my competitor drew with her circle, but I do remember that I used mine to draw an image of our planet, with certain 'tall things' -- such as skyscrapers, giraffes, and perhaps a rocket or two -- jutting out or being launched from the Earth's surface. Whatever the prize was, my drawing won it. That was, I'm sure, the first time I noticed that I could impress people by making pictures. I liked that feeling.
Thirty some-odd years later, I'm still doing that. Obviously, I derive a lot of pleasure on my own doing this stuff, but every time my wife and I have a visitor I corner them -- "Hey, you wanna see the new stuff I'm working on?"
Speaking of which...

"Fries & A Coke" 2011 10" x 8" Oil on Canvas

Carl Mehrbach

2011-11-12T02:30:00.000-05:00

I spend a good portion of most days slogging through the intranets looking for art that captures my attention, and plan on posting about my findings with much more frequency going forward. Disregarding the likelihood that my plan will more closely resemble that of a mice than that of a man, I'd like to share with you the art of Carl Mehrbach:

"Nude in the Green" Oil on Canvas, 54"x60" Copyright 2011 Carl Mehrbach

Carl Mehrbach's captivating paintings and drawings can be viewed on his website.

Eggs On Top

2011-11-12T01:44:00.000-05:00

I made the drawing you see below a couple years ago after I began to get the idea that paintings of piles of food might be interesting.

After almost two years I finally finished a painting based on this motif -- little things like getting married, buying a house, and working on other paintings get in the way.

"Eggs On Top" 2011 Acrylic 16" x 12"

In this painting (and a few others like it that are currently in progress) I'm not trying to mess around with perspective, space, and / or mass, as I enjoy doing in much of my cartoon / cubist influenced figurative work. Rather, I'm employing a more straight forward illusionistic approach to form and space. The reason I was attracted to the idea of paintings of piles of food is because I feel they can convey a variety of meanings to different viewers. For one, they can refer to America's affluence, and how fortunate we as Americans are to be born in a time and place where we can afford to not only consume but also dispose of literally tons of food on a regular basis, while the majority of man's experience in the world has been one deprivation. This of course reminds me at the same time of our voracious, unhealthy appetite for more. For myself, though, the most important thing is that I simply enjoyed making this painting and am excited for the potential for those still in progress. American food is very colorful, and when piled on top of one another, these various snacks and sandwiches and other delectables can take on a humorous, squirming effect. I like food. Food is good.

Comics

2011-05-06T23:05:00.000-04:00

When I decided to start this blog, I had an image of myself posting frequently and using it as a tool to better organize my thoughts and, possibly, network a little. Well, neither one of those worked out.
I also described it in the header as a "Comics / Art Blog." I have yet, until this point, to post any comics here. I currently have a number of different stories of varying length in varying stages of completion, so here are some old ones I did.

I did these in 99 or so, for a self-published comic I did a couple issues of back then. Pussy Turd and his buddy Johnson are a couple of twisted, horny creeps. They have hearts of gold, though. It seems like most of the characters I think of are twisted creeps.

Martyr's Last

2011-03-12T15:53:00.000-05:00

This is a painting completed in 2010, acrylic on paper, 14" x 10". Like many of my other paintings, "Martyr's Last" began with heavily watered-down layers of paint allowed to dry on the paper. The image developed from there in an organic fashion, eventually becoming what we see here.

I had a good idea of what I wanted this painting to convey and what I wanted it to look like fairly early in the process of making it. Sometime in 2007 (perhaps 2008) I had been reading an account of the horrific violence then taking place as part of the insurgency in Iraq. One article relayed an incident that had occurred at either an Iraqi police station or army base. A man approached the front gate of the facility, strapped to his eyeballs with explosives and carrying an AK-47, which he fired at the men guarding the facility. One of the guards explained to the author of the article that they quickly returned fire, but before they brought the would-be bomber down he yelled repeatedly, "God is great! I'm going to kill you!" That phrase struck me immediately, and I have thought about it ever since. Of course, people have been slaughtering each other in the name of their various conceptions of god(s) practically since the dawn of time and it is very easy (for me, at least) to not concern one's self with acts of savagery in other parts of the world, but sometimes things happen or things are said that put it in very stark terms and remind me of the horror and stupidity of it all. I've never been one to begrudge someone their religious beliefs, but being a somewhat disinterested agnostic myself, I've never understood or experienced the passion religious or spiritual beliefs can create in a person's life.

The idea I had in mind when making "Martyr's Last" was the change in understanding of the word 'martyr,' from someone willing to give up their own life to someone willing to inflict massive violent death on as many people they can. In this picture I hoped to use exaggerated, cartoonish visual forms to convey a notion of insanity, destruction, and absurd violence inflicted on the self and outward onto others.

Shows

2010-09-26T00:36:00.000-04:00

Until recently I have had a lot of energy-consuming activities taking place going on in my personal life -- minor things like getting married, buying a house, etc. I have continued to make art through all of that, although for much of the time at a very not-very-prolific pace. Trying to get into shows, however, had to take a back seat, thus I didn't have anything exhibiting publicly since my painting "The Reward" was in a show at the Parlor Gallery (which was then called the Crybaby Art Gallery) in Asbury Park, NJ a couple of years ago. Over the last few months I have been very much more active as far as submitting material to juried group shows. I got into a couple of shows, was rejected by another, and took part in a sort of ad-hoc group show at the Loop Lounge in Passaic, NJ. It has been fun getting some of my work out of my house and onto gallery walls again. Group shows are enjoyable, but now I need to get my act together a little further, put together a legit submissions package, and try to go beyond the occasional juried group show. Anyhow, here are some photos from a couple of the shows I have taken part in recently.

This is a shot of some of my work hanging at the Loop Lounge Art Show, held on June 30, 2010. I had a lot of fun, met a couple of other artists whose work I found very interesting (especially Nick Colbert, another painter hanging his stuff at the Loop that night), and got a lot of nice feedback on my stuff.

Another shot from the Loop Lounge. That's my good friend Jason Yerkes. He's a great photographer & digital artist. I'd link to his website, but he doesn't have one just yet....

I also have a piece in this year's "Strange Figurations" show at the Limner Gallery in Hudson, NY (show hanging from Sept. 8 - Oct. 11, 2010). I love the Limner Gallery, and am a big fan of Tim Slowinski's painting. Here are a couple of installation shots from this show:

I will have a piece in the upcoming Nexus NJ show at the Arts Guild New Jersey, from Oct. 17th - Nov. 4th, 2010. More information & photos from that to come.

The Garden of Pharmaceutical Delights

2010-06-25T00:51:00.000-04:00

"The Garden of Pharmaceutical Delights" is a painting that I finished in August of 2009. It is oil on canvas, and measures 40" high and 30" wide.
One day, I was looking through some nick-knacks and tchockies at the apartment of my then-girlfriend (and current wife). At one point I found an alarm clock, which consisted of the little figure of a purple, grinning ape holding a clock that was as large as he was. This particular piece was given to my wife by some doctor she used to work for, and was an advertisement for a prescription drug, the name and purpose of which escapes me at the moment.
"Holy shit!" I thought, "They're making up cartoon characters to sell drugs now!!" I guess "they" have been doing that for a long time (we all remember Joe Camel), but every once in a while I actually take notice of some of the wacky things advertisers do (most of the time it all blends into a consistent, non-descript hum in the background), and am struck by how creepy it all can be. I notice this a lot when I am in grocery stores. I don't have children myself, but it's not hard to imagine a parent's lament as I amble down the cereal aisle, beset on both sides by variations of maniacally grinning toucans and whacked-out extreme-sports grizzly bears, preying on childrens' susceptibility to loud colors and fun-looking characters in order to hock an array of sugar-frosted, honey-combed, berry-slathered, wheat-infused, cookie-bombed breakfast fun. It seems so cynical. Looking at the cereal aisle, one can see first-hand the millions of dollars these manufacturers have invested to make sure the visual elements of their packaging conforms to a precise formula that instantly attracts kids. Children, in turn, will pester their worn-out parents into buying the cereal, and Kellogg moves product. The alarm clock I found amongst my wife's stuff made me feel about pharmaceuticals something similar to what walking down the cereal aisle makes me feel about childrens' breakfast foods. I pretty much knew the moment I found the clock that I wanted to use it in a piece of art in some manner.

Fissure

2010-05-30T13:12:00.000-04:00

"Fissure" is a painting I made in 2008. It is acrylic on Arches watercolor paper, and is 14" high by 10" wide. Last I heard, it hung on the wall at the Spider's Den tattoo parlor in Garden Grove, CA.
The reasons why I made this painting are varied. First, the human face and head are probably my favorite subject matter, and I love distorting elements of their structure and mass while retaining a relatively natural color scheme. Also, I am interested in the idea of one element springing forth unintended from a prior element -- an original idea begetting a new idea, the unintended consequences of a particular action, one person having descended from another.

Like much of my painting, "Fissure" was made in sort of an organic way. Rather than beginning with detailed preparatory drawings, I start a lot of these by allowing a smear of very-thinned paint of various colors to dry out on whatever painting surface I happen to be working on. Carefully studying what I have in front of me, I then use the shapes of the dried paint as the starting point for the different elements of what will become the finished image. When I start these, I sometimes have a vague idea of the shape of the image I want, the basic compositional structure, or some kind of fuzzy notion of what (if anything) I want the picture to be about. Most often, the image I end up with looks quite different than whatever idea I had when I started.

Fashion Worm

2010-05-21T19:58:00.000-04:00

This is a painting that I made in 2004, that I call "Fashion Worm...or, The Perfect Nose." It is 48" wide by 36" high, and is acrylic on canvas. The original stretcher bars had warped over the few years since its completion, so I recently removed the canvas from those stretchers and put it on new ones.
I had some of the general ideas for this painting floating around in my skull prior to painting this, but I was really inspired when I happened to watch a special on MTV about young men & women who were getting plastic surgery for purely cosmetic reasons. I was struck by the thought of just how far we as a society are willing to warp our bodies and minds for the sake of appearances; how the "next big thing" that society clamors for and is fascinated by is often just watered-down pablum spewed forth by media executives and their focus groups; and by the idea that no matter how much we twist ourselves up over superficial bullshit, death is always there waiting for us in the end...the great equalizer. I tried to get those ideas across in this painting.

Everybody Draw Mohammad!

2010-05-20T22:42:00.000-04:00

There is still an hour-and-a-half left of 'Everybody Draw Mohammad Day.' I present to you, "Extreme Sports Mohammad!!"

I bid you welcome.

2010-05-20T22:28:00.000-04:00

The world has been clamoring for it, and now it has finally arrived....another blog focused on fine art, comics, food, and other important stuff.
This is my web site. On it, you will find pieces of art I have created.