And More...

Acrylic on canvas, plus thread and wire tied into the canvas. Experimenting with figure and space. In the first one, I was trying to capture some sort of climax; something crucial happened between these two people, a burden was transferred from one to another...I dont know if it was usurped or sacrificed...or something else.

New Painting

Acrylic on canvas.

Recent Work!

A couple digital images. They are scanned photographs, on top of which is a piece of acetate where I've painted figures in acrylic.

What a beast, that Bacon. The show at the Met is a MUST SEE. You will probably go through something while in the gallery. It might be disgust. It could be revelation. Whatever it is, you will be moved, pretty literally. A collision of provocative and immersive imagery. I can't say enough good things about this one!

The Belly Button of the World

I came back from Peru 4 days ago. Lima, the capital city, is a place full of contradictions- large casinos with crazed roulette players within miles of complete slums; houses are built on the sandy dune hills, precariously fitted wherever space is available. I heard that most of those living in these slums aren't included in the 8.2 million population census. And yet there is, overall, much less visible poverty on the streets than in new york city. But there are also some awesome contradictions too. You are hard pressed to find a majority of peruvians whose heritage is the same, yet all share the bond of a common language and a passionately healthy obsession with their nation's cultural sites and food. Oh, the FOOD. So many of my favorite moments involve eating things.

Craziest eating experiences:

- CUY! or, our guinea pig :-( too bad it tasted so good.
- Chicha and Chicha Morada- morada is black corn cooked down with water and sugar until it makes a syrupy sweet liquid that we drank with lunches. The other one is a saliva fermented yellow corn beverage and tastes sort of like sour coors light, unless they put a little bit of sugar in it, in which case you take it like a shot.
- Alpaca, the llama's cousin! Beefy and lean
- cow hearts
- Ceviche: Yummmmm seafood marinated in lime juice, chilis, and red onion. tart, spicy and beautiful!
- the AJI pepper!!! they have a salsa that comes in bags made from this stuff and it's better than ketchup-- people ask for the aji at restaurants and i'm now on a search to find the pepper in nyc
- Chicharrones. oh my god. peru's (and most of latin america's) gift to any person's hankering for fried meaty heaven
- Inca Kola: bright acid yellow soda beverage drunk to no end at chiffa restaurants (peru's version of chinese food). Bubble gum in soda form.
- COCA TEA: you can do cocaine pretty easily in peru- the leaf that is, which is no drug, but only an awesome ingredient to be steeped for tea. It got me over altitude sickness. Ahhhhhhh altitude sickness, now I bow down to it after 6 hours of hurling and finding a new god in our hostel's toilet.

It's really an amazing place. i only got around through lima, the archeological site in carral, paracas, the coast in between, and cusco and around. I WANT MORE!!! Thanks to Alvaro my budd i got to feel like i was living the life, rather than just seeing it from afar.

Line of the trip: DP, when told by his neighbor at his birthday party that her baby was crying because of the noise--- "But I thought that's what babies do-- do I come to you when my dog is barking?" :-D aahhhhhhhh alll fressshhhhhh

Person of the trip: our amiable hiking guide Hegel (pronounced like the german philosopher but spelled quite different...i can't remember now). Anyone who was on the trip knows what I mean! Basically, he is the most endearing human being in the tour business. "My name is HEGEL Lady!"

Words i'll always associate with peru: inca, earthquake, blue, coca, leo, arroz, pollo, papaya, oro, casino, pisco, cops, turtles, volleyball, claro, corruption, hulk, san martin, llama, saqsaywaman, julia, alvaro, trekking, prouscht, mafia, hot spring, salt, bob marley, matrix, pina, wong.

Viva Peru! Pictures to come

recent additions

senior thesis artist statement

I am interested in the fundamental constraints of the body. That the human condition is one of intense self awareness, ambition and opportunism belies the elemental physical dependency of the body: we eat, we sleep, and we excrete. Intermittently, several times a day, we are reducible to unembellished physicality.
Collectively, we are caught in a cycle of dependency and productivity. We consume and expect to be able to keep consuming, without any binding condition of returning in equal amount what it is we have consumed. It would be absurd to suppose that we could live arithmetically- that in taking A we too had to give back some value equivalent to A. Imagine measuring the quantity of water used in a morning shower and needing to, in that same day, give that quantity to someone else; under the constraints of our daily routines, it is inconceivable. But it is similarly impossible since in giving resources we are taking them and designating another use for them. Giving and receiving then is a cyclical (and we hope) renewable exchange. They are activities to which we assign value.
These conditions shape my thesis work. The chance of our bodies to create their own sustenance lets us escape from being exclusively consumers. Unable to control what it is we create, or how much of it, we are conditioned to take bits from others and lend ours. A physical dialogue begins. My most recent body of work explores this possibility through utopian and dystopian scenarios. Instead of the body being simply a biological given, it now projects some civic responsibility. Yet while assured of our body’s production of nutritional product we are mindful of its imminent expiration- of it going bad. That these extensions could rot, go to waste and potentially infect other parts of our bodies complicates an otherwise productive metamorphosis.