This gallery is artwork I created in connection with a recently published piece, the Everyday Schoolbook.
Both the artwork and piece were finished in 1999. The stories were meant to appear alongside the art as a kind of mini-textbook.
Materials used include only German physics textbooks, old fashion advice books and original hand-drawn ink pieces.
The schoolbook format was a response to some of the prevalent use of standardized testing, tracking of "elite" versus "mainstream" students and overly patriotic textbooks used by my high school.
I wanted to critique that system and the often absurd reduction of human knowledge and intelligence to the ability to spit back memorized information.
The other main theme of the collection was a struggle against the concept that humans were a product of nature or nurture. I wanted to suggest that the self was influenced by both but beyond either.
This drawing was intended to be a companion to the piece "THRILL OF YOUR LIFE" about a man (SW Burnham) who takes a nightmarish rollercoaster ride.
My favorite line* from this piece is “Things feel more real when you squeeze tightly.”
* if you're allowed to have favorite lines from your own stories. I mean, I did write it over 16 years ago so it was almost written by someone else.
This drawing connected to a mini-story in which individuals trapped in a painting try to click out an SOS signal by rocking the painting's frame.
Around the time I was completing these stories, my father got me a gift certificate to the Arts Students League near Central Park. I did some life drawing and was predictably terrible at it. (this was probably the best)
Those sketches are where some of these two body drawings came from for the Schoolbook.
This was actually found art. It was a Kate Moss image that got corrupted when it downloaded improperly.
