————–

My work has always inhabited the environmental realm.  Due to the natural world’s ever-changing constitution, how necessary natural systems are to a healthy planet and the lives living on it, and the continued degradation of those systems due to human intervention, I have found it impossible to focus my attention on anything else for both innate and acquired reasons.  Lately I’ve recognized the underlying theme within my work of the continued displacement of both animals and humans to fuel the economic machine.

"The Bison's Bread and Bitter Root" four-color woodblock print. Dealing with the symbiotic evolution of North American bison and native flora, the loss of that relationship once cattle, in huge numbers with extreme impacts on soils and wildlife, were moved in, and the recent movement of reseeding the plains

"The Bison's Bread and Bitter Root" detail

"Boundaries I: Fences" Woodblock Print process - carved block

The Create Our Climate Series gave me a great excuse to get started on new work concerning oil/gas/coal development and extraction and it’s implications on those that were living, dying, feeding, mating, creating, and loving on that land before it became valuable for energy “needs.”  The following are the beginning prep work for that new series, to be multicolored woodblock prints:

Charcoal, Ink, Gouache preparatory drawing for a new series of woodblock prints

"Fuel For Us" ink painting - preparatory work for new series of woodblock prints

It’s Getting Hot In Here: Create Our Climate is a month-long series to feature the creative work of the youth climate movement.  Through poetry, prose, visual and performance art, we aim to use these different media to communicate the passion, struggle and imperative of our work tackling climate and energy issues.  Please join youth leaders for posts on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays throughout April.

And I sold a piece from Vain in Belltown a few days ago (the Heart Sign print).  If you’re the person who bought it, can you please send me an e-mail?  The management was supposed to get some contact information but failed to do so.  Thanks!

I’ve never really devoted anytime to working on hand printed flyer before, so this was sort of a print-flyer 101 class for me – it’s pretty messy, but once you take a minute all the text makes sense.

I’ll be posting some of the work I’ve done for the show in the coming days.

Next up is a commission I’ve been mulling over for the better part of a year.  Good thing the guy is patient.  Also will be completing an 8′  banner for the protests happening in support of Tim DeChristopher in Salt Lake City in mid-March.  He’s on trial (10 years and $75,000 in fines) for successfully bidding on a large amount of land the Bush admin put up for auction for drilling towards the end of last year.  The kicker is that the Obama admin later declared that most of the land that was put up for auction had not followed due process and was illegal, including every last acre that DeChristopher bid on.  It’s a huge deal, and the protest has some big names behind it (James Hansen, Naomi Kline, Bill McKibben, etc…).  Here’s a link for more info: Climate Trial.

*Just found out the trial has been postponed, which is what you will see when you go to the website.  Still planning to work on the banner though – I’ll be there whenever it is.

Finished and at the framers.  This is a process shot of a piece for a valentines day show at Vain in Belltown (opening reception this Saturday…).  Just tryin’ to get me some of that valentines day consumerism flowin’ my way.

The sketch for “Boundaries: F.E.N.C.E.S.”

And the beginnings of the final print.  I’ve got about two more days to carve this thing out, then off to Portland, and back to finish carving on Wednesday and printing on Thursday.  …There have been a lot of full mugs of coffee going up into the attic and empty ones comin’ down these past few days.  Surprisingly, the carving is going really fast.  I’ve finally figured out my ideal process from sketch to print, and a few good techniques.

I’ll be experimenting with adding impasto acrylic and printing the image multiple times while keeping it in register… we’ll see how that goes.

Started a 40″ by 50″ colored metal point drawing.  This is ridiculously large for a metal point drawing…and it’s gonna be done by the 10th.  Here’s some process.  I’ll update this post as the piece advances.  Sorry for the poor lighting…the attic’s pretty dank.  And here’s a piece I had finished that’s in the same vein.

The Braid

Woodcut print on Japanese Mulberry paper

12″x36″ actual printed image

Limited edition of 8

For the Georgetown Winter Arts Festival on January 30th.  Should be a one rad night.  Come by if you can, festivities start at 5pm.  Why would you want to come?  Well, the fucking circus is going to be there for one….  Thanks to Angielena at the Georgetown Art Center for droppin my name to the powers that be.

One of the most amazing things today was the $100 donation for SOIL from my friend Bert, a daily regular at the cafe.  If it wasn’t for our morning conversations while I’m making his americano, I might not have done this.  The title of my last post is an accurate assessment of the way he has changed me – altering how I view my place in the world.  Everyday he talks with me about the work he does to educate people on human rights issues and his work to stop the practices that have been ingrained into our society that harm other human beings.  Aside from Hector and Suzie, the two wonderful owners of the farm I worked on a few summers ago, I’ve never met anyone so compassionate (Hec was in charge of Cookeville’s Coalition of Stop the Death Penalty – I have a feeling he and Bert would be great friends if a few thousand miles weren’t between Seattle and Cookeville).  So here’s to you Bert, and Hector, and Suzie, and all those who truly care, and go out of their way to help others!

I had a thought today concerning the last paragraph of my last post.  I think a simpler and more accurate way of defining the causality of the extremely uneven distribution of wealth in the world can be summed up like this:  The reason we are able to spend $100 a day on ourselves is because a majority of the world can only spend $2 or less.  The link is a direct one, and we need to start recognizing it.

Links:

Democracy Now!

Raj Patel http://rajpatel.org/

These organizations have a history of working directly with the people of Haiti:

Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL)

Doctors Without Borders

Grassroots International

I also want to warn anyone against donating to any sort of United States governmental initiative.  It should be painfully obvious by now that the government does not spend our donations or taxes in any manner that could be call “wise.”  The two people who President Obama has put in charge, his predecessors in office, Clinton and Bush, is like instituting, in Patel’s words, “the horsemen of destruction” to save those in need.  Who do you think kept Haiti in the economic downward spiral, continuing the racist international relations, encouraging the privatization of essential human services?  (food production, telecommunications, concrete production – Haiti should be an exporter of concrete, and at a time was, but due to government subsidies and other outside, international influences, it has become impossible for Haiti to maintain it’s concrete facilities, forcing it to import).

These are not empty words.  Most of the money I earned from my recent show at Fresh Flours will be going to Doctors Without Borders and SOIL.  Both during my shift at work yesterday, and my shifts this coming weekend, I collected and will be collecting my tips, the jar sitting next to a statement saying that I will donate all tips, and match those with my own savings, to the two organizations.  I’m not telling you this to get some sort of praise.   Please, don’t bother.  I’m telling you because most of you know that, until now, my savings have been kept steadily at zero.  This call-to-humanitarian-aid sort of thing is not something I’ve been known to do, or had the opportunity, but I believe that leading by example is the most effect way to create change.  The huge difference between me giving my savings and giving absolutely everything, is that if I just give my savings I will still be able to live in extreme, humiliating, comfort.  Meanwhile between 100,000 and 300,000 (these are realistic numbers) have died, and more will, due to lack of resources and doctors, as well as the large international organizations that follow racist, governmental-imposed protocol that ultimately cripple their effect.

It’s time to get more involved in our communities.  And whether we like it or not, our communities now involve the entire global community.  However, I still feel that the most effective way to make change is by working directly in your neighborhoods, where you can see the effects of your actions, and develop lasting relationships.  The difference with Haiti and other counties hit with natural disasters, is that the choices we make in our neighborhoods, affect those countries thousands of miles away.  Whether it’s climate change, human rights violations, the reliance on international aid due to imposed regulations on what a developing country can provide for itself, or the insane national debt (third-world debt) that countries like Haiti owe to the World Bank, those who benefit from these things are to blame.  Those people are us in the so-called developed countries.

-J

Rough sketch of the Bison People series.  My friend Adrien who inspired the Bison’s Bread and Bitter Root print.