Wednesday, December 22, 2004


blue christmas/blue palm tree (for phil)
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blue christmas/blue palm tree goes all the way from san francisco to costa rica.

Sunday, December 19, 2004


church street getting darker before the rain
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this photograph is an altered rendition of the one which is the base image for daisies and saul on the way to damascus. the brewing rain storm can really be seen as it encroaches the downtown part of san francisco. i was just sitting on my stoop when i absent-mindedly snapped this photograph.

dolores park at dusk (for kaye)
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admittedly my favorite vista for photographs, dolores park at dusk (for kaye) just took form when i was fiddling with a new program that came with my external dvd writer/burner. the contrast between the cloud cover, the setting sun and the slow demise into sunset is rally striking, and fortunately, pretty regular an experience in my backyard.

church dome parallel to church street
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i have tried for ever to get some photos that capture this dome for this church, and sadly i have still yet to succeed. it is a striking, yet simple dome with very cool, seemingly cracking and disheveled tiles for its roofing. i'm not there yet in getting the dome right, however, this is getting closer to what i see in real life. church dome parallel to church street is a digital of mine taken pretty much from my favorite spot to take photos of downtown. this time, though, rather than shoot north-east (which would yield another dolores park at dusk (for kaye) shot, instead this is taken looking directly due east.

bloom poem #9 (foto of the detailed final piece)
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although not the most precise of photographs, this picture is what bloom poem #9 looks like after i have hand-detailed it and mounted it on canvas. this is a 10" X 14" reproduction of what is usually a 15" X 21" image. sorry about the unnecessary glare. the yellow border is just yellow masking tape -- when i was finishing up the corners, however, the blue ink kind of spilled and before i could stop the blue, it has created as small puddle as can be seen on the left hand side of the piece. i liked the puddle, painted the blue around the edges, scraped some of it off and before i knew it, i had a final version that was really striking. so i kept it as is.

bloom image #9 (for maria)
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if you scroll down about 22 images (to one posted 11/28), you can see how bloom image #9 (for maria) has been altered by my hand-detailing. while this image is usually a 9" X 12" piece, the rendition done here is 10" X 14." bloom image #9 (for maria) was made for a really great person who saw my art by way of americablog.com. all said and done, it is really quite amazing. the varnish i used to finalize the piece was actually plastic dip, a sort of liquid, fast-drying clear plastic that one uses on tool handles, etc. it makes for a great finish and also lets you touch the art with no fear of messing it up. this piece has a great home now in southern california!

Monday, December 13, 2004


six mini-golden gate bridges
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six mini-golden gate bridges is a fun 8 X 10 small rendition of the larger piece 6 different versions of the same bridge for jordan. the photograph from which i developed the image was a gift from my friend jordan who happens to be one of the most talented young photographers i have ever been lucky enough to be friends with. what attracted me to jordan's photo and which i intentionally emphasized in this piece (and its much larger parent) was the fog. it is almost as if it is eating or shrouding a specific part of the bridge. but i digress. i have pasted below most of the individual panels which make up the big parent piece.


one of the images for "six mini-golden gate bridges"
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each of the individual renditions of the golden gate bridge image is 8.5" X 11" so that when put together, they make for a 17" X 33" image (six different versions of the same bridge for jordan). this image and the next four are both details from this larger piece as well as free-standing images in their own right.

one of the images for "six mini-golden gate bridges"
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8.5" X 11"

one of the images for "six mini-golden gate bridges"
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8.5" X 11"

one of the images for "six mini-golden gate bridges"
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you guessed it... 8.5" X 11"

one of the images for "six mini-golden gate bridges"
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this is my favorite of the panels. i can't say exactly who or when, but this version reminds me of a very distinct california advertising style, very northern california to be as imprecise in my precision as possible. just as i think of currier & ives as winter and new england, whatever this style's name and whomever this style owes its look to, i always see it and think "berkeley, beat poet, san francisco, city lights, chez panisse." anyone know the style i am in homage to in this?

Monday, December 06, 2004


still life: shoes, altoids, socks & hanger
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the single shot that is now still life: shoes, altoids, socks & hanger is from a digital photograph i took by accident. it really is just a pair of my shoes, a tin of (empty) altoids), my favorite pair of socks and a white clothes hanger that should be in the closet. still life: shoes, altoids, socks & hanger is my triptych's triptych (the title too being nine syllables, one for each image in the finally image). it just came to me that my predilection for fractals and closure, or at the very least -- repetition, is so far the only consistency i see in my stuff. nevertheless, this image is 21" X 27"

turtles for susan
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the original photograph that turtles for susan is based on is not my own photo. it is, it would stand to reason, susan's photo. and it is. from ravello, italy. just one amazingly wonderful fountain, turtles, naked guys, an empty piazza and what appears to be the outline from the aol figurine from television. this picture and the one for permutations were both given to me by susan and this image, for a lot of special reasons, is dedicated to her. it is 8.5" X 11." this image happened quite by accident also, and on the same night that still life happened except that unlike still life, this photo was intentional; my futzing around with it to get this final image is what was by happenstance.

if by chance that the person now reading this is by chance the girl (with the geography trivia) who sat in front of me on the jet blue flight to nyc thursday morning (from oakland), this is what the image looked like before i colored it and gave it to you. i hope you enjoy it.

for you a pair of broken angel wings
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this is one instance where nothing i try does this image justice. for you a pair of broken angel wings is one of the pieces i am most proud of; the poem also, although there is most assuredly a disconnect between the image for this piece and the point of poem. the central image is actually a photo a friend sent a bunch of us by way of an e-mail of a single cherry blossom out his window. i really wanted to work with the photo, got his permission and about two months later, this is what emerged. there are seven pairs of images , in three columns, with the center column's pair being the same to its left and right, (to the left it has been desaturated; to the right it has been inverted). past/present/future... morning/noon/night... want/have/need... yesterday/today/tomorrow... before/during/after... memory/fact/revision... etc. seven pairs for seven days (a.m. and p.m.).

the image is really big. 3' X 4' the poem runs down the far-right side of the image, like a feather, like the greek myth, like sadness.

because i can't seem to get a good rendition of the whole piece here, below i have uploaded all seven pairs of the image that make up the whole. and, below, are two excerpts from my poem for you a pair of broken angel wings which is in, of, a part of and apart from the image...

(----)

When I wrestle control from my fears
That is when I succeed in redress
Your legacy still haunts me
Whereas I once had whole thoughts
I now cobble it all together in half-breaths,
These fragments only cohere because of commas and dashes.
Were my life spoken absent these I’d float
Float un-tethered I float broken. You stole wholeness,
You left me with my stuttering again intact.

(----)


If I could give you a gift my deepest hope would be this:
To be granted permission to hand to you in heaven
The wings that make you an angel
And as I hand them to you I break them,
Like you to me I snap their knuckles, like you to me limp
I’d make useless your wings, impotent and ugly
For you I would fashion a pair of broken angel wings
Unflinching I stand as you disappear out of my sight
Through clouds and wind and memory leaving me with silence.

angel wings (detail #1)
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10" X 14"

angel wings (detail #2)
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10" X 14"

angel wings (detail #3)
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10" X 14"

angel wings (detail #4)
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10" X 14"

angel wings (detail #5)
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10" X 14"

angel wings (detail #6)
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10" X 14"

angel wings (detail #7)
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10" X 14"

Monday, November 29, 2004


gambling w/ our lives he said (for mister man)
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this image is 3' X 3' and dedicated to mister man. gambling w/ our lives he said is a poem i wrote in 1996, the title being the response i got when i told someone that when we fall in love we gamble with our hearts. "no," he said back to me "we gamble with our lives." that phrase has stuck with me ever since. the image has about 30 separate photos nested in it -- like the disa orchid photo of mine in the lower right-hand corner. the central piece -- the swirls -- represent logan square in philadelphia. while not technically a square (it is a circle), the artist who designed the fountain -- calder (he is the father of the contemporary mobile artist and the son of the artist who helped design philadelphia's city hall) -- also has a shakespeare sculpting adjacent to the fountain. so, between the three nymphs in his fountain and the shakespeare sculpture, i figured it was a much a square as its name stated. if you stand in logan square and look behind you, you can see city hall (calder's dad's work) and if you look ahead of you, you see the philadelphia museum where the calder mobiles hang (his son's work). so there was a tremendous sense of lineage in that spot, the spot where i had my first date with mister man (i slipped and fell into the fountain, if you must know). that kind of familial fractal is the resonant theme of the image. each of the smaller swirls in the center of the image have a photo in them (each swirl standing for one of the nymphs and the fourth for the shakespeare sculpting). the other major, recognizable image is the transamerica building here in sf, where we moved (me back home, mister man for the first time). he loved sf. so it is only fitting that its icon be so prominent. the poem is there in the lower left-hand corner and it can be read clearly in its entirety even when the image is reduced to 50% its real size. the three line excerpt from wedding sonata is from this poem. one other comment – after glenn died and when we were cleaning out his apartment as well as going through photos of his, i came across a photo he took of me when we first moved here to sf. i had no idea this picture existed until it literally fell into my lap. if you look just above the poem, you can see that photograph.

Sunday, November 28, 2004


bloom in dublin - primary image
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bloom in dublin is an 18-poem autobiography which i gave my mom several years ago. since then i have edited all the poems, added four addendum stories and now have completely illustrated the whole work. the entire work is 25 panels in all, and each panel is 21” X 15." i should complicate this right now by adding that within the actual "story" panel itself, there are 3 distinct images which make up that panel -- the core image from a photograph of mine of chinese scroll (see below), the poem nested into a smaller version of the core image, and a background collage of the various renditions of the core image. the exception in all of this, size-wise, is the poem nested into a smaller version of the core image (it's 12" X 9").


i've uploaded 5 panels from this piece. bloom refers to not just the flower, but also to james joyce's protagonist leopold bloom. ulysses is set in dublin (hence bloom being set in dublin) and having been raised proudly irish, on top of my one-day-with-out-a-map-finding-leopold-bloom's-fictional-home-when-in-dublin, it all just made sense. the half-way point of the 18 poems is the shortest poem i have ever written (2 lines, 11 words) while the final poem of the 18 is the longest of all of them in this piece (rewritten to about three times the original length).

the core image for all 25 panels is a photograph of mine of a 2-panel chinese scroll painting. i am sincerely indebted to mrs. ogata for allowing me the chance to photograph it. i would be remiss if i didn't acknowledge my mom's acquiescing and letting me break our agreement about when this poem/image could be seen by anyone other than the two of us. the subject matter of the poem (as a whole poem in 22 pieces) is personal, honest and at times not very pleasant, but it is the what it is to be human.


bloom - story 1
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bloom - image 4
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bloom - image 9
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bloom - addendum a
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Wednesday, November 24, 2004


half sonnets 1, 2, and 3 in a row (self-portrait)
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half sonnet I & half sonnet II & half sonnet III
half sonnets 1, 2 amd 3 in a row (self portrait) is the final displaying of the half sonnet poems that i wrote in 1997. each image is 8.5" X 11" so, the full, 9 piece image is 25.5" X 33." what is in the background of each of the self-portraits is actually cool: in #1, the poster to raise money for the legal defense fund for the white night riots is the yellow/red border, as well as the outline of the cat in the hat; in #2, there is a poster from paris, france. and my big chin -- (OK, that one is not so interesting, except the irish country sea is imbedded into the image too); and in #3 is of course dolores park, san francisco, along with a few tiny jewel weeds which run along the border of the bottom of the image. the jewel weed is an impatiens which is a great antidote for poison ivy. it's also called the "touch me not" flower as well as the "poor man's orchid." if you've ever seen them after they've bloomed and if you've touched the seed pod, you know why these guys are such cool plants. and yes, each poem is a half sonnet not by rhyme scheme but by virtue of being 7 lines (a sonnet is 14 lines) and they all have something to do with love (i always associate sonnets with love, although that is not always the case -- i.e. "dulce et decorum est" by wilfred owen).


wedding sonata (for pam and judd)
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while a few years late in the giving, this piece, wedding sonata, is dedicated to my friends pam and judd. this image (which is only a mere 20" X 25") contains a 3-line excerpt from a poem of mine (gambling w/our lives he said which is also the title of a poem/image in memory of mister man). the three line excerpt fit these two perfectly. the image is based on a photograph from their pre-wedding preparations, except i only kept the outline of them, since their silhouette is what moved me to write the poem wedding sonata which only pam and judd have. this image was 1/2 the gift and is the public displayed image -- the poem, a sonata, is the other 1/2 of the gift and is separately and privately illustrated for them -- and of which they have the only copy too. you can make out a smidge of the 5 poem gift -- it is the line running down the left side of the image; the wedding invitation is what runs down the right side. and i did get permission to use the small image of pam and judd playing from the cartoonist. this is one of my favorite images that i've done.

the three lines of the poem read:


hands that hold are hands of god
tears fall rolling down my cheek
you kiss the tears out of my eyes and they are gone


halfpound4brenda
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halfpound4brenda is 8.5" X 11" and is basically 1/2 of my other poem illustrated, for ez. i halved the image as a gift for a friend and this is dedicated to brenda. the chinese ideogram in the center of the image translates into "plum blossoms resemble bright stars." this image by the way is entirely hand-made, no photos at all. this phrase and portion of this image is also the same image from the saturday flower from the week in flowers. my poem for ez (ez being ezra pound) runs along the left side of the image while one of era pound's last-recorded cantos of his life is in the lower right hand corner.


the penultimate moment (for nora)
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the penultimate moment is a very daunting piece, both in terms of its creation and its final size. full size, it measures 30” X 54” (2.5’ X 4.5’). the poem and illustration are both dedicated to my grammy, nora. this is not the only version of this illustration; the original can be seen in this final piece. months later i returned back to the image and realized the scale was wrong, too small. however, the simple process of resizing and augmenting this image was not to be simple at all. my lap top died. then the loaner lap top died. on top of all of that, the image was just too big for my memory on the lap top, so a few times even my photoshop program crashed. all in all, this illustration took over a full working month to finalize. the celtic knot that can be seen throughout the image is not a celtic knot at all, but a fractal of my mom, nora and her husband, my grampy, walking into the church for my grandparent’s 50th wedding anniversary. the photo one set in rows with itself and morphed becomes a very wild celtic know, often intimating a celtic cross. when i wrote the penultimate moment it was really after hearing my grammy’s voice, clearly, even though she had been dead for years. but things like that happen in our family, at least with nora, con, leller and ger. in the final image i have nested a photo of my mom and aunt, ages 5 and 3. suffice it to say the photo tells a lifetime in a snapshot. there is also a great photo of my grampy standing next to his truck when he worked for the city of chicago. he was a proud, tough, lucky and bedeviling man, as she was a soft, quixotic, mysterious and devoted woman. and as it turns out, my penultimate moment with my grammy was at her 50th wedding anniversary. it was a traditional irish wedding party. to the nines. nora and i danced. she said something to the effect of “i’ll lead but it will look like i am following. just follow what i do.” and with that, we danced. i can still remember her glasses, hands, voice (she did almost sing her greeting), her eccentricities. while i have a fairly good memory, when it comes to my grammy, i draw a very mediocre hand. she is my achille’s heel when it comes to my photographic memory. but, i try the best i can to at least approximate what i felt transpired. she always seemed more in-between what was said and what was expected, anyway. it is indeed that moment just before the last one that either haunts or calms. i miss her dearly.


for ez
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for ez is one of the first images i ever illustrated (ez = ezra pound, the greatest american poet ever, regardless of how whacked and odd he was, and in spite of his virulent and asinine anti-semitism). i managed to keep the original version in some format in the final version, as it runs down the center of the poem separating the 2 covers of the open book. in recasting the image, it struck me how pound's closing cantos -- while by no means reparative-- were redemptive. not one to admit being wrong, not one to ask for help, not one to ever suggest hurt or loneliness, and yet comes the phrase “let the gods forgive…/let those I love try to forgive…” and yet, even in the defeat brought on by his own hubris, pound remains so, so cranky.

the image that is the entirety of my saturday flower from the week in flowers is a five-character chinese ideogram, as brought to us by ernest fenellossa. pound is to have seen this ideogrammatic statement and was able to translate it on the spot, without having ever studied chinese in his life. it could be that it was another ideogrammatic passage or ideogram, but that is not really the point. there was an incident where pound was able to translate without having studied and it might as well have been this one. once i had finished the saturday flower i realized that the image was perfect for the illustration of for ez. in 1991, i spent an entire afternoon on san michele, the island cemetery off venice, italy. it is not lost on me that pound was buried on an island. his grave is simple and dignified, a bit unkempt and very still. the echo of for ez in the background of the image is in memory of that afternoon and i hope the image pays my due respect to my poetic mentor.

tower poem
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canto X: valentine's day eve
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a simple move of the second hand (for liddy)
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while one of my favorite images, this one is probably the least shown, owing both to the person for whom, to whom, and because of whom it is dedicated and completed, namely my cousin liddy. the poem nested into the image a simple move of the second hand is part of the trilogy of time and space of which 2 of the 3 poems/illustrations are complete. the other finished poem/illustration from the trilogy is the end of the ride. meanwhile, the third, syncopated melodies, is still in rewrite until miss byron returns. then it will be completed.

in both a simple move of the second hand and the end of the ride, there is a shared image, namely a fire hydrant (courtesy of moose, whose photograph of the fire hydrant he has allowed me to use and whose original photograph is brilliant). since all three poems deal with death, loss, time and meaning, i found the fire hydrant in the desert image (moose's photo) to be quite droll and understating.

obviously, the title of the poem refers to the second hand of a clock, marking the passing of time in seconds, and the echo-play on second and seconds is intentional. what differentiates a hand shake from an embrace is the second hand. stuff like that. i had lost some very dear friends of mine when the poem was written (including reggie and chuck) and by the time the image was being put together, by then liddy. so, the image is a blend of some of my favorite and most important friends and colleagues and family. i guess that is why it remains finished, and socked away. because the reproduction of the full image is pretty much crap (size issues -- this is a big image, almost 3' X 4'), i have pasted and will paste more examples of the framing image which makes up this. it is a digital photo of the corner of my house, and there are 12 of them (for each month) and in each of the 12 months is nested the name of a friend. etc.

oh and before i forget, because the issue is really important, please check out the Liddy Shriver Sarcoma Initiative website (
http://www.liddyshriversarcomainitiative.org/). liddy was amazing. as she dealt with her own ewing's sarcoma, she never stopped trying to help. using the web (it helped that she was truly brilliant -- and it didn't hurt that she was truly caring) and with assistance from her really amazing husband, dad, mom and brothers, liddy did everything she could to try to educate people about and to try to beat cancer. unfortunately, liddy died from ewing's sarcoma in january 2004. our last e-mail exchange was when she wrote at the end of december 2003 apologizing that -- contrary to plans and our conversations -- she was going to have to postpone her trip out to the west coast over the winter holidays because she wanted to make sure her health was strong enough and all that.

[sigh]


in the image there is a private joke of sorts that we shared, from a dinner she and i had over a decade ago in san francisco. all i will say is that if you find the pair of glasses in the image, then you've got great eyes.


april-liddy
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Wednesday, November 10, 2004


permutation4, ravello
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permutation3, ravello
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permutation, ravello is based on a photograph sent to me by one of my closest friends in the universe from, surprise surprise, ravello, italy. the four variations are all here (one is spring, one summer, one autumn and one winter, although i decided to not label them so obviously). each image is 5" X 7."


permutation2, ravello
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permutation1, ravello
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a view downtown by way of the park (vXray)
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at last count, there were more than 30 versions of this image (24 of which are here). this image is from a photograph of mine and is aptly titled a view downtown by way of the park. i took the photo one afternoon, just one block north (downhill thankfully) from my front door looking out towards downtown. each one of these is 5" X 7" and what you can't see is that when i hand-colour these ones, whichever song is blaring on my stereo is incorporated into the final image, by way of a line or two of said song. i have not done as many variations on an image as i have done with this one, but the subject matter lends itself to a lot of fun versions. NOTE -- this was my first non-poem image that used a photograh of mine.


a view downtown by way of the park (v7b1)
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a view downtown by way of the park (v7b)
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a view downtown by way of the park (b&w)
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a view downtown by way of the park (original)
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a view downtown by way of the park (v.3.0)
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a view downtown by way of the park (vt.1.2)
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a view downtown by way of the park (vclouds)
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a view downtown by way of the park (v1.t)
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