asheville rites project video

at last! the video of the asheville rites project is here! this was a project i co-organized with my good friend garth grimball back in may along the french broad river in asheville, nc. garth choreographed a contemporary dance piece with original music from michael libramento, and i painted a free-standing mural to act as a backdrop for this one time, free performance. this project was AMAZING. thank you to adam hillberry, meredith chetwynd and sabrina gilbert for their footage, and especially adam for editing the whole thing.

interiors

a couple shots of interior murals with paint pen. the top one has a 3-D element (right corner) and the bottom one is paint pen on adhesive latex (the material you'd use to wrap a car or a bus.)

working on a new project now (taking patterns to the streets!) and also solidifying my plans for the upcoming months. hopefully a lot of travel....

philip levine

Unholy Saturday

by Philip Levine

Three boys down by the river

search for crawdads. One has

hammered a spear from a

curtain rod, and head down,

jeans rolled up to his knees, wades

against the river's current.

Barely seven, he's the most

determined. He'll go home

hours from now with nothing

to show for his efforts except

dirt and sweat and that residue

he's unaware of sifting

down from a distant sky

and glinting like threads

of mica across his shoulders.

In the distance someone keeps

calling the names of the brothers

in the same order over

and over, but they don't hear

what with the river bank gorged

with blue weed patches and all

the birds in hiding. Perhaps no

one is calling and it's only

the voices of the air as

the late light of June hangs on

in the cottonwoods before

the dark gets the last word.

charleston mural

my latest piece for the chArt outdoor initiative (park circle, north charleston):

photo by my expert protographer colby rabon.

thanks also to thea lynn anderson, mollie howey, haley hobeika, patch whisky, ben sellers, and geoff richardson.

while i was painting, i had a lot of people tell me what they thought this looked like. favorite guess: armadillo.

court mccracken

i have been meaning to make this post for awhile, so i'd like to start the year off by highlighting an artist-friend of mine: court mcracken.

let me gush for a second. court has been my right-hand-girl on three different mural projects, and she is a real gem: supportive, attentive, hard-working as all hell. she has not only helped me tremendously in the past, but her newest drawings are breathtaking. i went to her studio while i was in asheville last week and they are even better in person. if you're in town, go see her show at the junction in the river arts district, beginning january 19th.

from the series "migrations":