Archive of artworks
Rather than simply responding to each others works, Message in a Bottle is a singular collaborative sculpture by poet Karin Spitfire and visual artist Kenny Cole as their contribution to the 2007 Belfast Poetry Festival.
"While Rome Burns" is a series of drawings and paintings in which I'm creating imagery of figures extending their various odd gestures of friendship or communication from inside clouds or smoke across a limbo-like sky
"While Rome Burns" is a series of drawings and paintings in which I'm creating imagery of figures extending their various odd gestures of friendship or communication from inside clouds or smoke across a limbo-like sky
"Prison Papers" is a series of drawings on found prison record forms, in which I am depicting weaponry from the world’s arsenal of missiles and bombs.
This work is a continuation of previous work created since the war in Iraq, in which I've formatted my drawings into coffin-like shapes. Within these shapes I've drawn atomic explosions from photos taken of nuclear testing in the 50's as seen in the book "100 Suns" by Michael Light ( www.michaellight.net). The overall intention of this work is to express a sense of a weariness of past and ongoing military enterprises, thus the title "Black and Blue"
With this work I'm attempting to critique the role of religion in war and politics since 911. I've begun by referencing the military's growing sophistication in the practice of naming military operations, in which operations are given names carefully selected to shape perceptions about them. I've turned the word operation on its head however by appropriating the hapless character "Cavity Sam" from the children's game "Operation" and used him to symbolize the simple idea of "soldier as pawn" and to suggest that our compliance in supporting military operations has an unreal quality; as if we were innocent children playing a game.
Some of this body of ink drawings were accepted into the Pierogi flat files. These flat files have their home in the Pierogi Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and they travel all over the world. Visit www.pierogi2000.com to see if they're coming to a venue near you!
This work cuts a deeply cynical edge against the current state of affairs in America’s foreign actions. At the heart of this work is the format of the coffin shape. It is a symbolic form that is always kept from public view in times of conflict. It is my belief that by not acknowledging the reality of war in a public fashion we allow ourselves to continue waging war.
I began this project by filling my composition book with drawings from what I thought would be my own vast repertoire of symbols and imagery, only to find out that I was beginning to repeat myself beyond my own comfort level by page 12. That's when I turned to this 1966 World Book Encyclopedia set that a friend had recently unburdened themselves of and given to our family. One man's trash is another man's treasure and I hoped I could appropriate imagery complimentary to my style in the form of 60's type ink illustrations. I was not disappointed and the set became my companion from October 2002 through March 2003 each morning as I worked for a short time before setting off to work.
Cole’s strategy, it seems, figures that in order for one to counter patriotic fervor one must replace the recognizable slogan with the idiosyncratic
On the way to Vermont Studio CenterI stopped at a convenience store and noticed a kind of commemorative mirror hanging up that basically had a high contrast graphic image of a furrowed and concerned looking George Bush silk-screened onto its surface. My reaction was to consider this depiction of George Bush and how presidents are typically depicted or have been in the past. I couldn't think of another president who had ever been innnortalized as sad. As an artist who is always interested in symbols and in particular what I like to think of as the "birth" of symbols, this struck me as something new: Sadness as a symbol of leadership.
I like the format of drawing but am very interested in the structures and supports inherent in painting, which is why I like to use both sides of a stretched canvas. My recent work has brought a return to gluing drawings (now ink rather than graphite) to canvas with the addition of clear molded plastic from toy and hardware products which I typically mount on the back of the canvas. I like how the molded plastic is like a window or container, yet it caries with it an articulated surface that creates a tension with its own transparency and the imagery it encloses.
These drawings were started at the Vermont Studio Center as an exploration of materials and format.
These paintings were completed at the Vermont Studio Center as an attempt to transition from drawing to painting.
