the truth

('couples' doesn't just pertain to relationships in the narrowed sense, but also includes mother & child, friend to friend, etc.)
"Couples spend years and huge amounts of energy trying to change each other, but significant disagreements are about values and different ways of seeing the world - things that don't change. Successful couples know this and therefore decide to accept each other "'warts and all'."

"Assessments we make in the blink of an eye can be as good as those we make after much deliberation."

"By the laws of probability, most decisions made under pressure should be flawed ones, yet psychologists have found that people routinely make correct judgments most of the time, even with limited information."

"When we make a split-second decision, we are really vulnerable to being guided by our stereotypes and prejudices, even ones we may not necessarily endorse or believe."

To me, this is why we feel we have to label EVERYTHING:
"We feel we need a lot of information to be confident in our judgments, but often that extra information, while giving us the illusion of certainty, makes us more prone to mistakes."

"If we become more conscious of our ingrained reactions and behavior patterns, our life can begin to be genuinely free."

"To the true believer...the perception of their own purity of intent allows them to do anything in the name of that noble intention---including take their own lives."

"If the world is black and white, then action is clear. It is only the open-minded who have to deal with surprises or contradictions."

"...'what is not' is always a more powerful motivating force than 'what is'."

"the need for belonging leads to misjudgments about other people."

bamboo canvases

Made some more progress on my bamboo canvases - weaving them together with hemp - more developments will be posted later on.
and as always, input is much appreciated.



Side view of the lightbox that will I will be suspending the bamboo canvases from:





All the plans laid out, thus far. (at one of my favorite places to work, parent's house up in Orlando, out on the porch)









(Each canvas is 13"x13" | in total we are required to have 4 canvases of the same dimensions)

painting I

So, this is how the 4'x4' minimum free range painting came out : I was frustrated because what I had imagined in my head is not what it came out to be. When speaking with a friend about it, he made a good point, that it never happens that way - haha so I guess that made me feel better. It was definitely a challenge painting on an uneven surface, however, I think I am going to take my teacher up on her idea about taking all the boards apart and painting each of them sepperately and then putting them back together :) So, I will upload the new painting when it gets done over winter break..

progress on my canvas

working on adding more and more layers of paint before starting the subject of the painting.









I played around with some sandpaper and I love how it came out, so I'm going to work that into the painting, and depending on how i do my layers I can buff out the darks and lights to create an interesting effect... Guess we'll see how it turns out.




This is the first color for my linoleum print:

current workings of my canvas

okay, so i'm not going to put my idea out there just yet, but i've got a sweet one figured out. these are the pieces of wood i cut/sanded (and meliza helped me on some of the masonite ones, thank you!) i'm going to arrange them in an irregular shape for a canvas for painting I class. i want to get better at keeping up with process pictures, so i'll be uploading photos while the project develops :) Thanks for checking it out, and for any input.
I plan on going into further detail about my process when it is finished.

san francisco photographs

I had the awesome opportunity to make it out to San Diego in March of 2003, and we road tripped it 9 hours up to San Francisco to stay at a TravelLodge for the weekend. I love that city. Here are some photographs I took while I was there :)


here are some palm trees that were in a friend's backyard in Del Mar




San Francisco





This was one of my favorites, they were sitting up on the roof throwing paper air planes :)









this first one was inside a Tequilla Bar we went to:





and these were taken out on this hill we were all hanging out on around sunset, it was an amazing view of the city





this is the view of the city we had from that same spot





and this was the view from behind where we were sitting





a portrait of Christine

photographs from illinois

went to a small town, population 310, called Orient in Illinois in the year of 2006

something i was working on over the summer of 2008, rising sun with japanese symbols that are going to be filling all the negative space. I am using a wood burner to put in the characters :)




one of my reference/inspirational walls with my photographs and references I use for paintings.




This was part of an assignment I had to do last spring semester (2007; sophomore year) for a Graphic Design class. We had to make three posters, and this is one that was my favorite, we had to use a quote outside of the images we juxtaposed, and a small phrase or word that was to be included in the images. For my phrase, I used "Free Speech Area" which is actually on the UCF campus in orlando, and because a huge controversy at times. The quote I used was one from Lupe Fiasco, "Every dream is designed and broadcasted from the masters to the masses"



some sketches I did during the summer of 2007 one day while I was hangin it at Chris & Kevin's pad:





these are skatches from Drawing I that I took over the summer of 2007 at MCC with David Kinsey, a Ringling teacher who is an amazing artist, and I definitely learned more from his teaching style than i could have imagined. All of a sudden it was like, wow.. i Can draw haha

annnnd more..

this is a website layout that I made sophomore year for our Web Design Class with Mina (the downest teacher ever). The assignment was to pick a website and re-do it, to make it better. I wanted to do my friend's band up in St.Pete called People Catch Fire. I hung out for a while and took lots of pictures, made up some sketches and imported them into the computer. After which, i went outside trying to think of something to do for the background, having only 30 minutes left before class, i took a piece of computer paper, crushed up some vine charcoal with a hammer, and the paper on top of it - smeared it around to give it that burnt, smokey look and then burnt the edges. I hand't noticed i had gum on my shoe, so when I was stamping out one of the flames on the side of the paper, i got some of that gum on the border, but it definitely added to the effect so it was a happy mistake.
I made rollovers out of the matches, so that when your mouse floated over one, it would pop out and display the section of the website it would take you to.




















this was an assignment I had freshman year, where you picked out a picture of yourself as a guide, and used only two font families to create the portrait. i spent most of my time and concentration on the eyes, as you can see, because to me it was definitely the most important part of the composition..

















this was my second painting from this year's painting I class. 13 ball, one of my favorite numbers..
annnnd Ray Johnson is an interesting character, ya'll should watch How To Draw A Bunny :)

















this was an assignment from my Art of Psychology class, I definitely had some fun with this, and combining some different mediums for some more experimental art..
the assignment was to make a piece of art demonstrating how we are a "little 'h' hero" on our day to day basis. i was referring to how whenever people ask me for things, especially the homeless from my hometown, I am more than willing to give what I have, even if sometimes it is my last. In turn my reward is their time and stories, I enjoy getting to know random people, even if you never end up meeting them again..





















this was my first painting in Painting I class, had to paint part of the classroom, and then later she said she wanted us to put our object into the painting - the scale was at our exposure, just had to make it fit with the composition. i gave my object some arms and legs and ears, forgot the tail though, it was a monkey 13 ball haha

and some more...

this first one is a collage piece i was experimenting with




















this was what i cut off of one of my paintings, to improve the overall composition of the painting, but my teacher pointed out that scrap i cut off had it's own composition and was a great painting all on it's own. So this encouraged me to fulfill an idea of just constantly painting sunsets over it as i see them in different areas and see how it turns out :)





















this is the final finallll of the same painting i had in an earlier post, turned out pretty sweet i think, had some great feedback on it, still some things i'm going to fix

















this was my second printmaking project - where we worked with embossing plates, and adding textures to those plates. then inking them up with, i used oil paints, and running it through the press onto the paper we bought... this is jimi hendrix, had some excellent feedback on this as well, and as always i have plans to make improvements





















this is a inking i started two days ago while I was watching The Doors movie, I have this poster of Jim Morrison that I absolutely love, so I took it down and started inking it during the movie :) it was fun, when I make more of the finishing touches on it, i'll put the movie on again haha

old work continued

this first painting was the beginning of my first landscape assignment for painting 1 class, it ended up changing completely by time i was done with it, as you can see in the next photographed painting:


































a photo i took while cruising around in Orlando















the beginning stages of my dream painting. it was a free-choice assignment, built the canvas myself. i wanted to illustrate what dreams are like to me, especially lucid dreaming and demonstrating collective consciousness with the idea of billiard balls. it's still looking like this right now but i have plans to fix a lot soon :)

















another photo i took, but this is in sarasota