Columbus Was an Asshole

Originally appeared in Seattle comic anthology zine Dune #5, April 2013.

May Is Better Hearing and Speech Month

This is the original image I cut out of an ad.

Between roughly September 2011 and April 2013 I drew all these in pen.

Rosa Parks, Pugilist

Whisler

spelled wrong in the bubble

War Dudes

Man O' War

 These rad new Portuguese Man O' War prints are navy blue on britany blue, or light blue (women's sizes) and have realistic white and pink highlights hand painted on the pneumatophore.
Additionally, there are small fish following in the tentacles looking for a free snack.
These shirts are available by contacting me direct, or at my Etsy shop, An Enormous Door.

BD-71 Field Switchboard

Tree Love

Pen & ink on bristol

6" x 6"

book review illustration for Real Change News

Time Clock

Sewer Mummy

Nature and Nurture

Nature and Nurture

2013

pen, watercolor and gouache

10" x 7.5" (each)

These pieces will likely hang in a show or two later this year.

Japanese Army Drawings

Some pen and ink illustrations from old photos in a book about the uniforms of the Imperial Japanese Army in the Second World War.

Race Against the Machine

Race Against The Machine

2013

pen, watercolor and gouache on bristol

10" x 6"

Another book review illustration I did for Real Change News, this one on
Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy  by  Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. The review focuses on the decay of job skills among the unemployed due to the rapid pace of technology innovation.

Classen High School Board of Education, 1959

Northwest Classen High School, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma 1959

Board of Education (from left to right)

Mr. C. B. McCray - Ward 3

Mr. Jim Wright - President and Ward 4

Mrs. L. D. Melton - Ward 1

Mr. Phil C. Bennett - Vice-President and Member at Large

Mr. Otto F. Thompson - Ward 2

I bought a bunch of yearbooks a while back and occasionally turn to them for entertainment and practice. Some of these were drawn in a dimly lit bar. Drawn from right to left, I originally started by trying to make these caricatures but ended up with my older quasi-realistic style. 

If you have an old yearbook you don't want, I'd love it. Anything 90's and before would be great.

Doctor Quien

For the new B'aktun last year I made this illustration as a gift for my partner. She's a big fan of this particular British television franchise and I'm very interested in Mexican culture, so I mixed the two. A little Doctor Who and a little Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe equals Doctor Quien: Sainted Tardis.

Pen and ink on bristol board.

2013

12" x 8"

Looking Glass Jimmy Carter

Despite the fact that I really don't need more magazines, I couldn't help but get these. Six issues of Time and Newsweek from 1976 leading up to and immediately following that year's election of one Baptist Georgian to the office of President.

Initially I was mostly interested in USAmerican politics around the Vietnam War. The policy of containment during the Kennedy/Johnson regime is well known, but I became more and more interested in the outlying aspects. The genesis of our involvement there during WWII is little known, or the fact that Jimmy Carter granted amnesty to the draft evaders whom had moved to Canada during the war. I came to see Carter as an accident of an exhausted system. So tired of the apparent bellicose and divisive politics of the war years, the people seemed to want anything but.

Another interesting thing about these old magazines is the advertisements. Every fourth page or so is a full-page advert for liquor or cigarettes, and of the six I bought, one has a back cover ad for the former and the remainder for smokes. This was just five years after a ban on cigarette ads in television and radio was signed into law by Richard Nixon. It's interesting to note that as much as the one party decries government spending while the other slashes it out of some bizarre sense of laissez faire “tough-love,” cigarettes are one of the rare instances in which the consequences are continually acknowledged as communal. The very name of the bill, the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act highlights the collective nature of the legislation. It’s just this sort of compassionate coercion that Jimmy Carter seemed to embody as the head of state. A close look at the history of his tenure reveals a more ambiguous picture, but as Capitalism increasingly tries to fragment and individuate society, driving us further apart from each other, Carter's brief tenure seems to me to represent a temporary shudder toward a more collectivist spirit.

During Ronald Reagan's first term he deliberately cultivated an image of masculinity and rugged cowboy-ness. He did this it has been claimed in order to differentiate himself from Carter who seemed soft, even feminine, wearing cardigans during several national addresses. One of Reagan's advisors has been quoted as saying that Jimmy Carter was America's first woman President, an interesting admonition considering that Hilary Clinton, wife of America's "first Black President" may (or may not) be considering a run in 2016. Clinton may have played the saxophone and nominally smoked pot at one time but he was hardly any kinder or gentler than his predecessors. Historians and economists have pointed out that he essentially implemented many of the legal and economic policies for which Reagan (and other conservatives) laid the philosophical and political groundwork.

Consider that under the newly minted trade agreements US produce companies successfully sued in the World Court. As a paltry concession to their legacy of colonialism, the U.K. had agreed to buy bananas from Jamaica at a generous price, but the US considered that 'unfair competition. He also implemented Operation Gatekeeper and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. By increasing twofold the INS (Now ICE) budget, and similarly the number of BP agents, the former effectively forced migrants east to cross the US/Mexico border in the desert where, as one Border Patrol officer clarified, more of them will die leaving fewer to require apprehension. The latter Act, as the name implies, makes poverty and getting out of it a 'personal problem' rather than a systemic and historical social problem.

Of course, the real "first Black President," Barack Obama might have a little more understanding of personal responsibility and the logical disconnect with work opportunities in a culture where people are subject to a 500+ year history of systemic (race,gender,ethnicity and religious) oppression. Nevertheless, he hardly has a better record on these issues. For just one example, presently "undocumented" Guatemalans (and Hondurans and Salvadorans) who are detained are flown all the way back 'home' at a cost to taxpayers of 12,500 dollars per person (numbering just over 76 thousand people in 2011 alone.) He's got a little under four years left to rock the boat, but so far Obama is not exactly a 'glitch' in the business-as-usual system.

Taking a closer look at the policies and politics of Carters term then is a bit like a look in the mirror. The “hope” to which the current regime has attached itself seems tempered by the realities of political inertia. If you want to play the game so to speak, you have to follow the rules. Carter for example failed to stem the flow of arms and assistance to the government of Indonesia which since 1971 had been actively engaged in ethnically cleansing and suppressing the independence of East Timor. He did cut off arms aid to the Guatemalan military dictatorship which at the time was ethnically cleansing the indigenous Maya population. (Israel and Taiwan eagerly filled the gap) Jimmy deregulated the airline industry which laid the groundwork for Reagan's infamous union-busting. He also deregulated the beer industry which allowed for the glorious birth of craft brewing which we so enjoy, particularly here in the North West but has also proved a boon to (inter)national corporations and distributors.
While he certainly had his faults and failures, I've come to see Carter as something of a glitch, a progressive hiccup on the long descent into neoliberal mass-penury. I'll admit then that my dire opinion of Capitalist politics vis-à-vis Jimmy Carter has been largely eclipsed by the incredible, and yes, profoundly compassionate humanitarian work he has done after leaving office. Something you can hardly say for any other President. So, you can see why I tend to be drawn to Carter as something of a rebellious accident. More or less fortunate perhaps but soon "corrected," nonetheless.

Some of my sources:
Clintonomic$: How Bill Cinton Reengineered the Reagan Revolution by Jack Godwin
Life and Debt
Man From Plains
Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era by Susan Jeffords
Wiki-fucking-pedia
Truthout: Reluctant Migration: The Vicious Cycle of Debt, Deportation and Flawed Policy That Drives Central Americans Over the Border Again and Again 
Cascadia Solidaria

Kim Jung Ilmatic

The third of my irreverent Dictator t-shirts, although only the second of the Hip-Hop dictator series. This one features the former Dear Leader of North Korea, Kim Jung Il with a back imprint of his son and successor, Kim Jung Un. If you are familiar with New York MC Nas, you'll get the joke. If not, well... More may be in the works, but I've a lot on my plate right now

Check 'em out at my Etsy shop An Enormous Door.

New Sketchbook Frontispeice

For the last four years on the first page of my new sketchbooks I've been drawing a portrait with the date the sketchbook was started. Last one was Clint Howard, before that was Marge Mellor.
This time out I drew Corinne Calvet.

Insects

Man O' War

 

Man O' War

pen and ink on bristol

11" x 4.25"

$35