Some work of the past

Thoughts of Walt Whitman

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."
-W.W.

Travel Sketching

It has been a dream of mine to be a traveling artist, sketching as I go, trading, and giving away work. I have been planning a bicycle/surf trip down the California Coast and beyond. I am hoping to use this opportunity to sketch on the road, exploring methods of recording and engaging with my surroundings via drawing. Stay tuned for blog updates or a link to a separate blog about this trip!

My first stop motion and my final school project! 

or for a better quality video go to: https://vimeo.com/39077575

This was about two weeks of day and night drawing, erasing, drawing, erasing, etc. It is a beginners/rough cut but I enjoyed the process of learning how stop motion works. It takes some patience, letting go, and attention to detail. I recommend the experience!

This is a portrait of a Shipibo woman I met while studying in the Amazon. I tried combining photos I took with pastel illustration. This was done in response to my questions about traveling as an observer, student, artist, and foreigner. 

In Tim Cresswell's book, Defining Place: A Short Introduction, he explains that places are “made, maintained, and contested” out of landscapes and spaces. Cresswell explains places as a pause in space. This resonated for me; making place is a subjective action, it is a way of looking at the world, a perspective as well as a physical object. Place became a defining basis to look at the relationships between local and global, familiar and unfamiliar, known and unknown as undercurrents of my motivations to travel. (This is an excerpt from an artist statement I wrote in college).