Art Good, Hitler Bad. » Pretty Pictures

A Stitch In Time

Charles — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 05:05:24 +0000

Caricatures and Grotesques

Marcus — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 21:45:15 +0000

Students from a California high school art class were asked by their teacher to draw the 2008 presidential candidates from memory. The results: a profound reflection of the media’s role in politics. Looking for a dissertation topic? You’re welcome.

For more great artwork got to: http://highschoolart.blogspot.com/

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Will Bites Back

Charles — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:14:27 +0000

Some photos of a recent up cropping of posters by the now infamous ‘Natalie’s Dog Walking Service’, aka ‘Will’s Motorized Mountain Bikes’, aka ‘Paul’s Pro Painters’.

Apparently Will’s custom canine orthopedics have evolved into something less favorable of the geriatric canine community his early posters sought to champion. And who can blame the man? Picture it: you’re in the park walking the dog after work, and all of a sudden you’re surrounded by a gaggle or ruffians in sandals insisting that you help them look for a lost Aerobie.

Given the situation, who wouldn’t want a half-rabid battle-beast in spiked body armor at the end of a short leash to help hammer home the point that you’re not out to take gruff from folks playing games, but to chase gophers and bag up a pile or two of steaming shit?

Thanks again Will!

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Creepy

Charles — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 02:20:39 +0000

I was emptying out my camera’s memory card when I stumbled on this picture taken a couple months back. At the time of the photo the sheer scale and creepiness of this huge monstrosity compelled me to walk by it a number of times, like someone trying to inconspicuously get a good look at a burn victim without them noticing. Eventually, I seized the opportunity to sneak a snapshot, guerrilla-style, while the grizzled looking vendor had his back turned.

Besides musing about the fascination the artist (male or female) must have had with young, prepubescent girls, there’s just something about the tone of the work that gives me the willies. The strange, featureless girl in the center reminds me of what it must be like to see one of the Olsen twins wandering around the kitchen at 6am in a post-apocalyptic, cocaine-fueled, zombie-like haze unable to coax a smile, let alone open the refrigerator door. Makes me want to call in an amber alert just as a precautionary measure!

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Wish You Well

Charles — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 23:09:26 +0000

San Francisco is great town for bicycle commuting. Aside from the looming hills that dot the landscape, it’s really fast, easy and fun to get around on two wheels. I sometimes catch a glimpse of some middle-aged tool driving a Hummer H2 and I wonder if he even knows the pure exhilaration and sense of freedom a bicycle offers. Sure the commercials for those tanks sell a similarsensation of freedom, driving up a cliff or mountain side, but most assholes are driving from garage to garage in city traffic, isolated from the outside world at a pace no more than a crawl.

Unfortunately, cars and their drivers see things a different way. As luck would have it, I recently had the unfortunate experience of having that debate face to face with the side of a Prius. Fortunately, with the exception of a bum shoulder, I walked away from the encounter fairly unscathed. Moments after impact, neighborhood friends who heard the thud of my shoulder slamming into the side of the car came over to make sure I was OK. Anthony was one of those who checked in on me.

A couple days later he told me he had something for me. To my pleasant surprise, he made me a get well card. It was quite thoughtful and actually made me feel a little better.

A couple weeks before, I commissioned Anthony to create a portrait of me. Evidently, I look like the 5th Beatle from the Yellow Submarine. Again, witness the amazingly detailed strokes used to color. This is definitely one for the wall.

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Wonderlust

Charles — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:23:30 +0000

I live in a tight-knit neighborhood community. On any given night the local bar plays second home to a storied crew of locals from the surrounding area. As with any small neighborhood, rumors and gossip abound. And when I first started talking up my affinity for Anthony’s intriguing t-shirt designs I learned that the owner of the local tattoo studio had a collection of colored works acquired in exchange for snack money or a warm cup of coffee. When I expressed my interest he gladly took me to the back room, where after digging around in a storage loft, he pulled out a handful of rolled up papers.

When I first saw his collection of Anthony’s work I was awe struck. The first piece I was presented depicted a hovering zeppelin of some kind, emblazoned with the insignia of an eagle. But most impressive were the tightly contained waves of tiny hatchwork strokes painstakingly textured in a radiating web of colors that stretched across the page.

Each successive piece seemed increasingly steeped in pop culture references and fantasy worlds, ranging from a portrait of Paul McCartney, to an homage to Ronald Reagan’s victory in the Cold War and mythical man-eating scorpions.

I’m no art critic. My response is driven by emotional cues rather than intellectual associations. I often struggle to find comparable artistic references or even explain what excites me, other than apparent artistic expression in it’s pure and unfiltered form. With these types of simple but elegant renderings the message isn’t clouded by the messenger.

A few days later when I ran into Anthony I complimented his work and asked if he had any more pieces at home. In his timid and humble manor he told me the majority of them had been misplaced. Let’s hope they turn up at some point.

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The Unsinkable Molly Brown

Charles — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 21:30:59 +0000

Here are three more panels from what Anthony tells me is a 200+ frame comic book!

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Love Walks In

Charles — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:47:07 +0000

There’s a local character in my neighborhood named Anthony. He’s been a regular drop-in guest at many of the area businesses, from the tattoo parlor to the video rental store and likely many more. I never really knew much about him except he suffered from some kind of developmental disability and always seemed to be in a perky mood. When a friend and I opened a clothing store, he started occasionally popping in to say hello to my female business partner. This went on harmlessly for a few months until one day he allegedly grabbed her boobs and as a result was given a stern talking to by the guys in the tattoo shop. Evidently, chicks don’t dig that sort of thing.

Fast forward a couple of months. Today he surprised me by coming in and asking for me by name. He preceded to tell me he had t-shirts to sell based on artwork from his upcoming comic book, which I later found out was named “Love Walks In.” With my interest peaked, I told him to bring them by so I could have a look. He brought me one shirt featuring a seemingly headless protagonist sporting a “I Love New Jersey” shirt heading off to confront a villain bent on the destruction of the cover girl (and nominee for best porno name ever) Kiwi Sweat. Was my interest peaked? Affirmative.

Front:

Back:

To my surprise, the shirt sold only hours later. Needles to say, I told him to bring by more shirts and any drawings he has. Looks like we may have a budding Daniel Johnston on our hands.

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Suffer for Fashion

Charles — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:07:15 +0000

I’ll admit it, I am more into clothes than most guys I know. The thrill of finding some weathered, zip-tastic, leather jacket, hidden in a rack full of otherwise unassuming garments elicits an joy probably not dissimilar to a lottery winner upon hearing their numbers being called. OK, maybe that’s a bit of a stretch. But for a brief, relatively insignificant period in my life (at least until I find a new one), that jacket makes me feel like a million bucks.

Fashion has long been a channel of expression through which a person could affirm their unique sense of identity, and proclaim their affiliations within the social context of status, beauty, and power. It’s not surprising that so many young girls find the allure of fashion so appealing. What other medium offers such a safe place for a woman to explore the sensitive issues of sexuality and power? Below are the drawings of one such woman, named Ruth Camilleri and her collection of over 1,200 oddly captivating fashion figures from the early 1970s.

What originally caught my eye was the sloppy and disproportionate characteristics of some of her models and the sheer volume of her work, which seems to have been created all within a couple of years time. However, I subsequently learned that fashion design students are taught to “(draw their models) long and slim with squared off shoulders and very unrealistically elongated legs.” Who knew fashion design was so careless and wonderfully crude?!

This collection of work represents either the sketches of a highly driven, working designer, or perhaps the secret portfolio of a passionate housewife expressing herself through the language of contemporary fashion.

More images can be found on the AGHB Flickr Page.

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Honey Tree Evil Eye

Charles — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:24:48 +0000

I love stories told in brief compelling episodes, each one a new clue to the titillating climax that lies ahead. However, instead of soap operas or the political circus surrounding a presidential candidate’s every misstatement, I favor the narrative of the offbeat, expressed in rants, ramblings and bizarre imagery. The continuing saga of Natalie/Carolina’s Pet Portrait & Dog Walking posters is what “must see Thursdays” was probably like to the masses back in the 1990s, only not quite as safe and filled with non-sequitur tangents, far out propositions, and downright strange renderings of Noah’s prophetic herd.

Anyway, this Sunday, after months of silence I finally got my fix. After catching a fleeting glimpse of a poster taped to the back of a stop sign more than a week ago, this time I mustered up the motivation to hop off the bus along Cortland Ave. to capture one for the archives. Not only did I find a one, I actually discovered two and a quarter previously unseen posters along the sunny, early morning streets of Bernal. While his witty cartoon thought bubbles remain a means for animal-human communication, our artist seems to have abandoned his rough pen sketches in favor of a collage of photo-surrealism. From what I gather the 1980’s advertising campaign of Bud Light must have had a profound impact on Will’s formative years, as he appears to have enlisted the help of the once famed, ever-exuberant party animal Spuds MacKenzie, donning swimming goggles and offering clever one-liners as a spokesman for his master’s artistic services.

Interestingly, in “True Hollywood Stories” fashion, I discovered that Spuds MacKenzie (real name: Honey Tree Evil Eye) had quite the controversial life, complete with meteoric rise to fame followed by an almost immediate free-fall. After becoming an over-night sensation that began with a 1987 Super Bowl commercial, Spuds received a slew of endorsement deals and his face garnered everything from t-shirts to dolls. However, it was soon let loose that the super-macho, ladies’ man Spuds was actually a female! With the frenzied media controversy that ensued, reportedly Anheuser-Bush execs tried to shield her from cameras to conceal her female parts that might become front-page news when she had to go #1.

Like other pop-icons Prince and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister, Spuds was even the target of angry temperance-oriented parent groups, who in 1992 accused her employers of selling the “too-cool-for-monogamy-and-sobriety dog” to America’s children. Even though the FTC ruled in the maligned Bull Terrier’s favor, the ads were dropped and less than a year later Spuds died of Kidney failure at the age of 10.

Anyway, back to Will, who decided the optimal way to advertise his “Adventure Walks” was by showing a little girl being dragged along by an overpowering Alligator. Natalie the dog, with the clear intention of distancing herself from this bizarre spectacle, states she “did not take that picture.” Good to know who’s got your back, eh?

And then there’s this. If you ever leave town, you may have another option to leaving your beloved canine with family or a professional boarding kennel.

It’s nice to have something to look forward to (again).

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