Artistic Tendencies, News Outta My Control / 17.07.2011

Two new posters from the Chamomile Tea Party. Click on each of them for a close-up view. It's been pretty steamy here in Washington. But I'm not talking about the weather. Here in DC, we seem to live and breathe politics. It's not always our choice. Sometimes our jobs literally depend on what's going on on Capitol Hill. And, the rancor you might pick up out there is magnified over here. Political wrangling and rhetoric is pretty high right now as the Republicans and Democrats are jockeying for position. But it seems like they're jockeying more for the 2012 election than...

News Outta My Control, Professional Auteurism / 09.07.2011

Wally Shawn photographed for Time magazine. This has got to be the worst photograph of Wallace Shawn I have ever seen. What were the editors of Time magazine thinking when they decided to use Peter Hapak's image for their summer reading feature in last week's edition? What? You don't know who Wally Shawn is? I know Wally and this is NOT him. Well, I actually don't know Wally personally, but I once saw him at a phone booth on the street next to the Whitney Museum, which is the same thing. You do remember The Princess Bride, don't you (he played...

Artistic Tendencies, News Outta My Control / 02.07.2011

Today marks the first anniversary of an idea. One year ago today, as I was walking home from work, my brain gave birth to the Chamomile Tea Party. More specifically, I decided to take World War II-era propaganda posters and remix their words with commentary about the caustic state of contemporary American discourse. I remember exactly how it happened and exactly where I was when the idea hit me. I was let out of work early for the July 4th weekend. I took the Metro home and was walking the last mile to my house. Listening to NPR's All...

News Outta My Control / 08.11.2010

John Boehner on the cover of Time. Click image for detail. When the mailman handed me this week's Time magazine I was immediately drawn to the cover photograph of John Boehner, the presumptive Speaker of the House. But I couldn't figure out why. There is something very odd about it (see detail). It's not an attractive portrait. The shallow depth-of-field forces us to confront his face. His eyes are bloodshot and his expression is inscrutable, like Da Vinci's portrait of Mona Lisa. Boehner looks a little goofy. Is his grin comical, magnified by the soft shadow of his Perot moustache-shaped philtrum?...

Artistic Tendencies, Fairly Odd Parents-Present, Idiosyncratic Celebrations, News Outta My Control / 31.10.2010

I positioned us at the Rally for a good photo op of the Capitol. At the last minute I decided to bring one of my Chamomile Tea Party posters to the Rally for Sanity here on the National Mall yesterday. So Friday afternoon I got it printed BIG. You might wonder why this wasn't on my radar weeks ago. After all, procrastination is not my usual style. Let's see, there's work, soccer games, work, grocery shopping, exhaustion, and work --well, you get the picture. The Chamomile Tea Party is my "side" biz. Promotion is key to any success but my methodology...

Artistic Tendencies, News Outta My Control / 26.09.2010

The latest poster by the Chamomile Tea Party (click image for larger view). Posters distill the essence of ideas or messages to their most economical form. You glance at a poster as you walk by the wood barricades of a construction site or, these days, as you peruse the walls of the Internet. When remixing someone else's poster as I've been doing with World War II-era propaganda posters for the Chamomile Tea Party, I'm initially attracted to the design and then to its message. Simple and direct is best. Then the real thinking begins. What do I want to say? What's my...

News Outta My Control, Professional Auteurism / 25.06.2010

A recently discovered magazine ad fuels speculation that Steve Jobs can time travel. This morning, in an old dusty box hidden in the corner of my attic I unearthed some old magazines. I can't remember why I kept them. But thumbing through their pages I came across this 1960s ad for Western Electric's Picturephone ® and something in the shadows caught my eye. Steve Jobs knew Marty McFly. But more importantly, proof positive why AT&T, the descendant of Western Electric, is the exclusive carrier for the iPhone. [ iPhone, AT&T, Steve Jobs, Western Electric, Apple ] ...

Artistic Tendencies, News Outta My Control / 10.02.2010

Jeff Gates, From a Series of One Acts… #7, 1987. Click on image for larger view. Before moving to the DC area I spent a year teaching art in Minnesota. I learned to drive in the snow that winter and am proud to have survived a week of -90F (-68C) windchill. But that pales by comparison to what the Mid Atlantic is going through right now (okay, what I'm going through right now). It's a blizzard out there and believe it or not, I think this storm is worse than the snowpocalypse that inundated us this past weekend. We've been off...

News Outta My Control / 08.02.2010

Top: Panorama of the entrance to the park across the street from our house taken during the blizzard (part of a series of photographs I've been taking). Bottom: Our street as I struggled to get back inside (our house is at the extreme left). Click on either image for a larger view. We knew it was coming. They had been warning us for days. The good people of the nation's capital thought we were seasoned winter citizens after the last big snow in December. But at the last minute we all panicked and cleared grocery stores of anything that was...

News Outta My Control, Professional Auteurism / 03.01.2010

Glenn Beck as our species savior? Annalee Newitz recently posed this question: "When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like 'Avatar'?" And she followed it up with some interesting ideas on race and film making in America. While I would agree that Avatar and District 9 are Hollywood's metaphors for racial relations, by limiting her piece to just race she missed a larger issue: the broad scope and brutal reality of human nature reflected in these films. Avatar is James Cameron's epic about the Na'vi of the moon Pandora. Humans are so interested in obtaining the element Unobtainium (talk about transparent...