the power of pictures

i walked over to Park Slope to view an exhibit about R.I.P. murals in Brooklyn. It was a tiny show organized by the Groundswell Community Mural Project, a really cool organization devoted to community involvement in planning and painting murals in Brooklyn neighborhoods.

a group of teens spent a few weeks documenting the history of the murals and interviewing friends and family of those who the murals commemorate. it was really compelling to learn the stories of the people behind the images.

to me, this is the essence of folklore, the field i studied in college. one uncovers the history of a group of people through how they choose to communicate that shared history artistically whether through visual arts, performance, or oral tradition. it is their distinct communication that defines them.


detail from a mural in my neighborhood (Baltic Street at Hoyt): this commemorates the life of Nicholas Naquan Heyward, Jr., a thirteen year old boy shot and killed in 1994 by Police who thought the toy gun he was playing with was real.



i was also really inspired by progress on one of groundswell's current projects at the corner of Degraw Street and 4th Avenue. The bright palette and graphic style create a profound visual impact admidst the industrial landscape. i'm anxious to learn the story behind this one.

re-lighting the fires

i took a week off. last weekend's 8+ hours of painting left me with sore wrists and the necessity to recuperate. but i can't sit still for too long. i've moved up the date of my housewarming art show by a week which means the next few weeks will be busy as i strive to create a bunch of new work.

i sent my children's book out to Chronicle Books last week. (My editor contact at Simon & Schuster passed on it.) So the game continues. the funny thing is i feel like i'm in a creative place that haven't been before, on the cusp of something big. i hope to have a second story in the mail to publishers before the end of the year with 3 others drafts in the works.

here's a small piece i made for my upcoming show:

Howlfest 2004

i participated in the Howl Festival's "Art Around the Park" gathering in Tompskins Square Park this weekend. Designed as a festival of East Village Arts, they surround the park with a wall of canvas, assign 7' by 6' sections to artists and let 'em have at it.

it was an interesting experience painting in public. at times i felt uncomfortable so it helped having my back to spectators. and at times i wondered why more people didn't attempt to enagage me. they'd comment as if i wasn't there or i that i was so focused i couldn't possibly hear them. a few people stopped and asked questions. several said it reminded them of "Jack and the Beanstalk." i consider the greatest compliments to be those given by young kids who thought "it was cool" or "i like that one."

thank you to all who came on by Saturday to say hello. (a special shout out to my sister.) i know many of you planned on stopping by. it was best you didn't. the rains came with a fury at about 2pm forcing most of us to scramble for cover. i came back Sunday and finished up as throngs of people bought produce 4 feet from my back at the farmer's market set-up on the same sidewalk.

i know some of you expected monsters. what's up with the ladders? exactly. they're bridges up. they remind us that sometimes we need a little help to reach the next level. they give us the path, and provide the rungs but the climbing is up to us.

it all starts with an idea roughed out


the blank slate


"The Ladder Triptych"

in honor of Shel

things are busy these days. i've set the date of my housewarming/art show for the end of September (9/25) and i'm trying to have 10 new pieces ready to display in my apartment gallery. i find myself bouncing around from project to project, sketching a little, painting a little, organizing piles, looking for frames, etc. somedays it's more bouncing than actual focus, but the deadline is forcing me to flesh some new book concepts which is really good.

in the midst of my schedule, i've been re-exploring the work of Shel Silverstein whose "Where the Sidewalk Ends" singlehandledly made a profound impression on my generation. his scratchy pen and ink drawings and imaginative poems were engrained in my child psyche early on and i only need to open his books to find familiar faces and read well trodden lines of rhyme.

i've had animals floating around my head (amongst other things) and i composed the following poem which owes it's roots to Silverstein himself:

There's a RHINO on the bus!
There's a RHINO on the bus?
I don't see all the fuss because
there's a RHINO on the bus.
Now you're trying to tell me
that he's sitting next to us?
I really think it's something that
we've all got to discuss.
I'm not the type of boy to
stamp his feet and cuss.
But don't you people realize
THERE'S A RHINO ON THE BUS!

here he is on one of the quieter commutes:

iguanas on the subway

(BORING BUSINESS: i'm back. i apologize for the fact that i haven't posted in awhile. i was in the middle of changing web hosting services and there were some glitches. it's come to my attention that i'm not always receiving emails. (last week i got an email from a woman i went to highschool with. she sent it 3 years ago! hell, i lived in texas and had long hair back then.) believe me that's more frustrating than you can possibly imagine. the point i'm making is: if i didn't respond to you, i'm sorry, i may never have received it. the other reason would be i don't like you but that's rare. i like you. BRIAN@BRIANYANISH.COM will always be my email address. but if for some crazy, world wide web mishap it gets bounced back, please tell me by sending an email to my back-up email address: BYANISH@MAC.COM. thank you, this is not the information i intended for this blog.)

when i was riding the subway late at night a few months ago, i saw this young guy slouching in his seat across the way, falling asleep. he had so much gel in his hair that it spiked up really high. quite frankly he reminded me of an iguana and naturally the image of an iguana on the subway seemed amusing to me, so i jotted a quick sketch and a few notes for further development. i'm really just avoiding drawing people by switching from monsters to anthropomorphic animals. recently, i've gone back to this idea and developed it into a story.
and i'm really excited about this one.

the cryptic text (yes, i know i write small) from my sketchbook reads: "I saw an iguana on the subway. He was big and scaly and he took up 2 seats just like that. 3 people almost tripped over his long green tail but he didn't seem to care. He just blinked, scratched his belly and went back to napping right there on the subway. The only time he moved was to share his seat with a rhinoceros but nobody believes me. About the rhinoceros I mean."

productivity and comics on the brain

it's been an inside week, inside my apartment, inside my head. but that usually means some kind of work is getting done, and the best indicator of things happening is a messy desk. (i hate a messy desk. but if it means productivity then so be it.) i've been working on some story ideas and a few pieces for an upcoming housewarming/art show i'm planning this fall. ladders will figure prominently for some unknown reason.






i ventured out this evening to a little gallery/store called Jigsaw in Alphabet City that is owned by a friend of a friend from Austin. a nice little space, it was full of comic and zine enthusiasts and artists hanging out to celebrate the publication of comic artist Neil Kleid's latest graphic novella "Ninety Candles."

(i like comics but have always felt they were a bit much to keep up with. going into a comic store is intimidating and overwhelming to say the least. and i also don't need anything else to collect. i've got a shelf full of children's books and boxes of toy figures and random plastic monster heads and tchotchkes that it pains me to think about it. and my comic reading as a kid tended toward lighter fare, Richie Rich, Bugs Bunny, Archie. as i got older i chose comics purely for their visual look and style of illustration.)

but the stuff at Jigsaw was really inspiring. i purchased a few mini-comics and self-published/xeroxed stuff by Dan Moynihan and Todd Webb. visually, i'm drawn to strong ink lines and the simpler, more graphic stuff. and i love the fact artists will make up little books of their work and just put it out there to share. it doesn't have to be bound and glossy to be worthwhile.

i also just finished reading Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" about a couple of cousins who create a comic book while living in New York city during the 1940s. It's an epic story, complex and vast, and sad and inspiring. It manages to be light and heavy at the same time and very readable. Chabon won the Pulitizer for it in 2001.

all this makes me want to experiment with the medium a bit. in due time.

brooklyn and the power of saints

i had a great time just hanging out in brooklyn this weekend. since i moved here 2 months ago, i've really felt the need to connect more to my surroundings and this was a nice first step. i went out to Prospect Park with some friends and heard They Might Be Giants and then hung out at a local neighborhood bar, talked to some interesting folks.

at about midnight i discovered i didn't have my keys. then i realized i'd left them on the grass in the middle of the Prospect Park. i told my friend i'd be back in an hour, hopped on the subway, ran up to the park and began my twilight search for 3 keys attached to the tiny broken head of a weathered action figure. a couple parks people brought over a flashlight and helped me look for about 10 minutes.


enter the saint: i'm not a religious guy. i was raised Catholic but quite honestly spent more time imagining ways to escape from church then attending it. Catholic mass suffers from a lack of special effects and a decent soundtrack. however, i remain faithful to Saint Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost objects. (He can also help protect you fromshipwrecks which is good.) my mom taught me the following mantra whom she learned from her mother:

"Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony please look around, something is lost that must be found."

i said it at least 5 times in the park. to myself, out loud. i never doubted for a moment i wouldn't find them. it was a mini quest. the park's folks we're about to give up and have me fill out some lost and found form, when i spotted them, nearly invisible in the grass. they told me i was the first person to ever return and actually find what they were looking for. i bid them a good evening and ran off to the subway, tipping a street musician in proxy for service from solid old Saint A. i walked back into the bar exactly one hour later.

(when i recounted the tale the following day to my grandmother, she said i ought to send a donation to wherever Anthony's headquarters were. And some day I shall. she then said i should ask him to find me a nice girl, cleverly adding she hadn't been to a wedding in awhile.)

i visited Manhattan for a birthday party on Saturday night and quite honestly couldn't wait to return to my new borough. the point is, we got the power in brooklyn. it's in the trees, it's in the air, and it's only getting stronger.