.:Everything you can imagine is REAL:.

New Year, New Website, New Projects, New Semester!

2010-01-21T12:37:00.000-04:00

Greetings again,

I have made several promises to myself over the years about this blog. What that has taught me, is to resist making promises. I am sure many of us were touched by the devastating tragedy in Haiti, and it is quite heartwarming to see the outpouring of support of the region in response. I urge and implore you to do whatever little thing you can to help. Whether it is an affordable monetary donation, or some action of a larger scale, it is moments like this that are true tests of our character.

I find myself with a full plate. This is always a double edged sword, but it forces me to think on my feet, and to be more organized than I would be usually. More importantly though, it is in these moments that my creativity is pushed by necessity. This is an exciting period despite the obvious increased stress, mostly because of a refreshed outlook on design, thanks to a Holiday break spent learning, practicing, and researching.

This space may prove to be a cathartic one at times, but I find the step back useful for perspective. Thanks for reading my (late) first post of the year.

The World's Greatest Commodity

2009-12-20T10:52:00.002-04:00

“Information is the currency of democracy.” Access to information is the integral factor that determines just how much power a people have. This must have been Thomas Jefferson’s thinking when he spoke those words. Or, as the writers of 80’s cartoon series G.I. Joe put it, “knowing is half the battle.” Once we have a population that has unfettered access to information, their ability to make informed decisions or formulate informed opinions increases exponentially. Sometimes, those decisions and opinions have become evaluations of the performance of their governments, and such, a primary tool for the application of democracy and change.

Information in this age flows in at least two directions as opposed to the traditional one. Before, when the public were simply recipients of information whether by television, newspapers, or letters, there was no channel through which we could communicate directly to the sender of the information. Now when a news story breaks on CNN, The Guardian, BBC, or any major news outlet, the public has the power to comment instantly.

As comments accumulate, both users and the information provider can see the forum taking shape. In these digital communities, virtual representations of the ideas of democracy can be seen, groups coalesce behind their shared beliefs and opinions and sometimes a clear majority emerges. Radical views also tend to get moderated, or corralled and rejected by the users themselves.

With cellular technology, much of this information is now exchanged on handheld devices. The access, now no longer restricted to laptops and desktop computers, means that millions of people worldwide are interacting and exchanging information more than they ever have in history. We are constantly processing, sharing, and more importantly - creating content to exchange.

The number of people who have access to the Internet has ballooned over the last decade from approximately 360 million to 1.7 billion (Internet World Stats). The penetration in most regions remains a far cry from the 74% access boasted by North America, but the growth in the last decade has been incredibly impressive. When before only the wealthy could afford access to the Internet, now it has become much more accessible to those less privileged, especially via mobile technologies. The continent of Africa for example, grew from 4.5 million users a decade ago to 67 million this year, a growth of almost 1400% (Internet World Stats).

So more people of varying experiences, economic backgrounds, and geographic locations are getting access to information. It has truly been democratized. The Obama-Biden campaign of 2008 understood this new world better than any campaign before, and has substantially changed the way political campaigning and fundraising works. But as the masses access this information, we change the way we look at and experience events.

No longer can media outlets or governments completely control the news. While some entities are still attempting to control access to information via the Internet, there is always an out, a loophole, and an option for the user to free himself. The elections in Iran earlier this year is a prime example of events being changed by information that has been democratized.

In the past, similar events have taken place, but the world had only hearsay, or eyewitness accounts. This year despite the Iranian government’s efforts to suppress it, we experienced the uproar over Ahmadinejad’s stolen election almost firsthand. Through Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube, we saw what we never would have seen on our news before. The people in the streets of Tehran were not only protesting, they were documenting. They became their own journalists and provided avenues for the world to see what was happening to them. CNN could not break the news to us. They had to show us what the masses were showing the world.

These people changed the world. Being able to see the infamous video of the murder of the Iranian girl Neda on Youtube not only made her a martyr for her cause, it changed the news from an abstracted headline and captioned photo and made it real. It made it a little harder to change the topic to the ‘celebrimania’ driven by websites like TMZ and chased by otherwise ‘serious’ news companies.

Unfortunately, we saw the same phenomena turn its head and do precisely that when Michael Jackson died. The masses went with them. It is hard to decipher if the news houses controlled the switch of focus or if the public in the West was eager to stop seeing the horrors of war and disenfranchisement. Either way, the same machine went to work. The traffic of information regarding Michael Jackson was overwhelming. Everyone felt the need to eulogize the King of Pop on their multiple social network accounts, post photos of the icon, or stream his memorial service or funeral from the websites of every major news house.

Another tradition that has been changed by this new world is education. With greater access to information and communication, comes greater access especially to tertiary education. Distance learning in particular, when from properly accredited and reputable institutions, is blazing a path forward getting students into degree programmes, who could not otherwise afford the money, time, or travel that in class learning demands.

The University of South Africa is a strictly distance learning facility, catering to a student body of 200,000. There are no classrooms on its campus, just facilities that students can access to research and complete assignments. The university was established in the 1800s and is accredited and well respected.

The reality of how information is exchanged, interacted with, and who creates it has changed dramatically. Especially in the realm of education, we need to explore harnessing all the utilities we can in order to improve how we communicate our material for our students, who now have the opportunity to learn in a world that has made information available on a scale never before seen.

BusinessBVI 2010

2009-12-01T14:42:00.002-04:00

The annual that I design for is out again. If you're in the BVI, look around, pick one up and check it out. If you aren't, go to www.businessbvi.com and keep an eye out for the online version.

The House on Main Street

2009-10-16T19:09:00.001-04:00

The wrought-iron gate creaks, black paint peeled through to steel
open onto the path. We sit on groaning wicker chairs on the narrow porch
as the tourists stop, the neighbours clip, the hibiscus peering over the wall.
The thin path is short concrete cracked and willful. Dirt and grass
push past and through it
to a carpenter’s house. The shutters swing out
in front of louvers, the ceiling was pitched acutely
but still inside the heat is suffocating. The living room littered
with yellowing black and whites around the tired piano
it had had years of gently played Methodist hymns,
its keys resistant to fingers.

The corridor of faces watch as the old man meanders
in the kitchen, lamenting the damage done.
‘everything is all muddled up.’
New fluorescent lights hum softly over
the cracked and stained linoleum.
They had moved the furniture to the porch,
when they painted, the dresser next to the boxes
of things to throw or give away reeks of old mahogany
and we fan ourselves silently. The hibiscus
overgrows the wall now, waiting for the passersby.

2009

Finus Ex Machina

2009-10-11T18:00:00.002-04:00

The red sun laboured across the sky, paused to examine the bare streets of the city and then climbed back down to hide under the horizon. The Icarus was already rumbling in the muddy lot, its only company the grass and the curious rats shaken from their holes. It was one of the transports carrying miners mostly from Georgia all the way to Mercury. The figure at its base in the worn blue overalls patched with stains beckoned towards them and Marcus led the group across the marshy field to the stairs of the ship. The railroad was directly behind them as they walked, complete with rotten tracks and the memory of the night before for the future tourists. Morbid interest would be sure to draw many like minds to see for themselves the decomposition of men, city, and planet.

As he approached the Icarus, Marcus could see the loose panels on its side, the rusted hinges and bolts in the door, the shaking staircase, and could hear the tremendous rattling that the precarious bundle of steel and iron was making. The pangs rang in the air as the metal declared its unwillingness to fly, and its resistance to help. There really was not much else left to be said. They had decided to stay. Now, there was no option but to leave and there definitely was no option of another vessel.

Once inside, the cramped spaces reached out to knock elbows, shoulders and the backs of heads. Louis explained to them the processes with which they were going to begin their journey. The first being the storage of their bags and effects in the hole – a rectangular compartment the width of two people laying side to side, with similar length, but only a few feet deep. The next step was the allocation of the lockers. The lockers were just that, about six and a half feet tall slots in the wall of the main bay. They were completely fabricated with iron, rusted in some places and not at all intended for civilian use. It would be in these lockers they would be suspended for the duration of the trip. But before suspension, each person was given a suit bag, and invited for the bath in wax. Louis told them that the bath was precautionary, and the hardening layer on their bodies was meant to maintain the state of their bodies and internal functions and ensure stability during removal from suspension. After all this, the eight of them stood in their lockers, more like caterpillars in their cocoons than people, faces frozen solid.

Only Louis remained outside of a locker, strapped into his chair, all leather and heavy buckles on his chest. Grasping the throttle as the burners scorched the muck beneath them, as his junkyard of thirty years ignited, wood and iron ablaze, as Mercury spat them out having made the mouth bitter. As they hurtled toward the stars already racing towards them, Louis could see the Dreyfus Building quickly disappearing from view. This high up, where the birds have stopped flying, and the clouds have grown dense from the wispy puffs below, the tower beacon continued flickering as the shuttle rose until it grew dim under the gas and went out.

Scaffolding

2009-10-01T11:52:00.000-04:00

I

The rubber soles of my favourite sneakers are Iago’s hands
letting the cold and wet in to surprise my socked toes.
Only my left foot falls victim to this transgression
- it is well enough for my right supports my weight
on a plank split down the middle and christened.
Far below me, the streetwalkers clutch their own elbows
and shiver, they may glance up if spurred by a loose chip or pebble
tumbling off the many steel beams that prop up
the loose boards. Trust always sounds hollow when you test it
- as does the torso when the wind pushes against it.
No one builds scaffolding just to build it
but the rods never bolt the same way as before
the ply can only be used but so many times
before they must be made new again – the rust scraped off or painted over.
No one builds scaffolding just to take it down.

II

This high up, with the wind spitting in my face
I chip at the concrete but the mind sputters.
You could bolt the rods, beams and boards
in exact requisite order and combination
yet it never feels the same.
Far below me, the streetwalkers come and go
and all I hear them speak about is the cold.
I freeze on these ladders of steel, my senses appalled
– I see how my purpose could be misconstrued.
I’ll let it be known, that’s not what I meant at all.
Shall I promise to touch His hands?
The rods are hollow – yet this sound is different
– I feel the creak of the planks in my left foot
I do not know the sound the chest makes –
as the scaffolding falls away

Titus

2009-09-25T04:47:00.000-04:00

Canals in the studio walls,
lattice steers the light to the postured subject
wild-haired in inks
red-maned in oils bearing a sword across the chest.
Saskia: once a goddess, again woman in background,
the servant upstairs will draw her bath.

Lights splatter on black water,
dabbed grays on brick bridges lay wet
contemplating the next stroke in Jodenbreestraat
Waterlooplein will carry you stone by stone.
It is November, and Titus will grow Roman.
Saskia’s brow trickles as she sleeps.

A sister will come from Frisia
and the nurse will hold him at his mother’s funeral.
Red strands on the house linens, a grave for sale,
Titus will not have to see his children die.

There is no war with the Goths,
only another grave in Westerkerk.
2006

Wardian Case

2009-09-18T05:51:00.000-04:00

for Camille Pissarro

The merchant ships in harbour;
Spanish, Dutch, Danish.
“drawing coconut trees.”

The donkeys flagellate, lashed to their carts,
veins and skin ripple on forearms,
the Negro women do their wash,
carrying their jugs and baskets on their heads.

Leaving the Queen’s Quarter
in crates and boxes with worn labels;
“Madrid, Amsterdam, Copenhagen.”

The pencil scratching form, value, shadow.

The palette; from Charlotte Amalie
“bolted to Caracas in order to get clear
of the bondage of bourgeois life.”
2006

The Cutters

2009-09-11T12:42:00.000-04:00

The old woman stood in the tamarind’s shade
Bermuda grass bristling her bare feet
her head tied like her hands
akimbo, mouth snarled in command
madras wrapped, dough under her fingernails
her spattered apron clung to her stomach.

Two hired men bent in the heat
fired bronze backs strained, spun,
stretched, their cutlasses swung
and grass, branches, leaves leapt up
over their heads amidst the flamboyant
and balisier, frangipani and oleander.

2009

Green Arrow Commission

2009-09-05T22:55:00.002-04:00

The commissions are slow but sure.

A Poui Tree sheds its Flowers

2009-09-04T16:43:00.000-04:00

The rain falls in the night like blankets
flattening and spreading when it finally lands.
The poui remembers it fondly, forgetting slowly
each drop it sheds. Its own flowers are lemmings
letting go of the hands, the branches.
Fluttering down till they collide with stone and wet earth
staring upward as they die beautifully together.
The anoles salute them, holding their breath in honour
throats swollen, red, yellow, green, proud, alive.
Nodding their approval, their black eyes turn to respect
and each ridge on their backs, each scale reflects
their own majesty. These dragons in miniature
standing sentinels in moonlight.

2006

Cane Rows

2009-08-28T11:20:00.000-04:00

The crop still would not rust
after yellow metal caterpillars
tried to hide their unnaturalness
jutting against the sky.
When rain would come,
run away like a child done wrong
and come back soft, guilt full.
The cane rows meticulous and muddy,
yesterday burnt chaffless and black
left leaning on one another.
The Caroni still flowing,
arrows flowering from the fields still safe.
The island divvied up,
county lines drawn, roads paved
like tributaries of molasses
on sawdust floors.
Muck caked on to the tyres.
The country prone on the coroner’s table,
chest splayed open.
Carefully dissected,
organs soaking in briny solution.
Individually labelled.
A colder sneer than Ramses before red eyes.
Reanimated kings, gods and devils
hands sowing retribution.

2006

Traffic

2009-08-21T16:33:00.001-04:00

I pick grapes in traffic, crossing lanes
striding with no crosswalk, no time but rhythm
too aware that I am alone.

Headlights cut the night like machetes
two at a time, as they come nearer
the space between them grows.

Glass jumps and sprinkles, playing confetti,
rice pouring down at a young wedding
catching as much as it can before laying still.

The pieces lay like crumbs for pigeons
waiting for the squat birds to come down
in a flutter of wings and feathers to salvage their evening.

The lights grow dim, and voices rise
then drop out my ears,
grown heavy with salt.

Blood runs from my fingers, sliding on the rough asphalt
filling you into all my life’s empty spaces
and I say, ‘tomorrow there will be apricots.’

2006

Yurokon

2009-08-14T07:17:00.001-04:00

The mouth burns. But the pepper-pot is beautiful,
the meat falls off the bone for the mouth of the spirit.
The clay bowl rests on the damp earthen floor,

Waiting.

A goddess goes down to the river, the people are devils.
The tall wooden spoon in the cassiri pot, and the
river quenches thirst but never brings solace.

2005

Eric Canete Comicon Conan Commission!

2009-08-07T18:06:00.005-04:00

Just scanned my Canete commissions! A week or so before Comicon I email Eric Canete's agent - Jason Schacter (sp?) about the possibilities of getting a Canete piece done. The day at Comicon that they're supposed to be ready and Jason says,
'There's good news and bad news...' I flinch. I grimace. 'the good news is.. it's awesome.' I smile because now I know the commission has been done. But now I am starting to wonder what the bad news is.. maybe he gave it to the wrong guy? Jason continues, 'the bad news is... there's three of em.' I smile.
'That's not bad news at all,' I say as I empty the contents of my wallet.

Kirkwood

2009-08-07T07:15:00.000-04:00

10:58
I’ve never been to Bloomington before.
A warm day in June,
the cashier avoids eye contact
as she takes my order.
One Angus burger with fries.
large coke

the pathway teases through a park
blowing kisses to the creek alongside.
I pause to read what’s left
of a tattered flyer ‘FUTON FOR’

I turn right on to Kirkwood
the people and signs are everywhere
I see Nick’s (I wonder if Tom saw the game here)
a blonde dreadlock rolls by me
on a skateboard

by the time I get to North Walton
I will be ready.

2005

Greg's Iron Man Commission

2009-08-06T15:29:00.003-04:00

Well, the use of the word 'commission' is misleading. I offered a bunch of friends free art of their choosing to force myself to keep my art more constant and consistent. This is an early piece and hopefully things improve here on out. I had a little fun drawing Iron Man, and I can't recall ever drawing him before and even though there are things I'd probably do differently a second time around, I'm relatively happy with the results.

Sketches from Drink & Draw @ Hennessey's in San Diego

2009-08-05T10:47:00.003-04:00

So, on the 23rd of last month, Dan Panosian and a couple other artists hosted a Drink & Draw at Hennessey's downtown San Diego during Comic-Con. There were girls posing. Great artists. Good food. Better booze. I went. Drank. Drew. Had a blast. Here are a few sketches I did between pints of guinness.

Needles

2009-07-31T07:12:00.000-04:00

I was telling my sister,
I think I am addicted to tattoos.
The angry growl of the needle
as it rips my skin apart, spitting ink
deep within me. Coloring me,
being careful to stay inside the lines.
I want to put one on the nape
of my neck, since if on my sole
it would fade. In cursive letters.
“GOD ‘82”
footnotes underneath.
“Amendments – R.G.” with a space
for every year of my life.
It hurts like hell,
but nowhere else can I take
a little ownership of myself.

2005

Tuesday Love Poem

2009-07-24T07:11:00.001-04:00

Screaming gulls pick at vomit on the bricked sidewalks,
frozen hard between the rock and grit spit up by the crashing surf.
Both the gravel and the vomit are days old
The water has retreated reservedly
and fangs have been sheathed.

In the past when the sea got angry
it would grind the bones of dead slaves and sailors into soup
and froth at a rabies-filled mouth
to wake all who lived near and seduce all who would listen.
And now the son sets above it staring at his reflection.

The gulls came every day; and then it was too cold for vomit.
Black and grey stone stretch on this beach
and are never warm to touch

Until cold water pushes itself
past nostrils, mouths, eyes, ears.
past throats and windpipes
resting only when the last door is opened
And all is filled cold.

2005

Leslie

2009-07-17T07:05:00.000-04:00

Between the beer bottles and half-filled tumblers of rum or whiskey;
Before I could appreciate these dark and sunny weekday afternoons,
He had me seeing things. German soldiers with funny shaped helmets,
Winston Churchill escaping during The Boer Wars, cowboys.
After a game of cricket and enough trees had been climbed
I bounded home as Hanuman with dusty knees and vision.
A julie-mango if I was lucky – if late, lentil soup or worse.
I would spend hours looking for the turtle in the backyard.

Even after he stopped, his gums and lungs had grown black from exhale
I forgot how his voice moved in the air, I would forget altogether
When they pulled each tooth out and I sat with him and his pillow.
What little he had to say was muted by the needles now.
He used to stand in our yard when I came home from school
The slightest embrace before the two of us sat silent reading.
Nowhere near ten now, we both sat silent breathing.
I don’t remember ever finding the turtle in the backyard.

On the night he died, we turned the television off.
He prayed with us to a God I had never seen him acknowledge
Until he relaxed on the same pillow; without dentures.
The mango tree he had saw people throw stones to taste it.
But they never saw the backyard
-the cherries, lemongrass, pawpaw and dasheen.
Some turtles travel thousands of miles,
But I was sure he was still somewhere in the backyard.

2005

Twitter is Not for Teens

2009-07-14T09:35:00.003-04:00

Morgan Stanley get a 15 year old intern to do some market research.
Twitter is Not for Teens by Julia Kollewe for the Guardian

Why Google Is Stealing Apple's Ideas

2009-07-13T17:18:00.001-04:00

Short answer: because they're good. Long answer: because Google has none of its own.

By Brian Caulfield at Forbes.com

Self Portrait

2009-07-13T16:19:00.007-04:00

2009

Took ten minutes this afternoon to sketch myself. Eventually, I will warm up again for drawing.

Blow Flies

2009-07-09T19:00:00.003-04:00

Flies never feel the need to tell the maggots
what they are eating.

They have been born and provided for.

When they are fat from death, they crawl out
to another damp rot to hide from the light.

2005