Cloud Becomes Your Hand illustration, 2016

I was delighted to see my friend Stephe Cooper's band Cloud Becomes Your Hand on a short trip to NYC recently. I love their music & their live show is truly something to behold. I was pleasantly surprised to see everyone actually DANCING! Not moshing, not sitting around, but boogying! It was a sight for sore eyes. Their finale was a monumental display of synchronized dancing, it was smile educing.
Triple Threat Lives! Stephe gave a huge shout out to Triple Threat before their set started. It was dope. I attended with my good, good friend and incredible artist Jade Kuei. A good night out!

2000 My Handmade High School Yearbook

Cover to my handmade yearbook 2000

I was not your average high school student: I never got my photo taken, didn't go to prom, didn't play sports, and didn't buy my yearbook. When my calligraphy & advertising teacher Mrs Jennifer Trettner asked us to do our final project in a calligraphy font of our own creation, I decided to make my own yearbook. Although the calligraphy font I created is ugly & illegible in places... and my layout skills left something to be desired... I love my handmade yearbook.

Teachers and students would write their messages/comments directly in the book (comments not featured here, those are mine!). Each page would have a yearbook-esque pic and a full drawing at the bottom, they would sign the opposite page. Here's a few memories from my yearbook...

 

My parting words for High School were borrowed from Roger Klotz, they are words of wisdom.

I'm thankful for my teacher Mrs Trettner. Her classes prepared me to be a professional in everything that I do. In the desert of Three Village, she had true passion & guts.

Sometimes I kick myself for not also buying an official yearbook, because it would've made the process of drawing autobiography "Secrets of Silent James" easier, but I'm proud to say my memory proved to be quite sharp! So... HA!

1998 Comic: Triple Threat

Cover to the Triple Threat graphic novel, 1998

Triple Threat was comic about a gang... well, it was more like an army, of wholesome individuals I knew in the late 90's. I remember drawing the whole 1st issue on the coffee table in Luke's living room. He just kept feeding me and cheering me on. I photocopied them using the secret code for the teacher's photocopier, and passed them out in school. It all started with 3 friends: Adam, Luke, and I- but it grew into a huge community that I was very grateful for. It was a means to bring cheer to my friends, and make new friends. Still to this day, people bring Triple Threat up to me, which is great. I'm including the entire 1st issue here. Triple Threat!

My advice to artists in school is to follow my example: create a comic or zine and fill it with friends and people you admire, hand it out, and create your own communities. School was frustrating, but it would have been unbearable without the friends I made from this humble comic. And thanks to Luke for forcing the whole thing to happen in the first place. To read more about the origins of Triple Threat, stay tuned for my autobiography Secrets of Silent James. Lastly, I want to include a page from a later issue that I just love. The drawing style I believe was my best during that time, and it has a good collection of the cast.

1997 Art Lessons

Self Portrait, age 15

I had been drawing since age 3, but I had no fundamentals. I started taking art lessons with the extraordinary June Jermyn in 1997. She taught me form, composition, contrast, color, technique but most importantly: she taught me to see. The work I created during this time was not good, but it was necessary. The above self portrait is interesting because almost 20 years later... I haven't changed much.

I only have slides of the work from this time period, and they were a little scratched from countless moves. I did endless pencil renderings from photographs she took of ghost towns and factories.

I believe I gave the above drawing to my Mum, she hung it up in her cubicle at work and told me she received many compliments.

There's an Edward Hopper thing going on here, I like it. This one was my favorite of this series, I like the tone. I painted a lot of still life oil paintings during this time as well, but you don't want to see those.