Zeng and Friends

Prismacolors on Bristol, 2010.

According to the 1985 edition of The Guinness Book of World Records (which published the photo that this drawing is based on): " ...the acromegalic giantess Zeng Jinlian of Yujiang village in the Bright Moon Commune, Hunan Province, central China... was 8 ft 1 in when she died (at 17 years of age) on February 13th, 1982...Her hands measured 10 in and her feet 14 in in length. She suffered from both scoliosis and diabetes. "

Am I a morbid person, or do I just have secret aspirations to design fashion for the exceptionally tall? The truth is, when I don't know what else to draw, I always copy from old photographs, preferably no more recent than 20 years ago. Somebody on my street was throwing out a Guinness Book from 1985, so I snagged it with the hopes of mining images from it. One man's trash is another man's art project.
No doubt, there will be more drawings to come. I still have all of those old National Geographics. Now that school is out, I can make elaborate drawings on a more regular basis, but I am not any more inspired than I was while classes were in session.
You don't normally think of a giant as a fragile person, but they usually are. Reading about Zeng is very sad, but I embrace any opportunity to embellish a scene of emotional ambiguity. Are the two normal-sized girls her friends, or just two passers-by whom the photographer recruited for his shot of the giantess? Did her community accept her or treat her badly?
We always get the facts and the stats, but The Guinness Book doesn't include any human drama. When I add bright colors to the figures, I fictionalize the image. I'm sure that living on a commune meant that the clothing was more drab. I am a sucker for patterns and color relationships. I wanted to suggest harmony among the three young women by my color choices even if there wasn't any in their lives- that's why I say it's a fictional drawing.

After Ten Centuries of Wandering, The Medieval Christians Enter The Elysian Fields

Digitally colored drawing, 2010. The figures are from an illuminated manuscript that I copied, and the butterfly is based on a Chinese design. The big red foam glove is from my imagination, I don't know any more than that.

Happy Saturday!

When people hear that I paint, they might sometimes think that I'm some academic art snob. My interest in the arts actually has a much geekier origin than that, namely comics. I learned to draw from not just reading, but studying comic books. I didn't really draw from life until I got to college. To this day, when I visualize things, I usually see them with heavy black outlines and Ben-day dots before I see them in paint strokes or soft pastel.
I am an amateur at Photoshop. Everything I know I either learned from Jeanne, or from Internet tutorials. I just see it as another tool, really. It makes more sense to color drawings digitally if I know they're going to be posted on the Internet. I can also evoke a more comics-like feel with Photoshop than with colored pencil, or whatever.

Summer is almost upon us, and not only do I have a wedding to get ready for, but I feel like it's time to go back to making presentable art. Putting pen to paper is a step in the right direction. I just want to have some fun.

How Captain Clueless Got Banned From The Donut Shop (a work of fiction)

The cape came from a stage magician's yard sale. The Great Gambini, I think he called himself. Anyway, I donned it for an afternoon with every intention of fighting crime and righting wrongs, when I got a craving for blueberry cake donuts and then I forgot about the whole thing.
All I wore besides the cape was a pair of y-front Fruit of the Looms. This might have gotten me arrested, had it not been for the privacy of the video poker booth I was sitting in. A mosquito buzzed around my neck. I slapped it hard. I looked at the obliterated insect carcass and the spatter of my blood on my palm, and pondered how closely it matched my cape. Then I heard a sound.
It was the anguished cry of one of the regular customers of Sweet Things and Grill. The woman had apparently just discovered that she was the reincarnation of St.Francis of Assisi, and she felt the pain of the mosquito's violent death by my hand.
"Murderer!", she screeched in a very unsaint-like manner, "You killed an innocent!"
"Ah, shaddap, ya crazy old broad!", bellowed another one of the regulars, a portly gray-haired chap who went by the name of Huggaboo, "She went off on my brutha yestiday fo' sprayin' dem roaches dat came outta da kitchen, an' now ya can't even defend yaself from dem muskitas! Whydoncha go back ta church an pray da rosary or somethin'?"
While sipping the last of my chocolate milk, I mulled over the irony of wearing a cape and tight underwear for the sake of fighting crime, and yet here I was accused of murder. The regulars and I entered into a discourse about the nature of good and evil and whether or not pests such as mosquitoes were truly God's creatures. Then after the crazy woman calmed down, the regulars took note of my unusual garb.
I explained to them that the cape was procured at the yard sale of the Great Gambini, and that it only cost me about two dollars. I have a tendency to regale strangers with even the most minute details of my daily experiences, which I am aware they usually don't want to hear about. Perhaps that is why I have so few friends.
Finally, the cook emerged from the kitchen and told me that I had to either find a pair of pants and a shirt or leave. Really, does Namor The Submariner ever endure such indignity at the hands of those he protects? I think not. Unfortunately, after I cried, "Imperious Rex!", and took down the glass display case containing many appealing jelly donuts, I was banned for life from Sweet Things and Grill.
To be perfectly honest, I felt worse about that than after I killed the mosquito.

(This is what my life would probably be like if I hadn't met Jeanne.)

05/17/10

"Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one consciously, by means of certain external symbols, conveys to others the feelings one has experienced, whereby people so infected by these feelings, also experience them."

- Leo Tolstoy

Do it again. Do it again and again and again. And again.

What I want to say is something beautiful, but it only sounds repetitive. I am beginning to sicken myself. It's easy to give when all you offer is junk. By what right do I say that I have transformed this trash into art?
When I think back on what I have done, I see that I revisited the grotesque so many times because it was so easy. It is child's play to render an old, withered face with a crooked toothed grin. But to reach the sublime- that is a difficult endeavor indeed!
I know that there is a sweetness to ordinary life perceptible only under the optimal conditions. I call it the ecstatic ennui. This seeming paradox is really just a heightened appreciation of what goes on around you. An artistic representation of it elevates it to the sublime. Sort of like the idea behind a zen tea ceremony, of finding enlightenment within ordinary actions.
In the bakery section of Dorignac's, Three women reached for bread on the exact same shelf at the exact same time. Last Christmas, right before the break, a third grade boy idly hummed the melody to Frosty the Snowman on his way to the bathroom. The ugliest telephone pole on Metairie road is festooned with vines of jasmine in early May. There is harmony, synchronicity, and utter loveliness in all of the things we overlook. Why does this bring a tear to my eye?
I have attempted to find it on my own with my work, but I have always missed the mark. I perceive it in the art I admire, yet I have never made such work myself. How can I move others with what I do when I am not moved by it at all?
When I listen to the album, If You're Feeling Sinister, I am moved. When I see The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, trendy as it sounds, I am similarly moved. Perhaps nothing that I've ever drawn or ever painted has had the same level of involvement as record album or a motion picture, but by my own work I am never moved.
Sometimes it amuses me. Sometimes I giggle at naughty caricatures or visual puns, but it is a short-lived titillation at best. It never reaches the heights that I would like it to.
As today commemorates the 33rd year since I was extracted from my mother's womb by cesarean section, I lament that no great piece of art bears my name. I could say I am working for my own satisfaction, but masturbation also gets that job done. I could say that I work for the enjoyment of a small circle of people, but it becomes about little more than an inside joke. When I blew out the candle today, my wish was only for an idea, a single idea that wold enable me to infect others with the same feelings I have been infected by (to borrow from Tolstoy's definition of art), and to use that idea to steer me into a new period of creative productivity. Suddenly, I cannot bear to think that I shall never create something that can induce a feeling of sheer visual bliss within the viewer, that the reception for my work will always be apathetic and cold. I have to reach out to the world, to offer something up as a testament of hope for the human condition.
I want to create something that makes you hear music in your head when you look at it.

a destination

Be ever so grateful for the small joys in your life. I reflect everyday upon the fact that I have stereoscopic color vision, and I know how important it is to me. Also, I have a right hand that I have trained to hold various implements of writing and drawing; this too is of great importance. (Don't ask what I use the left for :P)
Occasionally I am granted visions to put the eye and the hand to good use- this is called art. Art has a way of enriching our world, of illuminating even the most mundane experiences. This is what I strive for, but it seems impossible without the help of someone above.
Thank you, God.
When I create with the intention of giving, the work takes on a new tone. It no longer feels like I'm spinning my wheels, but that I have a destination to look forward to. Art is a wonderful thing, yes, but all the more wonderful when we share it.
In my limited free time, when I feel as if I should be making something, I will make small give-away art, like the bookmark you see above. Eventually everyone I know will receive something that I have made, but my first objective is to reward those who have displayed random acts of kindness. Look out, you unsung saints of the work-a-day world!

Head Full of Birds

Let nothing but a floating feeling and the sweet sound of music occupy the space within your skull. Kick back, relax, and pull out that favorite album. I feel as if I've been given ears only to hear this beauty! There's nothing better to do at the end of the day...
I feel like I've been taken care of. I dare not ask for more, and I certainly dare not seem discontent. Blessed and blissful, please allow these gifts that keep on giving to remain in my life.

Thank you, Oh God!

Binary Ghost

I found that Inaugural Ball ticket from 1989 on the ground outside a couple months ago. Looks like whoever had it didn't go. The other thing I posted is a doodle I made on an old calendar page that I am going to use as a bookmark. See, that's what I do nowadays. I have no time or energy to paint, so I make bookmarks and pick stuff up off the ground if it's over 20 years old.
Happy Mother's Day to the very, very slim margin of moms out there who might be reading my blog! This Mother's Day, May 9th, happens to fall on the birthday of my grandmother Lucia who passed away eight years ago. She would be 94 years old by now if she were still with us.
So in honor of my grandma, I am posting this poem that I wrote about my childhood since she was there through all of it.


"Breakfast With Aquaman", a poem in no- verse by Reggie Rachuba

Trio street trees swaying in the streetlight-here an elephant, there a dinosaur.
Running to exhaustion, granny-beads of dirt and sweat.
Maw-maw's front porch, boysenberry jam.
Church bells on the hour.
A yellow teddy made of yarn.
Little Golden Books, an encyclopedia set.
Deep sea divers, dogs in armor, masked stallions.
A pliable Popeye, Superman, Batman, Aquaman.
The patches of green, the placid cows, the bike seat.
Lights on the river at night, the fairy boats, the singing of little fishes.
Show Biz, Billy Bob, flat pizza.
The candles, the saints, the organ, Darth Vader (a baptism).
With my own Millennium Falcon, straining to reach that great Wookie in the Sky .
Every dog a friend.
The small hairs on the elephant's back, the wasp, "Don't you touch them!"
The Saturday mornings with Godzilla and Son.
Black velvet peacock tapestry, classical ruins, the fan in the attic.
Listening to Big Bird but staring at the Moody Blues.
Prehistoric plastic monsters, real dirt, little snails.
Mint in the iced tea.
Listing all of the animals, some of them twice.
Grey moments filled with owls and pines, three paintings of boys I'd never be, a stain on the ceiling.
A cowboy on big wheels, a ray gun, my thieving friends.
Feeding the ducks, stepping too close, my split second as a hippopotamus.
Hospital ice cream, wooden sticks, my dolphin voice.
Sea turtles, blue lizards, Dr. Chin.
"No cookies, no cakes, no pie!"
The last time I saw my dad in the kitchen.
The blue elephant, the vacant sky, a scolding from teacher.

Happy Mother's Day!

Drawing Therapy

For those of you who don't know, I work at a school, and the school year is almost over- thank God! Those of us on the faculty who don't act worse than some of the kids we teach occasionally enjoy having "therapy sessions". In these sessions we help each other cope with certain individuals who make our work environment less friendly. The doodles above were made yesterday during the discussions.
Maybe I'm not such a good visual thinker. Maybe I think with language too much, and maybe that's why I've had artist's block for so long. This was a pretty good stream-of-consciousness exercise, and there's even a bit of observational drawing in the 1982 piece.

Last night I did something I had said I'd never do, which is make a Facebook page. Guess I gave in to peer pressure. Hey, maybe it'll get more people to read this blog, and I can actually start to make posts more often.