Structural Patterns

In June 2013, the Nicaraguan National Assembly approved a bill conceding the financing, planning, construction and management of a cross-oceanic canal to the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company (HKND Group) headed by Chinese billionaire Wang Jing. The agreement spans an initial 50 years with the possibility of a second 50 years. The initial phase of construction began in December 2014 and the target year of completion is 2020. The agreement to this 40-50 billion US dollar project was discussed by the Nicaraguan National Assembly for only one week before approval. The agreement was not made public prior to the decision. The construction of the Nicaraguan Canal would entail the largest movement of earth in the planet’s history and would have immense ecological impact. The planned route of the canal would require the forced relocation of campesino communities.

To help bring attention to the Nicaraguan Canal, the video game Ometepe is set on the island of the same name, located in Lake Nicaragua through which the canal will pass. The island is formed by two volcanoes rising from Lake Nicaragua that are linked by low wetlands; Ometepe was officially declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO in 2010. Although the canal project appears to be stopped due to lack of funds, the Nicaraguan government remains secretive about the project.

Stalin/Putin, Smith/Mugabe, Somoza/Ortega, Hirohito/Kim Il-sung, Idris/Gaddafi, Batista/Castro, GOP/Dems are ongoing portrait pairings of autocratic leaders that reflect a corruption of power. These illustrations have been created with the intention of animating a transformation from one face to the other as video loops. “Stalin to Putin” is the second animation of the series. “Somoza to Ortega” was completed quickly following the Sandinista’s last constitutional amendment that got rid of term limits, facilitating Ortega’s permanency as Nicaraguan president. I created the illustrations and my assistant Thomas Medina is the animator behind “Stalin to Putin”.

Denver-based artist Tony Ortega shared recent videos montages incorporating a sequence of rotoscope animation that he created in a workshop that I taught last summer. The montages are so much fun that I felt the urge to share. The sequences are well selected and the timing is excellent, nice way to kick off a Tuesday morning!

Chicano Western from Tony Ortega on Vimeo.

Puro Party from Tony Ortega on Vimeo.

Tony states:

I created the art video Puro Party to explore my interest in identity and hybridity. I am using a variety of I pad apps, rotoscoping animation, appropriated gifs and appropriated music. In creating these videos, I am using grids to organize the composition and I incorporate pattern and repetition. In my creative process I use distortion and exaggeration for emotional effect. My work interweaves, juxtaposes unlikely images from American, Mexican and Chicano cultures that include icons, symbols, history, humor and the contemporary world to foster opportunities for the bending of meaning.

This past fall, I entered in to a conversation with a man named Jerry who sat near me on a downtown Brooklyn bench. Jerry was very interested in what I do for a living and asked me to teach him any skills I may have. I told him that I’d be happy to, gave him my card, but told him that he’d have to show up sober. I haven’t heard back from Jerry yet. Some weeks later, I photographed people recycling in the Lower East Side during an afternoon walk about a week before Christmas 2015. There was no particular reason to take the photo other than I liked the composition. Here is the photograph as an animated illustration and a small portion of Jerry talking about the social contract in U.S. culture… According to Jerry, we all play a role in the project that is this country and he wants to play a larger role.

New York City presents an opportunity for creativity at all times including dull subway rides.

Creatures filled with hatred toward other human beings.

I have been working on a series of portrait illustrations of individuals that I consider akin to dictators over the past year. The series is titled “Drunk with Power”. The intention of the illustrations is to make them into animations which is happening very slowly. Occasionally, I’ll make a quick animation, such as the one above. There is also a web version of this animation that uses code for the background rather than triangles colored using markers: http://rmz.nyc/mugabe.html

Mary Reid Kelley – "On Embarrassment" from Hammer Museum on Vimeo.

Last week I encountered Mary Reid Kelley’s new video at Frederick & Freiser Gallery in Chelsea and it is great! Upon walking in, I was about to walk out, because the video uses poetic verse which I generally do not want to listen to. However, the visuals, the costumes and makeup, the embedded videos and the use of Greek mythology are so quirky that I stuck around and I’m glad that I did. The artist takes the role of Dionysus and has fun with gender role reversal while celebrating sexual appetite and I’m certain there is more to the piece. The entire video is available on Mary Reid Kelley’s site.

Animator Leash Shore is awesome! She fluidly mixes so many different types of animation from hand drawn and painted to computer drawn to claymation to montage, from black and white to color… and it all comes together beautifully. I particularly like how she will render the same character in different formats. Charles Manson is at first a drawing with a blacked out head, later he is a claymation style puppet with a ball of hair for a head.

And the train of thought represented in the visuals is engaging while being imaginative… The jumps from one subject to another is weird, but they make sense, such as JFK’s head morphing into Fidel, Marilyn, Hitler… This is inspiring work!

Old Man from Leah Shore on Vimeo.

Over the past year, I’ve been slightly obsessed with Vladimir Putin. As the annexation of Crimea occurred in spring of 2014, I took in all the news as I tried to understand why in this day and age following two world wars and the cold war of the past century a world leader would behave in such a manner. I understand that Crimeans speak primarily Russian and not Ukrainian, that Crimea was part of Russia until 1954 and perhaps culturally the Crimean majority identify as Russian. But to make the power play of absorbing a portion of another country immediately following a revolution, strikes me as a land grab of another era not reflective of our globalized, pan-capitalist world. I of course wondered if Putin is today’s Stalin, as many other people make the connection. In considering this annexation, I assembled this animation as I work on a slightly less shorter animated portrait.