The above image is the super fun chart I had to make in order to keep track of every shade of grey used in the painting so far. This only covers the colors on the angled bricks (I originally mistyped “pricks” here) around the window interiors. The point of this is so that when I paint the surface brick colors, they’ll correspond to their darker shades, the sides of the bricks cast in shadow. I’ve numbered the shades 1-8, from darkest to lightest. So a window brick numbered 6 will correspond to a surface brick numbered 7, since the colors of the shaded window interiors must be a shade darker than the surface colors,. It’s all very “paint-by-numbers”, but in a way that would drive any child hopelessly insane and maybe even cross-eyed as a bonus.

I’m masking off each and every brick in order to get the lines as sharp and straight as possible. This requires repeated taping and peeling, since the bricks are so small and I can only mask off so many at once. After the bricks are masked, I look at my handy-dandy super fun number chart and paint the matching number in the tiny square. It gets confusing since all the other squares are covered up with blue tape, and I have to remember which section I’m painting (middle row? bottom row?). Needless to say I’ve screwed up quite a few times, but thank God for that number chart!

Imagine the fun and excitement. Just imagine it.

The only part of this process that could be loosely called “enjoyable” is the peeling of the tape to expose the results. Some of the bricks have come out perfect, while others look like absolute shit and will require touch-ups. Since there’s plenty (PLENTY) of taping to come, I’m not bothering with corrections just yet, as there will be more bleeding and tearing. I just need to bite the bullet and ignore my obsessive-compulsive proclivities that scream at me to fix every little inconsistency. I’ve got to wait until all the bricks have been painted, and then I’ll go back with a detail brush and straighten the lines, fill in the tears, sand the edges that stand out too much, search for hairs, pencil marks, scratches, and so on and so on. Then, once I’ve completed obsessing (for days) over the big boo-boos and the little inconsistencies that NO ONE would even notice, then I can begin working on the final layer of the painting, which will be all free-hand. I estimate I have about 4 more days of taping and painting bricks. I expect to have a nice new patch of grey in my beard by the end of the month. Should be nice. I’m going for the “distinguished lumberjack” look these days.

Upon returning home to Brooklyn a few day ago, I immediately jumped back on my new piece in order to get some more process pictures up. I was hoping I could post the entire process of this painting from start to finish in about a month, but my last Atlanta trip (opening the bar) really disrupted my plans. I’ll repost all the process photos again once this piece is finished, but for now I’ll continue with the posts as the work progresses. Continuing with the piece, I completed the detail cracks in the ground at the bottom of the painting, and I finished the top color gradation of the sky (luckily my mixed colors hadn’t dried out in their jars after sitting untouched for almost 2 months). I was planning on having a layer of clouds that receded to the horizon, but then I realized that most of the background details would be obscured by what I have planned for the building, so I nixed that idea and saved myself about 10 hours worth of work.

Without giving too much away, the windows play a large part in the final image, so I had to get them all laid out before starting with the multicolored grey-scale brick pattern. Since correcting paint runs or tears is much easier with the color black, I masked off the windows and filled them in first. That way, when I get to painting the lighter greys of the bricks, any paint bleeding will only be noticeable on the black windows, and that’s an easy fix. Painting dark over light works much better than the opposite. You might not be able to tell from the badly focused image below (sorry), but the windows didn’t come out as well as I had expected them to (lots of bleeding and soft lines), so I’ll have to correct the edges with the grey bricks. Hopefully the paint is opaque enough to cover things up without too many layers. I’m expecting the whole brick-painting stage to be quite the pain in my ass.

As a side note, my landlord notified me that my rent is going up $500 next month, so I’m moving out of my apartment of 3 years. I was pretty bummed at first, but I’ve managed to find a new place that’s about 3 times larger than this one, which means a larger art studio, which means LARGER PAINTINGS. With these new pieces, I’ve already increased the size of my panels, but this new space will allow me to really start working in a much larger scale. I feel like my last 12 years in New York have all lead up to this. I’m finally going to be living in a space that doesn’t restrict my work in any way, and I couldn’t be more excited about it. Besides the approaching move, all I need to do in the next 40 days is to focus on these new pieces and get them all finished before my show on June 22nd. I can’t wait until all this traveling back and forth is over and I can settle into my new home with my sweet little dog and the girl that I love. Then, once all is right in that world, I can turn back to my work and I can direct all of my energy into my painting and writing. I hope that life in this new positive environment allows me to truly discover all I’m capable of.

Lake Tahoe from Heavenly Mountain, CA

I’m waiting for the moment when I wake up and find my mind firmly set in the realm of my immediate vicinity. I’ll look out my window and see the Williamsburg Bridge glimmering with the reflections of rush-hour traffic. I’ll walk up to my roof and scan the horizon from south to north. The new World Trade Center’s single tower looms both modest and defiant, a simple design built in the shadow of the fallen, a great big “FUCK YOU” to our enemies. I’ll pan over Battery Park City, across the lower east side, up to the Chrysler Building, dwarfed by the Empire State Building that lingers in the background like an older brother. I’ll look behind me, at the rows of projects and semi-projects, windows barred to protect hasidic children from the outside world. In every direction, progress and industry, the fruits of our labors, our homes and factories, towers and chimneys. And then the next thing I do is to close my eyes, and I imagine myself someplace else. I’m looking out over spans of ponderosa pines, beyond the emerald blue waters of Lake Tahoe, out into a rolling landscape of hilltops and mountains. I don’t see the tiny cars and the frantic people and the resorts and the log cabins that self-consciously poke their heads out from beneath the green canopy they live under. I see the trees, I see the water, I see the birds spiraling up into the sun-drenched sky and then falling back down to earth like stalled planes. They drop as if they’re being pulled from below, as if gravity has decided to remove the gift of flight from all living things. And just as the ground opens its gaping maw to swallow the swallows, they are given back their aviatory abilities, once again streaking across the bleached-out sky. I wake up every morning with my thoughts somewhere else, beneath the 1000 year old branches of a murmuring sequoia, my toes being lapped at by a cold pacific tide, The sun slowly changing black to pink at the edge of a desert world. I wake up watching the birds fall to earth and soar to the heavens, watching their death and rebirth. And then I open my eyes, and I see Brooklyn out my window, and there’s a mourning dove on the sill, its head tucked below a wing that begins to glow orange with the light from the rising sun.

Endless Highway, Hwy 89, Lassen National Forest, CA

I’m back from opening my bar in Atlanta, back in Brooklyn and back to my home. I can paint & write again. I can’t wait to share more words and images with all of you!

Christmas Vacation 2012, Bee’s Nest 1, Niland, CA

While exploring an abandoned industrial space on the outskirts of Niland, CA, Cassie & I stumbled upon this giant honey bee’s nest. You could hear them buzzing in the next room, a frenzied hum that was unmistakeable, like the sound of a snake’s rattle. Thinking back on how close I came to the nest, I should have been stung, and deservedly so. Reading about California bees, I realized that this could have been an Africanized bee colony, in which case I’m especially lucky to have not been stung. I’m like one of those idiots who gets too close to a bison, inching ahead with tiny steps, leaning my camera as far forward as I can without falling over myself, just begging for a good goring. Here are some pleasant facts about Africanized honey bees:

 -They sting in large groups.
-They can sense both people and electronic equipment 50-100 feet from their nest.
-They consider both people and electronic equipment a threat.
-They will chase a human or electronic threat over 1/4 mile.
-They become defensive when nesting.

Yikes.

Christmas Vacation 2012, Bee’s Nest 2, Niland, CA

Donner Party Monument, Donner Memorial State Park, CA

Front inscription:

VIRILE TO RISK AND FIND; KINDLY WITHAL AND A READY HELP. FACING THE BRUNT OF FATE; INDOMITABLE,- UNAFRAID.

Back inscription:

DONNER PARTY

NEAR THIS SPOT STOOD THE BREEN CABIN OF THE PARTY OF EMIGRANTS WHO STARTED FOR CALIFORNIA FROM SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS, IN APRIL, 1846, UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF CAPTAIN GEORGE DONNER. DELAYS OCCURRED AND WHEN THE PARTY REACHED THIS LOCALITY, ON OCTOBER 29, THE TRUCKEE PASS EMIGRANT ROAD WAS CONCEALED BY SNOW. THE HEIGHT OF THE SHAFT OF THE MONUMENT INDICATES THE DEPTH OF THE SNOW, WHICH WAS TWENTY-TWO FEET. AFTER FUTILE EFFORTS TO CROSS THE SUMMIT THE PARTY WAS COMPELLED TO ENCAMP FOR THE WINTER. THE GRAVES CABIN WAS SITUATED ABOUT THREE-QUARTERS OF A MILE TO THE EASTWARD, THE MURPHY CABIN ABOUT TWO HUNDRED YARDS SOUTHWEST OF THE MONUMENT, AND THE DONNER TENTS WERE AT THE HEAD OF ALDER CREEK. NINETY PEOPLE WERE IN THE PARTY AND FORTY-TWO PERISHED, MOST OF THEM FROM STARVATION AND EXPOSURE.

Cinder Cone 1, Lassen Volcanic National Park, CA

Driving to Lassen Volcanic National Park, I was disturbed by the amount of logging trucks that passed me in the opposite direction. All throughout my drive from the coast inland, flatbed after flatbed, loaded with the limbless corpses of fallen trees, stacked one on top of the other, bound for the processing mill. Once I was within the boundaries of the park, the trucks disappeared, and the surrounding vegetation seemed to breathe a collected sigh of relief, as did I. I drove to the northeast corner of the park, to the secluded Butte Lake Campground, located in a grove of tall pines. The weather couldn’t have been better, sunny & 78 degrees, a strong breeze blowing through the branches above, making a sound not unlike rushing waves, dropping needles down on my head like prickly snowflakes. There was a camper far off at the other side of the campground, but no one else. I set up my tent, wrote in my journal, and just let my surroundings sink in. All the animal experiences, all the danger and discovery, the challenges, the victories and failures. None of that could ever be as fulfilling as these quiet moments, the moments alone under stars or swaying branches, the moments that heal my soul and make me a complete human being. There is nothing that better exemplifies my idea of a perfect life. If only these moments could last a lifetime.

Cinder Cone 2, Lassen Volcanic National Park, CA

No perfect moment can be truly appreciated without something not-so-perfect to compare it to, so I decided to climb to the top of the nearby Cinder Cone. Thought to have formed about 350 years ago, the 700-foot-high volcanic cone is made of loose scoria, or porous volcanic rock. Lightweight but extremely rugged, scoria is probably the worst type of surface one could ever find themselves hiking over. As I followed the trail up and out of the grove, the pine needle carpet gave way to a soft black surface, tiny bits of scoria crushed down from decades of being trampled underfoot. To my left was a massive wall of black lava rock, jagged boulders piled high in the form of a natural barrier that followed parallel to my path, but eventually broke off as the Cinder Cone rose up ahead of me. The tree cover thinned and only a few young saplings sprouted up from the black earth. There was a sign warning that the path ahead was strenuous, but I was already over 4 months into my trip and had hiked at least 200 miles so far. The cone looked simple enough. Just a big hill of soft rock. This wasn’t Canyonlands. I could probably get to the top and back in an hour at most, returning to my campsite long before the sunset, leaving plenty of time to grill the salmon I had bought in Oregon. I began my ascent up the leveled path that wound around Cinder Cone.

Looking back down the trail, Cinder Cone, Lassen Volcanic National Park, CA

About ten minutes into my ascent, I was wheezing and doubled over. The soft ground just swallowed every step, requiring extra effort just to pull my boots up and move them eight inches ahead. I was also sliding back a little each step, so my progress was akin to “two steps forward, one step back”. I continued upwards at a pitiful rate, often taking three or four steps at most, then stopping to catch my breath and to rest my aching legs. I looked back down at the path behind me, praying that there wouldn’t be some family making it’s way up the trail, some seven-year-old brat from wherever-the-fuck passing me without even breaking a sweat. Luckily I was the only person on the trail, so my embarrassment became less a driving factor, which didn’t help my motivation. I began to pick a stone or a scrub brush that I could focus on, setting that as my goal, as a kind of measurement for my “progress”. As I gained altitude, a strong wind began to blow down the side of the cinder cone, offering even more resistance to what little momentum I could gather. I cursed and considered giving up. Looking back down at the landscape below, I saw that the trees were much smaller now. I could see Butte Lake shimmering in the late afternoon sun, a surface of glass framed by a forest of ponderosa pines. Looking back up, the top of the cone seemed only a few hundred feet away. How long I had been climbing, I have no idea. It felt like at least an hour. I was more than half way, and I began to tell myself there was no other option but to reach the top. If I gave up, I’d never be able to erase that stinging memory of failure. I came all the way out here, drove across the entire country, almost 3000 miles from Brooklyn to Lassen, just to give up within 200 feet of my goal? There were only so many hikes left on this trip, so I kept going. Slowly.

Cinder Cone 3, Lassen Volcanic National Park, CA

Cinder Cone 4, Lassen Volcanic National Park, CA

I reached the windy summit in record time (slowest) and looked down into the awesome crater at the center of the cone. It sunk down about 200 feet, but there was no way I was hiking into it and then hiking back out. I was through with inclines for the day. I circumnavigated the perimeter of the crater, getting a 360 degree view of the surrounding landscape, made up of brilliant red and orange dunes on one side, then an abrupt line cut by the pitch-black lava fields that stretched for miles. Beyond that, forests and lakes that grew fuzzy in the haze of the setting sun, distant mountain lines layered like paper cut-outs in soft shades of blue and grey. I lingered on the rim of the crater until the fading light began to rush me back down the opposite side of the cinder cone. I practically slid down the entire way, like a skier without skis, almost tumbling forward numerous times before finally reaching the base of the slope. I reached my campsite after dusk, and grilled salmon over a fire as the shadows faded into the gathering dark. The branches above became silhouettes before a starry sky, and I once again found myself ending the day sitting in my collapsible camp chair, sipping whiskey and wondering if life could get any better.

Painted Dunes & Fantastic Lava Fields, Lassen Volcanic National Park, CA

Christmas Vacation 2012, Sunset at Salton Sea, CA

Two weeks open and the bar is doing great. I’ve been here every day since coming back to Atlanta about a month ago. Things are starting to get easier, and I’m finding myself daydreaming about traveling again. I imagine hiking alone through some desolate Utah landscape, once again getting lost and having to figure out a way to cheat death. Those memories of the most difficult hikes, the ones where I truly knew that my life was solely in my own hands, I long for that again. In my commerce-driven life, there are so many outside forces that steer me this way and that. I’m just coasting along, doing the work I’m supposed to do and laying a foundation for my future comfort. For now, I’ll continue along this path, knowing that this facet of my life is both necessary AND temporary. My true self, the heart and mind that longs for something deeper than all of this, will never die. I’m still out there, staggering along a dusty trail, trying to figure out which direction to go, wondering if the water will last, wondering why the hell I ever came back to civilization.

Christmas Vacation 2012, Carrara Ghost Town 1, NV

My new Atlanta bar Mother opened last Friday, so I’ve been super busy and haven’t had time to post much on here. Definitely missing a creative outlet right now, but I’ll try to catch up in a week or so…

Tall Trees Trail 2, Redwood National Park, CA