Wednesday, March 21, 2007

It's Just the Boys




Three totemic figures stand side by side on the page. They are rendered in a neoprimitive style, like an ancient cave painting on notebook paper. The artist identifies the figures as the boys from the Time Warp Trio, but the religious motif is hard to dismiss. Are "the boys" standing in for Christ and the thieves on the cross? The figure on the right even wears a cross on his chest. Recent statements made by the artist also point to a religious interpretation; during his evening bath the other night he asked if anyone knew what the word "sacterfize" meant. Michelle asked if he meant "sacrifice" and he said, "no, sacterfize. That is when you put your finger in this tube (he gestured to the pump from a shampoo bottle he was playing with) and then Jesus sprays water at your bum." It must be a german word, they have one for everything.

Saturday, March 17, 2007

You and Me Playing Catch




This one is open to interpretaion, please feel free to analyze it yourself and share your thoughts.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Everything Gets Mixed Up



"That's paint, it collapses together and makes new colors."

Three puffy dinosaur stickers are pasted over a background of washed out finger paints. The colors bleed into each other, the artist's small finger prints overlap the large prints of his father, and the dinosaurs wander through the middle of it all. The orange and the pink dinasaur walk together to the right, while the smaller purple one seems to sulk off to the left. Could they have had a falling out, some misunderstanding? Everything gets mixed up; age, pigments, communication and media all combine in this collage. Are we doomed to be misunderstood and mistaken? The ebullient colors suggest the artist believes there is some hope.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

The Splat



The Splat is a monochromatic exercise in mark making. Multiple deep plum splotches surround a loose structure that has been described in quick, light lines. The splotches seem to have been made by pressing markers down as hard as possible and leaving them there while the ink bled out staining the white desk top, upsetting both the artist's mother since she had to clean up the mess, and his father since those were his good markers. This is clearly conjecture, of course. I can say with some certainty that it is unlikely that the artist will revisit this style, if he knows what's good for him.

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Candora is a robot and he has a broken foot and he had a big tube accident because he wasn't supposed to warp in there, he's from Egypt, Africa




Leaving the drawing aside for a moment, let us focus on the title. Grant often provides poetic titles for his work, see "When the sun grows up he'll get blue", or "A bear walks to food" , this title on the other hand is so descriptive and accurate that there is almost no need for an image. If you were to think of a robot named Candora, would you imagine him any differently? What would a big tube accident look like? I can't imagine anything other than a blue spiral shooting from a robot's trunk. He hobbles ackwardly in his cast through a sandy toned page, just as the references to Egypt, Africa and broken foot demand. His drawing trancends culture and experience, an eskimo and a wall street trader would call the same vision to mind upon hearing the title.