A catalogue image of my Takashi Murakami Mr. DOB mousepad. Love looking at it but the cutout shape can be a pain in the neck to work with, the mouse slides off that little left ear all the time. Oops, just did. Really cute with my G5 Mac and rubber finger puppets of Garuda and Ganesh.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the profound effect Takashi Murakami has had on the Angels. This character is named Mr. DOB, and I also have a mousepad, perhaps a little more benign, no razor teeth in his big grin, that sat on my desk the whole time I've painting the Angels with Eyeballs series. I got it at his Brooklyn Museum exhibit last year and I tried to find an image of my favorite part of the collection but all I have are the tiny sketches I did in my postcard sized notebook, which reflect nothing about their color and texture. I bet Mr. Ewok saw the show too.

Little Pooh, as close as I can get to the scary angel from the last post. Looks more like a cat to me than a teddy bear, but what the hell. I like the colors, the baby blue against the hot orange, the overlapping navy and red in the borders. Especially on the pointed curve of the right ear.

One of the earliest AIDS angels, or in this case, more likely a ghost, I came across it while rooting around in my studio this weekend. Circa 2000, I was miserable at the time. I had two bosses who terrified me, screamers, constantly, one would slap themselves in times of stress. It was a rough patch, compared to now, which reflects in my paintings.

Silver Cloud and Melonhead, the forerunners of Sunny, from yesterday's post. One's the mirror images of the other, although the drawing came first. I'm probably boring you guys in cyberspace since I rarely see any comments about these angel pieces, but for me it's interesting to see the evolution, if you will, the artistic process. I'll follow yours if it out there.

Probably the most successful of the new series of angels, Sunny was a third take on one of those paper cut out masks I did after finishing my internship at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian; I use the second, silver, version as my blogger profile's identification image. 

I took a walk on the block where I work to look at the other galleries. Lennon - Weinberg had a Paul Waldman exhibit which was primarily landscapes with tiny falling figures in them, but in the back was an installation of a dozen or so of these hanging (falling?) angels. I shot the whole group but some of them, mainly the male figures, were engaged in activities I'm not really comfortable posting.

Orange Crush, ala REM, which I heard on Pandora while painting it, looks a little bit like Sparkie too. Not my favorite in the series, but not the one I like the least either. So far there are twelve in the 8x8 format, and they look really good together. Four each of yellow, orange or pink angels, on lavender or three different shades of vivid blue backgrounds. 

And just so you don't have to go back look it up, here's the close-up of Sparkie that inspired Big Mouth when I posted it a while back. Sparkie's been posted several times now, first as a full sized sculpture, then as the close-up with another piece and now. Popular gal, at least at my house. Not the most ambitious papier mache angel, but the one I like the best.

This would be Big Mouth, I'm sure you can see why. What I like are the details, how the edge between the flesh tone of the figure and the baby blue background shifts from red to indigo. Easily amused, apparently, although I was dead serious when I was doing it as I remember it now.

The next painting in the sequence of Angels with Eyeballs series. This piece, titled Ghost, was inspired by looking through the sketchbook for some of the drawings I posted to this blog. The sketch didn't make the cut, but its funky looseness impacted my ideas about what I was doing.

Just to remind you, if you've followed this blog for a while, or introduce you to it if you haven't, the source of Little Stupa from yesterday. This is the original Stupa, done during the early days of the Iraq War and after seeing a rock-my-world sculpture exhibit at the Asia Society. It's bigger, yes, more complicated, and certainly took longer to paint, but I like the new one better. Which is not always the case with these new paintings I did after posting the originals ones to this blog. Maybe it's just about how I felt as I was painting them, this winter was better than that one.

Little Stupa, the source tomorrow. At the time I thought it might be a tad too cartoonish but it quickly grew 0n me. Perhaps I should remind you that these new angels are only 8" x 8" so the size gives them an aura of intimacy similar to Greek and Russian Orthodox icons. I thought about doing them on a metallic gold background, I still may and probably will do it soon, but I like the flat hot colors I got with the matte acrylic hues. 

Actually, looking back, it might have been posting Calliope, to the left, which, as you can see, evolved from Dharma Bum, below, that inspired me to paint Baby Bum. Calliope now belongs to Alex of opla plaza who saw it here first. We did a swap, and I have his artwork hanging over my desk where I can see it now.
 

This is Baby Bum, so named because I painted him the day I posted an image of Dharma Bum to this very blog on February 24th. Definitely different texture-wise and coloration, but the face is recognizably the source. I like him enough to have him hanging under a silkscreen by Peter Mars and next to a pod shaped paper Noguchi lamp that I adore. 

Okay, where were we before I got carried away with my memories? Ah, yes, the new angel series. This one is titled Otto, but I don't remember why. It fits him though, maybe it's his circular mouth, or those lovely little round eyeballs. I found him very inspiring, as you're about to see.

Last December, I found Michael Carlucci, among a dozen or so old college classmates, through Facebook and it changed my life. I thought I was alone. I'm not, although I am the last one from the original group still in New York. When Michael sent those images of his, especially the one of me with Bruce, I cried. I had forgotten how young we were. I own these two, the one on the right was shot by Arne Lewis and the one below by Bruce as we rehearsed a scene from the film we were making, and was accustomed to the tough Warholian New Yorkers we'd become.

That's me in 1975 with Bruce taken by Michael Carlucci to the left, and then again, around the same time, with Michael shot by Bruce. We made films together in art school and were making one with Dennis at the time of these photos. Art was life, life was art.

Speaking of angels who died of AIDS, which, I must remind you, is what inspired the series of Archetypal Angels paintings to begin with, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Dennis and Bruce, who, like Bob, were a big part of my art school life as well as here in New York. I took the photo of Dennis at Bruce's loft where we all, at one point or another, crashed on that funky little sofa. The gorgeous image below was taken Michael Carlucci who also lived at the loft and now resides in Florida.

A bit of a departure, but today would have been my dear friend Bob's birthday and since he was definitely an angel in my life, I felt the need to honor him. We were kids together in art school and moved to New York at the same time. The bottom photo was taken in 1975 by Michael Carlucci, that's me trying on a flea market hat as Bob laughs, and the one to the right was taken at my wedding in 1980 by Peggy Horning. He died of AIDS, like most of the gay men I knew back then. So many gone, so sad, interesting I finally saw Milk yesterday. Also watched Frost/Nixon, which I thought was the better movie, Frank Langella blew my mind, although 1978 was not my finest hour. But I was too high to remember, really. To Bob. I miss you. 

So after my tirade yesterday, I am ready to proceed. Here's Lemonhead, the first of the new angels that I was happy with. Eyeballs indeed. Flat areas of color but still painterly. And tiny, this new series is all 8" x 8".

Not angels, and definitely not mine, these guys are canvas image #54 on Mr Ewok' website. I am posting this because after reading Lilly's Life blog about being plagiarized, I followed her Copyscape link and found out someone had copied my recent post about my new job. I tracked her site and didn't see my post, but according to Copyscape, it was cached. So Karen Burns, Working Girl, these Mr Ewok creeps are meant for you.

Actually, as I went through my sketchbook and saw the drawings I did at the Lee Bonticou exhibit, I realized that eyeballs have been lurking around for a long time. They made it into the sculptures but I resisted putting them into the paintings. I have even sketched the sculptures for painting ideas but the pupils just weren't included in the final product.