Thursday, December 5, 2013

My Neighbor Magritte


This comic first appeared in my series "Who Needs Art?" for Medium.com.

You can order a poster of this comic and many others at my shop - there's still time to order posters for the holidays. Orders should be placed by December 18 at the latest for arrival by December 24.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Georgia's World





This comic first appeared as the seventh of ten strips in my series "Who Needs Art?" for Medium.com. It was inspired by a trip to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Friday, November 8, 2013

What Happens After the Great Operas?



Illustrations for "Liberating the Librettos" by Anthony Tommasini, for the 11/10 NY Times. Bonus fact: Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" helped inspire Weezer's "Pinkerton," my go-to warm-up album for high school track meets. 



Thursday, November 7, 2013

After the Curtain Falls


This drawing appears in the Sunday, November 10 NY Times Arts & Leisure section alongside this article by Anthony Tomassini. Tomassini explores the unanswerable question of all opera (and for that matter, all fiction): what happens to the characters after the story ends?

I had a great time studying some classic operas and speculating about the future of the living (and non-living) characters. I also watched this video for inspiration. Thanks to AD Paul Jean for the gig!

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

People of the Art Museum






This illustrated journal of a trip to the Denver Art Museum first appeared in my series "Who Needs Art?" for Medium.com.


Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Sculptor vs. Painter




This comic first appeared in my series "Who Needs Art?" for Medium.com - check out the original post for some of the history behind the feud between Tatlin and Malevich. This comic could also be called "Constructivist vs. Suprematist." I think Constructivism was a fascinating movement, but I'm partial to the geometric energy of Suprematism. 

The last panel alludes to the Russian artists who combined the language of both movements in their work. One of my favorite examples is A Story of Two Squares by El Lissitzky, a remarkable children's book that advocates Constructivist principles of cultural progress through Suprematist shapes and colors. 

Monday, October 14, 2013

Looking at Art



The final comic in my ten-part series "Who Needs Art?" is now up on Medium.com. I've spent the last 5 months exhaustively researching 20th-century art. I've visited museums, searched digital galleries, and lugged piles of extremely heavy art books home from the library. It felt like getting an art history degree - without the pesky exams or crippling tuition. The last entry in the series is an incomplete summary of some things I've learned by looking at modern art. The visual inspiration for the drawing was the sculpture park at The Nelson -Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, one of the best places to spend a fall afternoon.

Thanks to my editor at Medium, Charlotte Druckman, for helping make the series a reality!