Hoobs & Jolly's Blueprint of Dystopia

BACK FROM FISHING

oh jolly!

70 sq feet of banana

been priming surface all afternoon--going big, going yellow! maybe thinking about a piece to take down to miami this december...

shitty-shitty scrawling 101

thanks to the summer malaise i now find myself in, i decided the best (and for the moment, the only) thing i could do is unleash a new series of very quick daily drawings aptly titled 'shitty-shitty scrawling'...here's the first one:

amusement ride

hoobs-n-Jolly (issue #7)

the following are some very kind words from the Sound on the Sound blog ( www.soundonthesound.com ) previewing my show at the sunset. thanks abbey
....

On this blog, Stoic Swine is best known as Blowdog of the dearly departed Hopscotch Boys. His performances, which we’ve described as “part art, part felony” were confrontational, dark, abrasive, fascinating, enthralling, and totally unique. The same can be said of the artwork he creates under the name of Stoic Swine.

While I’m no art critic or historian, Stoic Swine’s pieces evoke the same sort of reaction in me as his performances as Blowdog: enamored revulsion. As Stoic Swine describes his own work, “soul in the soot, head in the ether.” His art, like his performances, toes the line of grotesque, in a way that makes you want to see more, not less. It is raw, honest, totemic, evocative, and I think, beautiful in it’s portrayal of the flaws and vices of man. Much like Blowdog on stage, it’s work you’ll either love or hate, there’s no middle ground. I for, one, love it.

So does The Sunset Tavern on Ballard Avenue, which is currently hosting Stoic Swine’s latest collection, “YESTERDAY’S HERO, TODAY’S GOAT.” The artist describes his work, created just for this show at the Sunset as:

Spanning from the fumes of the room’s storied past (from shaky Chinese restaurant to a debauched sailor dive) to its present lore as one of the city’s finest rock clubs, this work was created specifically to be installed in the legendary Sunset Tavern. All portraits on display are of figures I could imagine, at one time or another, filling the Sunset with their gregarious personalities and drunken behavior as they unwittingly question life’s greater existential formalities. Hopefully no amount of their blood, sweat or ejaculate has been spared in my faithful depiction.

what lovers do?

more hoobs-n-jolly...

Hoobs-n-Jolly (issue #4)

hog farm scratch-n-sniff

scratch it to smell the shit inside!

all limbs.

ourselves

'we live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves.' -a.huxley

man in the mirror

(click image to enlarge)

it was a muzzle

it was a hand
it was a paw
it was a way of not talking
as you played your doctor games
all over my body

they can't all be hits

Perhaps life is just that...a dream and a fear.
Joseph Conrad

website updated!

http://stoicswine.com

has been updated with all the finished images of new work recently installed at the sunset.
the site is also undergoing a refurbishment that will hopefully make movement within a little more user friendly.
everyday a little more gets done. baby steps.

don't forget to call your father today.

OK, back for real this time...

Things have finally come to a slow and sultry simmer and I'm pleased to report that i'll once again be posting on a daily basis here at the old blog. I wanted to post a couple of images of my newest canvas (4'x11') that recently went up at the Sunset. This piece speaks of a rupturing of unity while cheekily offering oneself up to the prospect of a new communion by showcasing a couple of positive attributes of self. it was loosely a play on a famous political cartoon titled Join, or Die created by Benjamin Franklin and first published in his Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754. Join, or Die is a woodcut showing a snake severed into eighths, with each segment labeled with the initial of a British American colony or region. The cartoon appeared along with Franklin's editorial about the "disunited state" of the colonies, and helped make his point about the importance of colonial unity. During that era, there was a superstition that a snake which had been cut into pieces would come back to life if the pieces were put together before sunset.

(click to enlarge first image)

hello

i know i've been MIA for a couple of days but know that it's not been out of a lack of productivity...on the contrary, things have been moving at a hot-n-heavy clip as i finalize everything for monday's installation. i figure i'm about 80% complete with the final twelve foot painting and, as it stands right now, i think it's clearly one of my more carefully conceived and executed efforts in quite some time. that's not to say it hasn't been a tumultuous process, but i think in the end, i will be quite pleased with the final product. hopefully someone else will agree and drop some cash in my dirty paws.

in the meantime (in lieu of something artsy), i thought i'd post two images from my recent retreat to vancouver... i consumed the fantastic japanese hot dog while watching the bird eat his freshly captured eel.

(click on image to enlarge)
whilst i ought to be finishing up and solidifying work for the sunset show, which i'll be installing in one week, i couldn't help but be distracted by working on this new baby (one i'll probably won't even use for the sunset).

i sense my forthcoming art will sit squarely in the sordid parking lot of a more painterly, rawer, dirtier and trippier style. sinister yet endearing...
white boy tribal? no, not entirely that. just the gritty goods me'hopes.

regardless, i reckon its about time to fuck-shit-up once again.

WORKS IN PROGRESS...

Every man is a builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own...We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.
Henry David Thoreau

(click on image to enlarge)

no more rides

in the emergency room...

the surgeon braces for the worst.

sniffers.

just back from a little spirit quest in the northern hinterlands...here's a raw nugget about some boozers and sniffers. wouldn't you just like to see the kiddies donning this little design on their satchels and hoodies?

drunk cookie monster wishes you a merry weekend.

save some room for dessert and some napkin for doodling...

angry sushi chef...?

LET'S TALK ABOUT FEELINGS

wish i felt like this...instead of actually feeling like this tonight...

just a kid...

now with 20% more flesh

new skate deck art...

THE CONJURER

just a question...

Every dog must have his day.
-Jonathan Swift

a new piece:

don't.

bored

under constructing...

click on the above image to get a better idea of the detail work within. disregard the shitty quality of the pictures--these gold panels covered in multiple layers of shellac are a real bitch to photograph due to their reflective tendencies with light.

Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.

John Quincy Adams

acceptance

one from the archives...

prototypical goofball

(click on image to enlarge)

the studio (living room?) is heating up...

things have moved along at a nice clip over this past weekend. feel like i made some breakthroughs with materials (namely experimenting with multiple layers of shellac and countering with splashes of denatured alcohol on the water heater panels--even though the fumes are getting the best of me) and are now staggeringly close to a solid contextual frame for this upcoming body of work (sorry, no hints just yet). experiments are coming to a close and pure execution of the actual series is impending. i hope i can fall into a nice groove and some killer art will finally be coming out of the stagnant creative fog i've been in for much too long.

critter

future zephuros (quick sketch for larger work)

preacher and the acolytus

cold heart

(click on image to enlarge)

pure scrawlin'

love them dirty lines

dry hump (shellac is the secret)

Stage 1: the soul
Stage 2: the bones (not pictured)
stage 3. the flesh (not pictured)

dead fish

ode to the bearded lady...

Character is determined more by the lack of certain experiences than by those one has had.
-Nietzsche

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

Gramps use to always say...

'HARD-ON!'

thank god

new 'tusky' critter.

the one weakness of an otherwise invulnerable hero

...that which is between us.

my mind's combine is in constant stuck, always harvesting over the already harvested plot.

in my bed...there is no solitude, no comfort, or no friend.
my mind keeps me up as a prowler
who is just trying to break-in.
he's out there standing in the yard,
he stares at me through the window,
he steams the pane up with rancid breath,
smashing glass with closed fist.

easter dinner.

simplified.

rabid to ribald.

how a baby sees god...

ghost crotch?

drunk cookie monster...

experimentation with sumi painting on silver spray painted water heater drain pan.

looking for practical solutions in both materials and technique for showing a thematic collection of work in an unorthodox exhibition setting (sunset tavern-music venue).

the work needs to look good:

1. displayed on red/black wall.
2. in very low-lighting.
3. in a narrow and horizontal room with a low ceiling.
4. where people will potentially be in direct physical contact with the art.

any thoughts/suggestions...?

keeps on licking.

sometimes you've gotta take it up the Everything Hole.

one coulduva been.

grandmama's little slut pumpkin...

remixed found negative

MY GIRLS
by animal collective

Is it much that I feel I need
A solid soul and the blood I bleed
With a little girl, and by my spouse
I only want a proper house

I don't care for fancy things
Or to take part in a precious race
And children cry for the one who has
A real big heart and a father's grace

I don't mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status
I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls

nocturne's levitating mamilla

BALLAD OF SPRING'S FALLEN FOOL
(proposed and rejected artwork for the reissue of Barbara Streisand's chart-topping 1978 platinum single of the same name)

amen.

what's wrong with you is wrong all the way through you.

i painted this little fella tonight and realized about three quarters the way into that he was UNQUESTIONABLY FUCKED.

sometimes that's just how life goes, i reckon.

everything and all...

one great majestic.

enter one great majestic to the lit stage of the BROKEN SITCOM

present
to empty out one's little self
at the 'shed-fort' area in the inner goon sanctuary

(host's question)

what brought you to this place

a hogfarm scratch-n-sniff

to smell the hunger pang of
your poker-face


repent no
repeat
all of your little sins
the ones daddy taught you
when you were just a little kid

(insert laugh track here)

(into a song-n-dance number with a tuxedoed boy lost under a top hat
singing to his fat mother who is planted to couch
in a stained nightie watching wheel of fortune)

"this little light of mine
burns out these little eyes of mine
i can't see your foolish ways
when you have bawdy day with me

you are pieces of the dunce's hat
crowned to my head like whale fat
i will tear you free from me
when i leave here eternally"

(she replies with a tune of her own
in a different key)

"the rusty wind-chimes ...of my heart
feedback with hiss ...all night long
you stand too close to the static...
of my loooooove"

a black song for credits of this sitcom

there will be a dildo-flogging for good ratings come sweeps week
and by season's finale
one great majestic will pretend to be stranded in the mountains again
choking on the meat of a cougar's paw

sputtering for an emmy
the lines

" why didn't daddy cut his sex so he'd have no child to think of
when i'm old enough i will cauterized my sex to satisfy
my selfish ways."

(insert stunned silenced here
followed by uproarious applause)

bored at dinner (three napkin doodles)

put a smile on your painted face you dirty sister

my most prized possession

my grandfather (mother's dad) was a political cartoonist for a small kansas newspaper in the mid-thirties. i don't know many details about the man (he died a couple years before i was born) but i've been told by my mother that i've inherited a handful of traits from him--a love of drawing being one of the more prominent.

when i was in my late teens my mom gave me a sketchbook that he composed back in 1924 (my grandfather would have been 19 years old at the time). the drawings inside are sublime and rendered with such a lightness and ease of touch that my heart aches at their innocent beauty. with each image i feel i learn a little bit more about my roots, his era and true artistic integrity.

despite being gone for over 35 years, i feel he can directly communicate to me through his lines...and in turn, i sometimes try to do the same with my work for him.

he was a natural draftsman to the highest order and i long to create drawings with but a shred of his grace and soft-spoken expertise.

SLEEPING UNDER THE CURSE.

i'm trying to kill myself in my sleep.
slowly.

i've just figured it out after another extremely difficult night of arduous twisting and turning and waking multiple times. for the last few months, at least once per night, i will struggle awake with my forearm pressed firmly into my face completely covering up both of my breathing holes. other times i find myself desperately gasping for air from an inherited case of apnea (a sleep disorder characterized by pauses in breathing during sleep. each episode, called an apnea lasts long enough so that one or more breaths are missed, and such episodes occur repeatedly throughout sleep.)
The interesting thing is that i started noticing this significant sleep disruption the day after christmas...the very day my 86-day (and counting) brain fog set in. december 26 is also the same day i decided to move my bed from one room in my apartment to another more 'logical' location in what had previously been my art studio. i also hung the 2007 shamanic drawing- 'curse, the medicine' -above my bed that day.

what does this all mean? is it just an uncanny string of odd coincidences? or is it possible i just might be sleeping under a curse of my own making that has been triggered to life by its hanging in this room...?

dicking about.

even if you were the last motherfucker left

and through this desperation there are wings and there is a snare

baby.

i want to beaver.

the fixins

flick the switch, cut up the light
what's inside? "don't want to know"
lick her palm, it's already salt
read god's fist, her name's inside

hollow god's lips into dead worms
make them straws and snort your drugs
we are origami shapes in the rain
my language is turning black again.

flick the switch to turn back time
look at me writhin' round yr life
pierce my head with your precious look
pull my heart thru the grave you've dug

open up the thick parlor doors...
where your dreams consume the old dirt,
black-n-white checkered glossy floors
to stage the hissing and the trashing--

orchestrate your fictions now...
from the chaos of love's ashes
sleepy pride creates the cancer
that will eat through all of us!

artists will paint pictures of you
poets will write poems about you
sirens will sing songs for you
they will tell their children your lies

horse-head raise the baby high
in your mouth he will turn to light
from god's tooth falls a rabbit's toe
fortune's gone, you're all alone