I play drums in the band, Mantisgrove. We’re releasing a record soon. Here’s a video that Rueben Buchanan made of us performing on an evening in late summer, in the ash clouds of nearby forest fires.
If I Let My Life Speak (demo)
And Another Song, If I Let My Life Speak
Old Volvo (Demo)
Been working on recording some songs I’ve been working on. Here’s one titled, Old Volvo
A Definite Image- First Cow (Kelly Reichardt, 2020)
The Film:
The Image:
Kelly Reichardt strives for greater things when she tells a Western. First Cow (2020) tells the story of the friendship of Cookie (yes, he’s a cook and baker) and King-Lu an entrepreneur and world traveler. This is definitively a Western; it’s a story of the American West. It takes place in territorial Oregon, marks the process of the colonization of the region in it’s early throes notably marked by the arrival of the titular first cow to the territory, and showcases the variety of people living in the area during this point in time. King-Lu at one point, after having described the impact of his travels on his life and reveling in the American West says, “History isn’t here yet,” meaning that the domination of the West and the closing of the Frontier hadn’t yet solidified what the space was to be in the annals of American mythology. Ultimately, what Reichardt offers us is a glimpse into an alternative soft and interdependent West and the shot I’ll use to explore that idea is one of the Cookie and King-Lu caring for their home.
“Because Cinema is movement, the Western is Cinema par excellence,” says Andre Bazin, and he’s correct about the genre. Think of any Western and the role of movement. Stagecoach is essentially an extended chase scene, The Magnificent Seven’s story literally starts in motion, Once Upon a Time in the West features heroes who come and go like the laying of the railroad. This is all to say that the domestic space in the Western is a marginal location. It is reserved as the space for women in the stereotypical Western, a locus of order and warranting protection from the elements and outside threats. Thus, movement is indelibly tied to the dominant mythos of the West, it is tied to the danger (and thrill) of the life of the cowboy, a man who knows no home but the road.
What First Cow offers us is an alternative for the Western space and role of men and masculinity in the genre. Much in the similar methodology of Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff, a film which centered the role of white women in the narrative of American western migration/movement, First Cow's character’s center their lives and dreams around the domestic space. This is a western that starts in motion, and ends in motion, but in the middle (narratively a reserved space for the action and the movement, Cookie and King-Lu nurture their living space. Cookie bakes, and King-Lu dreams of where the baking can take them as they formulate an American Dream.
In the definitive image I’ve chosen (not even close to being the most beautiful in the film, stunningly shot by Christopher Blauvelt), we see Cookie shaking the dust from a rug in the door frame and King-Lu chopping wood outside. The image suggests interchange and interdependence. Cookie faces outwards open to the world returning dust to where dust belongs, and King-Lu, chopping wood outside, taking what belongs outside to bring inside for fire. It is here in this home that their bond strengthens and that their dream flourishes.
Reichardt tells us that the West is also a place for sweet things, for love and tenderness. Heck King Lu and Cookie never once take up arms. This isn’t a land for the lone cowboy, drifting and itinerant. It’s a narrative of the West long overdue and essential in expanding the meaning of the space in our cultural psyche, and for considering what it takes to make it in trying circumstances. We cannot make it alone, and it is together that we build our dreams.
-Connor
A Definite Image- Three Colors: Blue
The image:
The Film:
One of the definitive films in the abbreviated career of Krystof Kieslowski, Three Colors: Blue is a meditation on freedom, grief, and what binds during our lives. Julie (Juliette Binoche), on losing her husband and child in the early moments of the film, must regard these questions in light of overwhelming grief. Her life in the aftermath of this trauma asks how one becomes free in this life when inter-connectivity has the power to destroy us. Why do we hand over that power so easily? What is the relationship between love and freedom?
Masterfully shot by Sławomir Idziak, Kieslowski’s capacity for visual poetry occupies a great deal of the space of the film. The sugar cube shot we’re looking at today is that of a later moment in the film when Julie is at a cafe and upon dipping a sugar cube into her coffee, it becomes imbued with it’s taste, a novel texture. Essentially, it undergoes a metaphysical shift. It’s undoubtedly one of the most striking images of the film, but its greater impact must be set against the some of the visual metaphors that surround it.
The film is replete with images that suggest the boundaries of the individual, boundaries that Julie literally comes into collision with through her flesh. Take for example this shot-
Julie in motion signifies a life, the stone wall the conditions in which a life is lived. Here there is no porous exchange only a brittle object grinding against her flesh. Following this abrasion of two conflicting entities, body and wall, she takes her hand to her mouth, ingesting the results of that conflict. Imagine for a second the taste and texture of blood and dirt. Even as she ingests this mixing, suggesting an exchange between inside world and out, the taste isn’t pleasant is it?
Clearly suffering, blood and dirt is not so yum.
And, taking a look at the film, recognize the amount of images of Julie interacting with her environment in these abrasive, jarring ways. Whether its the repeated images of her swimming (boyant, interactive but still distinctly separate) or being pressed up against a window pane while having sex, the film is rife with these images that show her resistance to exchange.
Floating in Space
Ow?
Kieslowski, by constructing this definitive image of the sugar cube transfigured by coffee, shows us a elemental change in Julie. Part of the healing process and steps towards freedom for Julie is the ability to take in, to interact on the spiritual level with those and the world around us. Julie, as we are, is an assemblage of molecules; a sugar cube bound by chemical sweetness. When we “take in” the viscous, fluid, and unpredictable world around us, absorb that essence ever present into ourselves, the world is a sweeter place and maybe we can continue to move through it in light of the suffering we face? Freedom lies in the willingness to exchange and to allow ourselves to be transformed. We will look different on the other side of things, but the synthesis of ourselves with the world around us perhaps worth it in the end.
New Logo
I’ve changed my logo to this birb. Wanted to go for something clean and clear, with a touch of detail. The next task is to make a linocut of the image and start making some prints. The bird seems both bound to the ground but also full of airy space and lightness.
Mantisgrove- Live at StudioWyo
I play drums for a couple of bands. Here’s a recent, socially distant recording of Mantisgrove. We’re on all the streaming platforms- check it out!
The Lighthouse
Here’s a shot from a trip out to the nearby Twin Buttes. 100% not as wild as The Lighthouse, Robert Eggers film from last year, but still moody as hell.
New Shirt Design- Mantisgrove Mushrooms
New shirt design for the band Mantisgrove! It was a lot of fun drawing these little mushroom creatures based off of vintage textbook images sent over from Seth Leininger, the band frontman/idea guy. Check them (ok us, I’m in the band) out here-https://www.facebook.com/mantisgrove/
Best 3 Albums of 2019
Yadda yadda, we all get flooded with year end lists. They seem to take a general path when it comes to the editorial route, either predictable or decidedly obscure. I approach this project with the motive of reflection on what resonated with me in a strong year of music and with the hopes that it will turn you on to another listen as you round out the year.
Pro-tip from a non-pro: create a playlist for the year, listen to it at the years end. Don’t weigh more heavily the things that came out recently, that are more fresh. After having completed a first draft- replay. Listen and take notes. The reasons why you were interested at first may have changed. Finally, buy those records. Its clear you loved what they had to offer, pay for the item, get it in vinyl even if you don’t have a record player. You’ll have a record of your plays (oooh!) and that’ll be with you until you throw all your records away because moving every six months with a buttload of records and books is just self-torture.
What initially began as an enticing single (“Pressure to Party”) rounded out with an adoration of the subtle, largely subdued, and occasionally spirited foray into love and loss from the Jacklin’s sophmore record. Its an album that explores the boundaries of body after the cataclysm of a breakup. Her lyrics express a permeability of self as one redefines the outlines of identity in this situation. “How to Keep Loving You” sweepingly conveys the welcomingly honest perspective about how an often elevated perspective of intimacy, knowing ones ins and outs so completely, in all to often cases leads to not a growth of love but an exasperated sense of despair. The tonality of the record expresses the lows of moving through re-identification, and also the frenetic highs of being able to piece together oneself.
See the video for “Don’t Know how to Keep Loving You” here
Helado Negro- This is How You Smile
Ok, well this is going to be a hard one, because I literally listened to Helado Negro’s “This is How You Smile” precisely every day of 2019. So, even though I said these are in no particular order— if there was one, this would be at the top. Lyrically, Roberto Carlos Lange takes us through a breezy, reflection on love. It’s as though he’s singing these songs as he leads himself on a journey through the family photo album. “And we’ll light/Ourselves on fire/Just to see/Who really/Wants to believe/That it’s just me" Lange sings on the album opener “Please Wont Please.”
After Trump was elected, there was a whole swath of internet buzz awaiting the great protest records to come forward in the raucous style of (the immaculate) Thermals record The Body, The Blood, The Machine. However, Helado Negro delivers a record that quietly, tiredly speaks out against the exhausting regime. All the yelling seems to make little difference when everyone yells back, so this resistance is embodied. Lived resistance in the everyday being, the politics of the body as Lange sings on “Pais Nublado” - “And I haven't lost my mind/ Thinking about you/ And I haven’t lost my breath/ Shouting all the things we're about to do/ And we'll take our turn / And we’ll take our time/ Knowing that we'll be here long after you.”
I’m telling you all right now, it doesn’t get better than this spectacular piece of art in 2019. Helado Negro, I bow to thee and thank you for joining so many of my hours, helping me feel grounded, hopeful and courageous moving through these times.
I didn’t go through a breakup this year, why do you ask? Is it because there’s another breakup record on here? So what, I contain multitudes. Philly based Mannequin Pussy has been ripping since 2014, and Patience is a frenetic and beautiful welcome to their oeuvre. The opener “Patience” thematically pairs with Julia Jacklin’s musings on the effect of a relationship on the body. For Mannequin Pussy, the invasive control swelters out into the driving pop-punk chords paired to the lyrics, “Who told you that my body was yours to own?/And long before you called, it was crawlin' through the wild/ And after gettin' in my head/ Convinced poison was supposed to grow/ I wandered all around, the beauty I surround/ Patience, patience, patience, patience/ You know I've got it in my blood.”
The album contains two songs Drunk I and Drunk II, the latter preceding the former in the songlist, and again I’m going to pull lines because they hit super hard-
And do you remember the nights I called you up?
I was so fucked up, I forgot we were broken up
I still love you, you stupid fuck
But you don't look at me, you don't talk to me
And I know it's 'cause you're weak, baby
You feel guilty, it's pathetic, mm.
And just if we haven’t all been there, (you stupid f*ck) I don’t even know. Also, any album that creates such an impact after only 25 minutes is accomplishing something great. Need some catharsis- slide on the vinyl and press go.
There you have it. Why 3? Why not? That’s a silly question.
Connor
What’s the Weight of a Soul?
Some new work here. Print making has always been something I’ve wanted to do but hadn’t yet. Yos grabbed some supplies over the last week and we have been able to enjoy the process together over these slow, holiday hours. Oh, and here’s a bonus picture of the doge who seems to loves skiing even more than I do. Happy Holidays!
The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence
Here’s my latest work for Relative Theatrics. Sometimes coming up with concepts for poster design can be a bit of a challenge; however, when it came to Madeleine George’s work The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence, the concept of overlapping portraits to signify the interlapping periods of time and character that the play explores arrived almost instantly. Pleasure to photograph this great cast, and to work with director Anne Mason to bring the thing to life!
Another Build- T. Shaun Sutherland DDS and Ruma Novotny DDS
I had the pleasure of putting together another web build recently. T Shaun and Ruma asked for an updated and modern website, that communicated their wide range of services as well as the welcoming environment that they provide to customers. Take a peek and see the work! I was able to do videography, illustration, copy and photography alongside the graphic design work on this one, so it was quite the project and I was able to practice a variety of skills along the way.
Web Build- Occasions by Cory
I recently finished a web build for Occasions by Cory, a event and meal planning service that serves central Wyoming and beyond! Cory and his crew do amazing work and it was a pleasure to put together a site that updated their look and offered them new services to make working with their customer base easier, smoother and more effective.
Check it out-
100 Heads 24-28
Here’s the next set. Mainly trying to find the balance between too much and too little detail and smoothing our lines at this point. As always, proportions are hard to figure out too! Onward and upward.
Cowboys mini-zine
We’re continuing on with mini-zines. My students have found it to be an excellent way to hone their ideas and bring closure to a smaller subject. It’s been satisfying and the results have been very fun. Here’s some westernisms for y’all-
100 Heads Mini Zine
I’m continuing on with 100 Heads Project by focussing it into a zine form. Currently, I am working with students in a Zine club at my school, and this was my submission to our group’s zine library. Onward and upward!
100 Head Challenge
I’ve been working on this 100 head challenge to practice new techniques and hone my observation skills. Some go better than others. Here’s some so far!
St. Anthony's Tri-Parish Catholic High School
St. Anthony’s Tri-Parish School recently needed a logo for their budding program. We wanted to maintain the ideas established by the traditional school logo alive- a sense of faith and learning conveyed by the cross and flowers and text. What was important to me, was that the image give a sense of tradition, but also that it was something that would appeal to high school aged kids- something. It needed to be something that they would wear on a hoodie, or perhaps slap on as a sticker to their nalgene. Anyways, this is what we came up with!
I worked with the students on this project. After a bit of prep, I had them all come up with mock designs as an assignment in class. I wanted them to be invested in the logo that would be used represent them. We went through a branding exercise to help them identify key imagery. Each student came up with a set of values or ideas they thought represented this program and their hopes for it. After that exercise, they created their drafts. Finally, I mocked up a draft based on elements from each of their designs.
This is the logo that we used as a starting pointing for the high school.
Snow Day
A massive snow storm has covered the region, which meant lots of drawing and coffee! Snow days rarely happen here, but the snow piled up in less than 12 hours, and is going to continue into the night.
