-Inspired Procrastination pt.2

Everyone knows what pipe cleaners are. I went to two hardware store and all I was shown was sandpaper, coiled pipe snakes, and something that looked like a bbq grill brush. When I told them its the thin braided wires covered in fuzz that kids have adopted to make craft projects, they had no idea. Same with the Pharmacy and 99¢ store. No luck at the pipe/bong shop either, they weren't open on a Tuesday at noon, natch.

Necessity is the mother of invention as they say. I wanted to make a birthday gift while I was spending my day waiting for USPS and with no pipe cleaners I came up with this...

The postman didn't even show up that day. The next day they came so the prints are shipped and those that bought them should be receiving them any day now. As for foreign orders, they are also shipped.

I apologize for any brown spots on envelopes sent out this week. I didn't realize what happened till it was too late.

Paper: friend and foe.

Also, friends Tom Prior, John Peters, and Ian Baguskas have a really top notch exhibition of photographs at Crane Arts in Philadelphia. If you live there, go see it. They are wonderful to see blown up.

I'm not really sure how many people actually read the stuff that doesn't have to do with my paintings, but having a blog to post other stuff is becoming fun for me. Tomer once mentioned the computer as 'The Great Indoors'.
Its true.
-esao.

-Going Postal.

I am genuinely thankful for the response to the new prints I put up a week and a half ago. Thanks to everyone for there support, I'm doing my best, and am eager to get them out of my studio area.

Mission accomplished...sort of.

It's many days after New Years. There was a resolution I had for 2008. It was to get back in touch with people from my past and keep up with those in the present, I've had a real hard time writing or calling back people in recent years. All it takes is a moment to put the effort in. It might be living in NYC so long where there's so many people around, everything is convenient, expensive and fast paced. Friends come and go. It makes it easy to become self-involved and easy to put off the commitments towards others to the point of routine. Maybe I've always been like this or I've have recently grown this irrational shell towards people. I've had a few friends respond negatively to my lack of communication and rightly feel like shitballs. 2008 is the time to make amends and contact old friends and family.

Cheers to nostalgia.

I found some old comic strips in a photo album I did when I was 14 years old.
Remember those Safari Cards that your parents had when you were a kid? I still have a thousand of them. Looking at the first panel I know I used one of those cards for reference for this one below.


Here's another one done the same week thats just as light hearted.
The date says 12/17/92.
Notice the generic "comic hero hand" pose in the last panel.
-esao

-Post Show Post

6 new prints are up in the store. yay!
7 new paintings from my recent show are in the painting section, though a few have been shown earlier on this blog.

The Show at Jonathan Levine Gallery went great. Thanks for everyone that came.
Its February 14th day of Love and other obligated hoopla.


I did a quick sketch while working on the computer.

After I started painting it, it seemed unfinished so I added the kids you see below. note: I used red Saral Transfer paper to trace the drawing to the painting above.

A few shrubs in the foreground and some tightening up...

"Sweet Wilderness" 16"x19" oil on wood.
-Esao

-Blanket of Coins

I was hoping to have my newest work all photographed and planned to do sketch to finish breakdowns for a few. Since that hasn't happened yet, here is the best I can do with my point and shoot camera. This is a painting I did last summer. Starting off with a close up....


I've never been to Spain, but I named this painting after a river there.

"Guadiana" 30" x 30" oil on wood.
I was born in Altus, Oklahoma and moved to Arizona when I was 6 months old. There's that song "Never Been to Spain", a famous one that Elvis sang. Here's an excerpt:

Well I never been to Heaven
But I been to Oklahoma
Well they tell me I was born there
But I really don't remember
In Oklahoma, not Arizona
What does it matter
What does it matter

Thanks Patrick for pointing that out to me.


Detail sketch.

Detail of original sketch of girl.

________________________________

There's been a lot of talk about 'CHANGE' in the news...

A friend and I got to talking about how unfathomably massive a trillion is, so I decided to work it out and share.

Estimated U.S. $9 trillion(or British billion) deficit in currency coverage.

Summary of findings:
1) The US $9 trillion deficit broken down into quarters would blanket an area the size of New Jersey.
2) Broken down into pennies, it would blanket an area the size of Arizona, New Jersey, two Rhode Islands, and four Washington DC's combined and still have 14 square miles of pennies left over.
3) The deficit arranged into a solid-flat brick of stacked pennies would cover an area the size of Manhattan around 26 feet thick.
4) A tower of $9 trillion in pennies would make a stack all of the way to Saturn, or zig zag from the Sun and Earth almost 9 times.
5) Averaged out, America has added more than $106 million dollars each day to its deficit since 1776.
6) A calculation I found on the internet stated: A million dollars stack 500 feet (tall as the big pyramid in Egypt); a billion dollars stack 10 times higher than Mt. Everest; a 1 trillion dollars stack 1/4 of the way to the Moon 60,000 miles (97,200 Km)....
With that said, I guess 9 trillion, one dollar bills would stack (and no, not being placed end to end) would go up, arch around the moon and come back down to earth.

After doing all this math stuff, i came across a site called The MegaPenny Project, which is way more extensive and informative than my afternoon of time wasting. Cool images and other statistics to help visualize massive amounts of pennies.

Here's my math breakdown notes:
1 quarter = 1inch sq.(quarters seem to be 15/16th of an inch. whatev's.)
144 quarters = 1 ft sq.
if 43,560 ft sq = 1 acre.
then 43,560 x 144= 6,272,640 quarters per acre.
if 640 acres= 1 mile sq.
then 6,272,640 x 640 = 4,014,489,600 quarters per 1 mile sq.
if $9,000,000,000,000 x 4= 36,000,000,000,000 quarters
then 4,014,489,600 divided into 36 trillion= 8967 square miles of quarters butted next to each other.
New Jersey is 8,722 square miles.(according to what I found on the internet)

Using the same math in pennies.
1 penny= .75 inch sq.
256 pennies = 1 ft sq....
900 trillion pennies = 126,105 square miles.
Arizona = 114,006 square miles.
Rhode Island= 1545 square miles.
Washington D.C. = 68.25 square miles.
You could cover the area of Arizona in pennies, then cover all of New Jersey, then put a double stack covering RI, then a 4 stack on D.C. and still have 14 square miles of pennies left over.

17.5 pennies stacked = 1inch.
210 pennies =1ft.
126,105 divided by 22.96 ( square miles of Manhattan)= 5492.37 quarters per stack.
210 divided into 5492.37 = would cover the entire area of Manhattan with a brick of stacked pennies 26 feet thick.

5280 feet in a mile.
$11,088 of stacked pennies = 1 mile high.
divide 9 trillion by 11,088
$9 trillion = 811,688,311.68 miles of stacked pennies.
Though a planet's distance from each other vary, 800 million miles is about how far Saturn is from Earth, or the stack could go back and forth from the Sun to Earth, almost 9 times.

U.S. Declaration of Independence 1776.
1776 to 2007= 231 years.
365 days x 231 + 57 leap year days = 84372 days
$9 trillion divided by 84372 days = $106,670,459.39 per day of spending money we don't have since 1776.