this piece was made as a gift from bridget brody to her boyfriend (and my dear friend), brian niles. what a great girlfriend, yeah!!!

…shit, i can’t figure out how to link to an image large enough to view the bikini-clad kids climbing around on the waterfall-rock-cloud, oh well.

This is what my studio looked like sunday morning. now its got a lot more white. All this shit is a general growth and decay of my space over the last 6 months or so. I miss it but it has already started to grow back anew.

I recently had the great opportunity of painting all night for three months on the walls of one of Facebook’s office buildings! These are just some pictures I took at 5 in the morning to remember what I was working on. Once I get magic Otto on the scene I will post much more legit photos.

Checkout the high resolution shots at Flickr

My friend Rocky De Anda, of Galleria de Raza, recommended I propose a project to the Mission Cultural Council, so I did. I had been looking for a way to interact with the community and still produce my own work. So I offered my leadership facilitation skillz to a handful of after school programs around the mission. After working through trust, leadership, and self awareness games activities, I had the kids write or draw the things they valued and feared most in their lives.

Promoting, organizing, and scheduling my renegade art-related leadership program proved to be much more difficult than anticipated. Once I got the chance to run these sessions, I frequently found myself in a room of uninhibited kids 7-14 years old spazzing out on some of the more creative vulgar language I have ever heard.

The best experience I had was with The Beacon after school program’s Power Eyes group. These girls had they’re group leader present and had a pre-existing foundation together. In the end I found the images of them working together to be the message I wanted to convey most so that’s how I ended up with this product.

Now that I have one experience with community-engaged and public art project, I look forward to the chance of doing another with greater foresight.

Check out the whole together we can cross hot lava! set of pictures on Drew Bennett’s Flickr