Christopher Woods is a writer, teacher and photographer who lives in Texas. He has published a novel, The Dream Patch; a prose collection, Under a Riverbed Sky; and a book of stage monologues for actors, Heart Speak. His work has appeared in The Southern Review, New England Review, New Orleans Review, Columbia and Glimmer Train, among others. View his gallery at Christopher Woods.zenfolio.com.
“The Little Golden Book of Alternate Facts” by Tim O’Brien builds upon the classic Little Golden Books to create a satyrical response to Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway’s euphemism “alternative facts.” She spoke the term on Meet the Press, Sunday 22 January 2017, when referencing false statements made by new White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer about the size of the inauguration audience. Sales of George Orwell’s 1984 have since surged.
Tim O’Brien is an illustrator and portrait painter whose intricately detailed and imaginative illustrations have been published most notably in TIME Magazine as well as Der Spiegel, Smithsonian Magazine, GQ, Rolling Stone, Nautilus Magazine, Newsweek, TV Guide, The Atlantic Monthly, Business Week, Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, PlanSponsor, National Geographic, Playboy, New York Magazine, The New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Avon Books, Dial, Harper Collins, Penguin, Times Books, Scholastic, Simon & Schuster, TOR, Viking, Warner, and many others. Tim has designed several US postage stamps, and he has received multiple awards and recognitions from the Society of Illustrators in New York and Los Angeles, Graphis, Print, Communication Arts Magazine, the Society of Publication Designers, American Illustration, and the Art Directors Club. Tim has over a dozen paintings in the collection of the National Gallery, Washington, DC., and is a winner of the prestigious Hamilton King Award from the Society of Illustrators. To see more of his work, visit his website.
By Pepper Hume
Pepper Hume is a refugee from professional theatre design in scenery and costumes. After working all over the country, including years in both Chicago and New York, she retired to her hometown of Bartlesville, Oklahoma. She has a novel and several short stories under her belt—some published—and is working on a reference book on 20th century clothing for writers. In addition to writing, she makes one-of-a-kind art dolls and has designed several published book covers.
Artist Patrick Brown is a fairly quiet man—perhaps a bit shy—with a cute laugh, a slight Southern accent, and a gentle sadness that sometimes shades his eyes. It’s a companionable sorrow, though. It reaches into his paintings and says, “It might hurt, but it’s OK to look; you know me.” And while there’s no recognized treatment for his particular sorrow, it is treatment of another sort that brought Patrick to California almost four years ago, from Nashville, Tennessee.
Before he left, he had been seriously ill, Patrick explains over a late breakfast at Swami’s in Escondido. He’d had to sell his home to pay medical bills, and the prospect of Obamacare had forecast relief. But, like many red states, Tennessee rejected the expansion of Medicaid, abandoning Patrick to the middle of the legendary—and life-threatening—healthcare doughnut hole.
“My doctor said that either I had to come up with $2,000 per month or find a place that provided care to people with AIDS.”
So it was, with brushes and canvas and AIDS diagnosis in hand, that Patrick left behind friends and family—including two estranged sons—to obtain healthcare in California, to start a new life, to recover.
He found a place to live in Escondido, set up a new studio, and showed his art in regional galleries. He was accepted into juried shows, sold a bit of work, and launched a new series of paintings, Sins of the Father—to process his fractured relationships? It was confusing: He’d come out to his sons well before before his diagnosis; it was only after learning he had AIDS that they rejected him.
“They won’t even tell me why they don’t want me to be a part of their lives,” he says, looks down at his blueberry pancakes, pauses for the moment to pass. “It’s better here, but there’s still so much stigma attached to HIV and AIDS.”
And now, since the presidential election, there’s so much uncertainty and concern, enough to draw even the most introspective artist outward.
“Sins of the Father started out as a small personal series directly related to the conflict between my sons and me. It turned into a much larger one, to express other people’s family tensions, and then it evolved into what was happening politically—dark subject matter. The first of the newer ones, when the protests with the Black Lives Matter were more prominent in the news media, were ‘Memphis 1968’ and another one titled ‘Protest.’ And then this whole thing with Trump—that he actually won—and the controversies with the manipulation by Russia and the nuclear thing; that brought on my dead-on political paintings.”
It also brought on the more radical activist, harbored since Patrick’s youth, and a new series of paintings, War Dogs.
“It’s inspired by all of the turmoil against the LGBT community, the Hispanic community, women, what’s happening with youth, with bullying and suicide, with religious differences. And who knows what we’re in for the next four years. There are so many people in the world right now living in fear because of the election, the talk of war. We’ve unleashed a man that is giving people permission to discriminate and bully. It’s sad.”
But is there hope? Beyond the sorrow and fear, is there something better to come?
“There may be some hope, but it’s going to take a really big commitment from a lot of people. I don’t know if they have it in them right now. There are some, but you’ve got to mobilize people to take this thing on. That’s what brought on all the stuff with the Vietnam War and Martin Luther King and Black Lives Matter. People were arrested and got back out there. Right now, so many people have been empowered on the negative side, it’s going to take a lot of effort to counter that.”
He pauses again, takes a breath, comes to a conclusion.
“So, yes, my paintings are definitely addressing political things now. Art is a vehicle to make my statement known, my protest. Art’s been a medium of protest for so many for so long—Goya, Picasso, Diego Rivera—it’s a tool. It may not be the best thing to create sales, but it’s important to me to get the message out. It’s not all pretty pictures. I’m going for something that’s making a statement in the best way that I know how. I can’t worry about what other people are going to think about my paintings. One of the greatest things an artist can do is give up painting what they think everyone will like and start painting from the heart. It’s a choice and a responsibility for me.”
Patrick Brown is one of four featured artists in the 4•Up Exhibit at The Studio Door in North Park.
Exhibition dates: January 20 to 29, 2017
Opening reception: Saturday, January 21, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Address: 3050 30th Street, San Diego, California
Patrick Brown was born in East Saint Louis, Illinois in 1953. His education focused on painting at the University of Memphis, Hendrix College and Jefferson College.
Patrick’s successes include an ongoing relationship with the ABC Television Network, where his paintings are used on the sets. He was included in the 2016 juried exhibit and international publication 50 To Watch, featuring Southern California’s top artists. Among his earlier career achievements were mural work and portraits for the interiors of B. B. King’s Blues Clubs in Hollywood, Nashville and Memphis. His work was also included in Southern California’s Summation Exhibit and book publication the last three years, as well as the 2016 national Edgar Allen Poe exhibit in San Diego, California. He is a member of Visual AIDS, The Frank Moore Archives Project and the Escondido Arts Partnership Municipal Gallery.
Patrick currently lives and works in Escondido, California. Visit his website at www.PatrickNBrown.net.
Originally published by by Excuse Me, I’m Writing.
By I.E. Sommsin
I.E. Sommsin, a writer and artist from Kentucky, lives in San Francisco. The images, ink and watercolor on shirt cardboard, don’t represent individual persons, but are symbolic of the transition the country is now making.
Pastel drawing on paper/ iphoneography composite.
Artist’s statement
“Divided We Stand” was born on election night when the sea of red pushed into a nauseous realization that Trump would be …
Janice Grinsell is a multidisciplinary artist fascinated with the exploration and combination of media. She has a vast portfolio that includes iphoneography, painting, installation, and performance art, focused on the thematic internal journey of the artist and the viewer. She is an artisan with a omni-dimensional perceptual stronghold.
The central theme of her work is a cartographical exploration of her life as it is played out day by day, dream by dream, both conscious and unconscious. Her work reveals vulnerability blurring the distinction between one’s public persona and intimate emotions that reflects fragmented pieces of her emotional status and perceptions, often dark; they are fueled by a deep and intensely introspective nature. Powerful and intense, Janice’s work captures her audience with raw and instinctual iconography, unafraid of portraying the art of being human. Seeking pleasure in cryptic narratives, she invites the viewer to engage with her work, creating a portal to the subconscious.
Acrylic, medical tape, aluminum wire, and sticker on canvas board.
Artist’s statement
I created “I Voted: 2016” after voting on November 8. This perfectly illustrates how it felt to participate in a rigged system. I am a Guatemalan-born California resident and an Iraq War veteran who voted for Bernie Sanders, the true Democratic nominee.
By Anna Stump
Artist’s statement:
I have painted birds periodically throughout my life, mainly as a symbol for fragility, both personal and political. “California Least Tern Eggs,” from my Terrariums series, is mixed media on paper. Terrariums began as a series depicting Passenger Pigeons, which are extinct. I’ve expanded the subject to include endangered birds, their eggs, and other natural elements from the San Diego-Tijuana border, where I live.
The forced-perspective boxes of the series suggest architecture, coffins, and permeable borders, in which the natural elements are both trapped and preserved. I want to both hide, through camouflaged backgrounds, and decorate with flashy metallics. Formal qualities of abstraction, gridding, and figure/ground flipping, combined with political subjects dressed with decorative tropes, are important elements of all my work, which includes nudes, narrative interiors and portraiture.
California least terns are endangered and, at one point, only 600 nesting pairs remained. They nest on the sand where beach goers and the military, which has bases on the coast, can crush the eggs.
Anna Stump is an artist and arts educator living in San Diego. She earned her Bachelor’s degree at Occidental College and her Master of Fine Arts at San Diego State University. She was a Senior Fulbright Scholar to the Fine Arts Department at Anadolu University in Eskisehir, Turkey in 2006-2007. She teaches studio and art history courses at San Diego City College and Grossmont College. She also teaches drawing and painting at Donovan State Correctional Facility. Her work can be viewed here.
Anna’s New York Times reviewed blog of three years, Kloe Among the Turks, examines the art scene in Southern California and Turkey, and issues of arts education. In 2009, she curated an exhibition of 130 artists from Southern California and Turkey, presented in San Diego, Los Angeles, Istanbul and Ankara.
Anna is the founder of the San Diego Feminist Image Group. She is a member of Mid-Air Trio, an improvisational group that combines painting, dance and soundscapes in live performances. She is one-half of the painting team Hill&Stump. The artist is represented by MLA Gallery in Los Angeles, Sanatyapim Gallery in Ankara, Turkey, and Sparks Gallery and Sergott Contemporary Art Alliance in San Diego. She was recently profiled in the Huffington Post by Mat Gleason for her new work, “Sexy Jesus.”
By Carl Dimitri
Carl Dimitri, a Providence, Rhode Island-based artist, is committed to drawing one cartoon a day until the Trump era is over. Carl has received fellowships in painting from the Vermont Studio Center and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. He was also elected in 2012 into The Drawing Center in New York City. “Radio Jockey” is from his series “Hello, Mussolini.”
