The Lava Log is a series of digital animation loops and works on canvas and paper.
Each Lava Log was originally created digitally from stock photography collages. I then projected stills from the images to canvas and paper to create tactile physical versions. From each iteration— stock image to digital image to fully analog works on canvas and paper— the imagery is recognizable but with subtle variation. Works include 24 by 40 inch canvases, original one-of-a-kind VHS and DVD cases, among others.
From May 9 through 14 2023, Jonathan Miller Spies Fine Art presents The Lava Log in an immersive experience at 72 Warren Street, Manhattan.
A series of hand drawn maps begun in 2020. Initially, these started out as non-representational works, taking cues from the iconography I was using in commercial animation. As the Covid lockdown continued, I began virtually exploring places I felt disconnected from in New York and beyond. I used Google maps to identify neighborhoods, compressing and altering the shapes slightly to establish a birds-eye-view template. Street View then allowed me to comb the streets to recreate buildings, parks, vacant lots etc. and render them as flat icons.
All works are in pen, Prisma color marker on Bristol Board and range in size from 11 by 14 inches to 28 by 20 inches. A series of these featured in Art on Paper 2022. Commissions of Fort Greene, Brooklyn and Mid-City Los Angeles held in private collections.
"Save your receipts!" Inspired or perhaps tortured by the need to track my expenses for business, I've been carefully copying and and recreating various receipts since 2019. The little purchases add up, and so does the time spent on running errands we take for granted. We might experience the expenditure and the experience of a vacation to Iceland or new phone or whatever more acutely, but in reality we spend far more time and money buying cheap blinds for windows or gym water bottles.
Ink and prisma color marker on 3 by 5 inch paper. This series will be presented at Art on Paper 2023.
Baseball cards were the original NFT’s--cheaply mass-produced collectibles peddled to people with very little money by opportunistic huckters promising a speculative fantasy.
Unlike NFT’s, however, baseball cards were at least an actual physical thing, and there are a lot of them still floating around. And there was an attempt at creativity in the design and rendering of the data with which baseball is uniquely obsessed.
In this series, I used baseball cards from my collection as a child and worked backwards; if the folly in baseball card collecting was expecting the value of a mass-produced piece of cardboard to shoot to the moon, why not create instead a one-of-a-kind reproduction that sources its value from the time involved in the crafting a single object?
I focused on the backs of baseball cards because each set of detailed stats tell a story. While the intimidating rows and columns of decimals and abbreviations might seem like gibberish, I assure you that an 8-year old can pick it up with the proper motivation, and that in their own language, the backs of baseball cards convey the of the rise and fall of illustrious hall-of-famers, the seasons interrupted by injury, and the short arcs of careers that never materialized. Presented at Art on Paper 2022. Each baseball card is 2.5 by 3.5 inches drawn on 4 by 6 inch paper.
A limited edition graphic novel I created called "A Bender." This story is a heavily fictionalized, fantasized account of what it looks like when drinking is fun--up until the point where it's not anymore. 26 pages. Pen, Ink, Prisma Color Marker. Pages 5.5 by 7 inches.
Over a series of visits, I documented the rooms of the house I grew up in the year before it was sold. All works 5 by 7 inches on paper, ink and prisma color.
Selections from a book of 49 patterns. Each patterns if 5 by 3 inches, ink and prisma color on paper. Featured in Art on Paper 2022.
A selection of miscellaneous works on paper. Text and visual interplay. 3 by 5 to 9 by 12 inches.
