Existential Explorations

How is that for a catchy title?

My most recent work has been about humanity's collective history. In it, I explore the common threads that bind us together as people. 

Death is something we can all relate to. It's such an integral part of the human experience that we have rigid funeral rituals surrounding it. We have many TV shows about homicide investigations. We establish religions that try to explain the mystery of death. It is the most mysterious part of our existence. No one can show with evidence what happens after our heart stops pumping and our brain shuts down. We can only make guesses.

This is a little hard to identify from this large view. That's because this screenprint is 70"x54" in dimension and is made up of more than a thousand 1" monkey faces.

These monkeys around the edges of the print are faded and fragmented. they have no defined facial features. They are undefinable.

The monkeys in the center of the print are printed with bold value and contrast. They have varying skin tones and clear features. They are more individualized.

This print is titled "Dunbar's Number" and represents a study that determined the total amount of people we are mentally capable of recognizing as friends or family within our social circle. 

Read more about it here. It's really fascinating stuff, and it explains a lot about human behavior. We are all "programmed" in a sense, to act a certain way. To accept certain people and reject others. It explains profiling and stereotypes. It accounts for horrible crimes committed against racial, religious and gender groups. I only hope someday that we can recognize our predispositions and overcome them in order to create a more unified world.

I had intended this to be a screen print, but I lost too much visual information in the process, so I decided it could be read better as a digital piece. The information in it is important to understanding the message. The title can help too. Una (As One).

This is an older piece, drawn 3 years ago, probably. It illustrates my fascination with being a part of the universe. I am committed to the idea that we were born to know more about this beautiful, crazy, dangerous universe we live in. Carl Sagan once said that "We're made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." That is probably the most beautiful call to action that I've ever heard. Dr. Bernard Anthony Harris, an astronaut, once commented on seeing earth from space: "It makes you color blind. You don’t see race, sex, ethnicities differences from space... It was in that moment I began to call myself an earthling because from up there we are all the same.” If just leaving earth's atmosphere can produce such a positive awareness of humanity's need for unity, I wish we could all take a trip to see it. For those of us without millions around for a pop up to space, I hope we can hear the voices who have, and recognize that in order to survive as humans, we must resolve our differences and learn to trust one another.

And now I step off my celestial soapbox.