DOLLAR BILL

Rules:

1.  Five minutes to draw a dollar with closed eyes.

2.  It has to be accurate to some extent.

3.  What?

EXPLODING FACTORY

An exploding factory doesn’t happen every day. An exploding factory is an awesome, surprising affair. It has to happen fast, a shocking surprise. One second there’s a factory sitting at the corner of 8th and Technopolis Rd.; the next, pieces of shrapnel flying at your face (perhaps you’re standing across the street, sparking up a cigarette). An exploding factory--to be a genuinely exploding factory--has to take the whole block with it. Imagine the disappointment felt by countless millions: they turn on the TV, tempted by disaster, and still see half a factory standing. Large grayish metal beams resting on each other but still standing. It looks like you could still build cars in there, they’ll think. No. A real, genuine, gut-busting exploder has to leave only a crater and nothing else. Fireworks factories are ideal. So are jet-fuel factories. We don’t want a slow-burner. We want disaster.

ORAGAMI

The kids damn near loved it at free arts.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR... AND SARTRE?

PAWS

TERRORIST MESSAGE MISTAKENLY SENT TO ME. NOTIFY THE FEDS. (NSA PROBABLY ALREADY KNOWS)

FILE UNDER>YEMEN.

HOW TO USE ART. THANKS CONOCO GAS STATION.

Proud owner of number 2, by the way.

PIG PAINTING ON MY WALL

The painter is standing a little back from his canvas. He is glancing at his model; perhaps he is considering whether to add some finishing touch, though it is also possible that the first stroke has not yet been made. The arm holding the brush is bent to the left, towards the palette; it is motionless, for an instant, between canvas and paints. The skilled hand is suspended in mid-air, arrested in rapt attention on the painter's gaze; and the gaze, in return, waits upon the arrested gesture. Between the fine point of the brush and the steely gaze, the scene is about to yield up its volume.

The pig, which is food, is also human: it is looking in, waiting for dinner, seeing what's yet to come. We will not personify him, though the picture invites it. He is both outside with the chickens while looking inside towards the house, arrested at a crossroads between animal and human. A precarious balancing act. The pig, knowing that food is served, is not yet food. Likewise, knowing that food is served, he is also peering into the human world of food preparation, just as child or a hungry farm worker might do. One chicken in the background--the front one--also peers at us, directing its gaze from the background of the painting.

Our gaze meets the pig's; or rather, the pig's gaze meets us. He's confronting us, both in terms of looking through the window into the kitchen while also looking through the painting. One can imagine a curiosity on his part. Food sits just behind his reach and perhaps he is hungry. But he isn't looking at the fruit positioned in the bowl: he's looking at us, beyond the painting. His gaze simultaneously meets us from beyond two curtains: that of the window, and that of the painting. The window separates the animal from the human; the painting separates a representation of the animal/human dichotomy from the dichotomy itself. The space opened up by the representation is confrontational. We're implicated by the pig's gaze. Just as the pig is framed by the window so too are we implicated by the framing of the pig itself. Just as the painting disallows (or allows) our seeing the pig as both food and human, we are disallowed (or allowed) from seeing ourselves as mere actors in the drama of farming. We're confronted by something (literally, an unexpected pig glancing through a window)--and the very basis of this confrontation lies in the preservation of the moment of confrontation within the suspension of the painting.

Something piggish reminds me that I'm human. Something piggish reminds me that I'm not always human.  Something piggish reminds me what being human (may) really mean.