I have been spending a lot of time lately looking over past artwork and reconsidering my various creative paths... considering completely reworking and/or adding to old pieces... starting new projects and series, etc.

MonuMental Manhattan is a series I came across that I had begun over 15 years ago while living in NYC working on my MFA at Pratt Institute. I had been struck by a murder of a young child down the street from me and at the time found it so hard to understand why the world around me did not stop, look and/or feel different... it was like everything just went on... business as usual...


MonuMental Manhattan
Graphite drawings on mylar

monument n. (L. monere, rewind)
something set up to keep alive the memory
of a person or event

This collection of scenes of violent crimes comes from television news broadcasts, newspapers, as well as my own experiences. For each drawing there was a victim of violence. Hit and run, rape, mugging, murder, hate crimes, child abuse, suicide, etc.

click here to read and see more about this project

i have a variety of obsessive projects (located in the PRINTS section of this web page)... one was started as a result of my search for my knuckle tattoos. since then i have continued to collect images of new 8 letter word combinations.

i personally enjoy this one because of the conflicting message of "never-out" when it is obviously "out"... i don't know, i think that is pretty ironic and funny.

i currently have a list of over 400 combinations.

when it came to my own tattoos, i ended up with TOMATOES on my upper knuckles. this was a combination of TOMA on my right hand which translates to "take" in spanish and since i have turned out to be right handed i tend to take mostly with my right hand... then there is TOES on my left hand... which i just simply find to be pretty funny... but in all seriousness - it is that i relate to the tomatoes struggle to be validated in its identity as a whole... is it a fruit or a vegetable? am i a boy or a girl? i mean really why can't we be both? everything? what is the big deal? and who cares? i can fully accept the tomato as a fruit and a vegetable... and i hope that someday the world will be able to accept me and the full spectrum of my identity.

love, dylan