Author: cruelanimal

After all, every picture is a history of love and hatewhen read from the appropriate angle.–Leopoldo Salas-Nicanor, Espejo de las artes, 1731 I’ve been spending time lately with an interesting book — drinking in one…

Vader on Vacation (2007) This year Tonya will party downat Helm’s Deep. After car rentals, tummytucks at the Salem Witch Museum,she plans for a better security video. Carrying all that bionic gear makes the whole…

What’s in a name? that which we call a roseBy any other name would smell as sweet;–William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet I do like naming images. While it’s true that viewers will stubbornly resist an…

Enemy Combatant 1 (2007) “Put it all together, and last week’s passage of the Military Commissions Act is ominous for those in the US. As Bruce Ackerman noted recently in The Los Angeles Times, the…

Dragonfly Saloon Girls (2001) We had gunslingers in deluxe tuxes and knit jackets with shoulder straps. We had military girls and sailor girls but sexy Red Riding Hood was a no show. Smothered in daisies…

Alien Supplicant (2007) I go on a quaternion fractal kick for a few weeks almost every year. There’s something very special about these sculpted, rolled in Play-Doh, Tootsie Roll forms. I find them fascinating because…

Hordes of Photoshop Jockeys (2000) This one is kind of an in-joke. Back when I used to post my images on Usenet on alt.binaries.pictures.fractals (which were either — pick one — the good old days…

Deep in the Mines 1 (2000) Fractals sometimes transcend their parameters. If they are art — and I’m guessing that most of us think they are — then our images reflect some deeper part of…

Chump Change (2006) The way I saw my art changed when I started working with a master printer to make poster-sized Giclees of my own work. I began to see my images on the wall…

Homage to Andy Warhol (2000) From artrepublic: In 1960 Warhol began to replicate a range of mass-produced images, beginning with newspaper advertisements and comic strips before turning to packaging, dollar bills and more. He is…

Homage to Alexander Calder (1999) To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there’s no such thing as perfect.—Alexander Calder From the National Gallery of Art: Alexander Calder revolutionized the art of sculpture…

Homage to Niels Bohr (2004) From Nobelprize.org: In the autumn of 1911 [Bohr] made a stay at Cambridge, where he profited by following the experimental work going on in the Cavendish Laboratory under Sir J.J.…

The Familiar (1999) I’ve always been more interested in using fractals to push ideas rather than to serve as decorations Still Life with Dracula (2002) and this approach has sometimes proven very handy at Halloween…

Jar Jar Agonistes (2006) Gollum is way better.I evoke birthday blight and snakesto haul home. I stoke vitrioland hollow men to guess the price of my money pit. Sad to bepitied more than Lieberman orother…

Tiffany Lamp Gone Bad (2001) May West liked good salmon.Her bedroom had dark panelling and lava lamps. Over her tables hungracks of critics behind the bar where bad service is largely blamedon Texas. Her rental…

Unattainable (1999) An impossible self help questionwill waitcheck outbe homeunless you are a fan of stupid networks. One of the tightestgoing nuclear photographs cuts waste and overlooks ad agencyethics. To understand more toast the Broadway…

Mandelbrot Among the Gypsies (2001) Gaston Julia, recovering from injuries caused by a hospital, was named king of the gypsies in 1917. He had darned some socks for corpses and driven a hawthorn stake through…

Neptune Probe (1998) Ganymede Probe (1998) These heavenly bodies are still in good standing after astronomers recently convened to decide who would be voted off the cosmic island. Everyone held its slot in space, and…

Portrait of George W. Bush (2004) Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.—Theodor Adorno A poem that calls us from the other side of a situation of extremity cannot be judged by simplistic notions of “accuracy”…

It may now be said that an object becomes, or fails to become, a work of art in direct response to the inclination of the perceiver to assume an appreciative role.—Victor Burgin, “Situational Aesthetics” Who…

Writing a blog post is not unlike beginning work on a new image. How does one even start to fill a blank screen? When I first started blogging, I thought I had to write a…

The Passion of R2D2 (2006) I know what you’re thinking. Why does the Stars Wars droid who burps in squelches deserve a passion? Passions are reserved for gods and geniuses. Christ. Van Gogh — or,…