The Beginning of Hermes Elephant Pattern(s) Studies in Painting and Drawing Materials

Studies

The Apprenticeship's Path

Religious iconicity has always been an influence, the forms found within the works but also the context it holds.  Over the last several years Bellini’s Madonna and Child paintings, though I am not Catholic, has been the latest catalyst for the desire to emulate the religious influence. The ETRO Agenda on How to Study in the ZSB 6 series contained this first sign of this religious devotion within my body of work. Traveling around to churches and museums in Europe the ETRO Agenda is full of drawings studies; Mantegna’s Lamination of Dead Christ, Bellini’s Madonna and Child, Bronzino’s The Panciatichi Holy Family, multiple El Greco paintings as well as many others, and it is in these studies that the current series of Madonna and Child Studies is originated from. Keeping the series as studies of the source provides the image with the search in both the formal and conceptual elements, something that  has been a struggle in previous works.

First Batch of Fottage (Rubbed) Images

Investigating the Source of Form

The source of work will always be present within its self, and when the source is used not as style choice but as an investigation will an mêlée for form unfold? The current struggle is; does one need to acknowledge within the work that an investigation into it’s own sources is taking place? Does it take place after the work is completed by a self-reflected title? Is this approach of titling a work in this matter removed from the physicality of making, further rendering the acknowledgement of the source as mere concept never merging with the form within the work?  Must determining the formal presentation of a body of work come from the investigation of the source resulting in and subsequently creating reasons for the supplementary exploration into the source? Does the then determine form used to talk about the reasoning for the source creates the footholds for how the rest of the elements are utilized into a Concept? Yes!

The form of rubbing became an investigation of source.

Some drawing studies of the 1934 Chrysler Airflow

The Start after the Beginning.

The ZSB Apprenticeship is named after Chryslers’  “Three Musketeers” engineering team and focuses on the path, desires and expertise in hopes of reaching the teams level of innovation. The “Three Musketeers’” drive for ambitious achievements in the automotive industry and my personal connection to Fred M. Zeder’s own drive and devolution through his daughter, my Grandmother and the spirit to understand, design and create has emerged in my own work in a way that is best described as an apprenticeship.

 ZSB 6 set the stage for how I as the Quixote attempted to reconcile the inabilities I have in explaining what I learned from my family’s prestigious history. Uniquely designed furniture pieces, sculptures, paintings, drawings, prints and hand crafted wallpaper serves as a legend to understand the rest of the Apprenticeship series. The second part of the Apprenticeship series ZSB 3 is the process an apprentice takes in learning and developing a skill.  This set represents the Quixote’s advancement, it contains still life drawings with the process still apart of the image, rubbings of printing blocks discovering a form of image making, and woodblock prints emulating strategic plans.

The ZSB Apprenticeship intertwines esoteric symbols, hierarchies, patterns, historical and pop culture references, not in the vein of an illogical fool, but one who creates a new logic from what is inside him. “A Quixote’s Apprenticeship towards ZSB” continues for why and how the world needs to be constructed so that he may understand and so he will be understood.