for dom's amusement

miguel and jose were inspired by a chunk of desk they found while cleaning out my garage-yard that dom had drawn all over, so when they were done with cleaning for the day, they tagged up some desk pieces.
and i am, thank you. (that's to the second pic)

also, this is the new room!!


dude. dom.



dude.


and like it's crazy cause the color totally changes throughout the day and at night when the lights are on only in that room, it looks like a space ship is landing in our dining room from the parking lot.


it actually looks a LOT brighter and a LOT cooler in person

(well, that is if you think it's cool. you either love it or you hate it so i guess if you don't like it then it's a LOT uglier in person...lol)

i can't even describe the color in any other way but neon. when you see it up close you'd swear it's glow in the dark. i just fucking cannot get enough of it!!!!! everytime i walk in i'm like, "ahhhhhhhhhh" (in a good way, not "ah" as in "AH! real monsters!" or whatever that show was)

but unfortunately the eye is temporarily in storage because I LOOOOOOOOOVE the full wall of neon right behind the table but believe you me, it shall find a new home soon.


hope you enjoyed. i'm probably going to delete this later so that this stays just an art blog thingy or whatever.

oh yeah and TEXT ME VASIL'S EMAIL please!!!!!! thanks!!


i miss hanging out dom!!!!!!!!!

black hoodies

heh heh funny story.

so after the eighth grade graduation ceremony, i was running around taking pictures of kids and their families and all of that and i look over to the side of the school (everyone was hustled out to the front lawn for pics after the ceremony) and in the middle of a deserted patch of lawn there was a group of dudes in black hoodies, jeans, black hats, etc.

...not going to go into anymore but you get the idea.

so of course i look more closely and see the first two students who ever spoke to me at ECP hanging out in the group. So me being me, I was straight up to their little huddle and yell out to carlos that i had to apologize for embarassing him in front of his friends but that he was needed for pictures. After which I proceeded to grab him and playfully pull him away from his friends while he only lightly protested. heh heh heh. When alejandro and fat boi (two students i also know and who were also there) started to laugh i was like, "nope, don't think you guys are getting out of it" and i let go of carlos, grabbed alejandro's arm and dragged him over to a nearby tree (saving them the real embarassment of their patnas seeing them actually taking the pics) while carlos and fat boi (riding his bike) followed.

yeah. hella funny.

one of the seventh grade students who i talk to a lot was awed just to find out that i had made carlos the previous stencil and that i had given him my number (which that student has also) in case he needed to talk to a trusting adult or get help with whatever. carlos rocks but apparently he's like notoriously cool.... yeah


anyway i am totally just having a ramble-hands moment but whatever. you know you love it.


so yeah back to the stencil... : )

SO we took a bunch of pics under the tree and after we took this one, carlos was like, "awww can you PLEASE make a stencil of that one. that's be CLEAN."

LOL.


I agree, it is.


notice the detail i added on the bike. I think the next time i print it i'll do the detail in a brighter color so that it will show up more.

hope you like it

As game

brayan saw the "end of year" print when i was giving it to carlos and asked me to make a print of him and his girlfriend. The only pic I have of them is from the As game we went to and they weren't really doing anything special so I made her look super dramatic and shit.

I like the results and so did they.

end of year 2008

so it's a year delayed...so what.

this is of Elizama, Carlos Mendez, Brianda, Alejandro Diaz, Fat Boi (Jose Ventura) and Jorge Zapata.


Try and guess who's from which street block by their hand signs.







Sorry about the shit quality of the pics but I took them on the last length of my mom's borrowed camera's battery right before I gave the print to some of the students in it, AND the camera is also a fucking piece, so there was no way the pic was going to turn out clear, but whatever. Good thing for you I just got a new camera so I'll be able to take pictures that aren't half blurry. Sweet what a luxury!

also, check out my new blog for my students at ECProcks.blogspot.com
i'm using it to post the pics of my students that i've taken over the years, it's mostly for my eighth graders who are graduating but i'm also going to put pics of my other students as well.
fucking love those kids man.

RIP Daniel

Firstly, notice the hair? He was known for always having his hair totally slicked back in a Fonzie-esque way. He actually behaved a lot like a chicano, ghetto fonzie. very slick, funny, charming and nice but apparently also used to get into a lot of fights with his clique.

that being said... this is

Not technically a stencil (actually a kind of tracing was involved so it still feels like semi-art to me...) but I felt like I needed to put it up for people to see.
I got the idea for this painting back in oct. when I heard about his death (he drowned in Tracy saving his little brother's life....and apparently his body wasn't found for a few days....horrific and terribly sad) but I didn't get around to actually painting it until the end of april when I realized that what would have been his birthday was fast approaching, and that it would be the day after mother's day. I felt like I needed to give something to his parents to show just how awesome and special a kid he was. He was really, truely one of the nicest people I've ever met (he ironically said to me that life was too short to have beef with people- essentially, it's pointless to be mad or upset with people because life's too short- which is an extremely insightful outlook for such a young kid surrounded by so much violence and entrenched in the gang culture of the area to have. even though he wasinvolved in that lifestyle, he never let it sway his kindness and humor towards other people- though i don't really know how those two things could co-exist, but apparently they did)
anyway, ramble-hands. I finished this actually this morning, then met with Carlos Mendez (one of daniel's friends, and actually the first student to speak with me at ECP) after school to give him the painting so that he could deliver it to Daniel's parents, as I have never met them.

Even though it looks really simple, it actually took a long time to complete since I'm such a fucking perfectionist.


Hopefully his family will appreciate it.

They're having a memorial for his birthday on saturday but that's matt and my 8 year anniversary. (i know. dude.)

I'll post the one I did of dom a few years ago as well so that you can see the original inspiration, but I wanna leave this one up of him just for a little bit.

knowledge is power

ain't it the truth.

The original image was taken over the summer when I visited Mr. Reese (my former Master teacher) and some of my students who were doing time in summer school.

Miguel (pictured) and Cesar were playing around with Mr. Reese's old He-Man sword (clearly this was after classes were over...well, I shouldn't say "clearly" because I wouldn't put it past either of them to bust out a plastic sword and begin dueling in the middle of class) and we got some fun shots of them pretending to kill me (which they enjoyed immensely).

I ought to do a stencil of one of those pictures, though I don't know if the message it would be sending would be quite as positive as this one.

runnin' the beach

This stencil shows the reverse image of a photo taken of Miguel (the student from deep East Oakland I mentor damn near everyday) at Ocean Beach in San Francisco (that's the Cliffhouse buildingin dark purple).
We ended up climbing up those cliffs in the background (all the way up to the Cliffhouse!!) and then down to the ruins of Sutro's Baths on the other side.
Goodtimes.
Then it started pouring rain.
POURING.
And we still had to climb back up the cliffs and walk all the way back to the car (which was parked in front of the Beach Chalet!).
Fucking soaked.
Badtimes.

budapest matt and karina reflection (work in progress)

I actually made the last stencil for this but lost it in my house somewhere. Either I need to clean out our closet (HA!) or just cut another one. I'm leaning towards just cutting another.
Just need to get money to buy printer ink (Kinkos can suck it) so if someone wants to go demand some from the oakland school district office for all the unpaid work I've been doing then be my guest (to quote Efren, "Ms. K just say the word and me and my cousins will go down to the district and get you your money." Lol. that's all I need is a gang war against OUSD started on my behalf. nice.)

The last stencil is of Matt's shirt, the trees on the other side of the river, the rims of his glasses, my sunglasses in the reflection, a tree in the reflection, a part of the church in the reflection and my camera in the reflection.

"He puts his full attention on this monument" (matt on bus tour in prague)

This is a rare, one-piece, non shadow stencil. I was kinda experimenting with different forms. I guess this one is more graffiti stencil inspired except it would just fall to shreds if you tagged it up somewhere.

This is actually the reverse of the image as well as I am still tweaking it. The quote that it is named after is what Opa said when he was going through the pictures that I took on our Europe trip.

steve and meghan as popeye and olive oil

Cut this stencil of Steve and Meghan on Halloween to print for their Christmas presents (very crafty christmas this year). I reprinted it for part of my purple series in my dining room.
Love the matching nose rings!

michelle obama

Part of a series of Obama stencils I did on election day.
She is my new roll model.
Way to bring yourself from the hood to the best universities in the country and then on to the White House Michelle.

the obamas

Also part of the series of Obama stencils cut on election day (I was a very prolific stencil cutter that day!)
I love the tenderness of their closeness. It's refreshing to see.

Running for Office (Hairless barack and michelle obama)

Woops.
Forgot to cut Barack's hair!
Yet another Obama stencil cut on election day (can you tell I was fucking stoked?).
Michelle's pearls in this one inspired my gigantic pearls that I've been sporting recently (Not Wilma Flintstone, as many have assumed)

richard alvia camel ridin' in Egypt (blurry photo of image)

The camel in the original photo is making the scariest face ever.
This shot was taken at the base of Khafre's pyramid on the Giza Plateau in the spring of 2004.
My camel driver was very inappropriate.
'Chard's was cool though.

Jimmy Ward, Milton Montes and D'Juan Foreman

This is from the last day of school last year (their 6th grade year).
Some of my favorite kids of all time (cept Miguel of course)
Love how Jimmy busted out a lemon yellow suit for the occasion.
Milton (with the stunna shades on) used to kick my ass on Super Smash Bros. Brawl online

pirate matt

Matt's 6 dollar halloween costume.
Aaaaarrrrrrr.

miguel castillo (reppin 100s) and daniel avalos

Notice the school shirts the kids are wearing. Love the ECP logo and Miguel's sunglasses-actually I think they were stolen from Karen...(they're those crazy 80s ones that are solid plastic with just slits cut out of the front. AND they're bright yellow. i fucking love the kids' styles in East Oakland. so fucking slick.)

The funniest/saddest thing about this is the FIRST thing Miguel said when he saw this wasn't "oh that's cool" or something like that. It was literally "Why is my shirt blue?"

ismini and gareth in budapest

This one was also cut for gareth and ismini's christmas presents and then printed again for my purple series.

I find that when I cut stencils I often either don't get around to printing them for a couple of months (if at all!) and when I do, I rarely print a copy for myself. This is partially due to the durability of the medium, as photocopy paper can only hold about two prints with acrylic paint per stencil until it begins to get soggy and fall apart. And then I hardly ever want to sit around for the stencil to dry completely before printing again so I usually just do a run of two and then file the thing away.

The whole purple series thing is kind of my reaction to that. I say kind of because it is partially a reaction to dom requesting prints of my shit, so the series, I suppose was really a reaction to dom and i's mutual request for prints of my work. All of them are hanging in the dining room now and we're about to paint the walls this bright, acidy lime green, so they will either pop and look rad as hell or need to be moved to another location. Only time will tell...

fountain in Erzsebet ter. Budapest (shadow stencil)

This is still one of the stencil's that I am most proud of. This print was done at the end of 2004 (I don't recall the specific month, but i believe i wrote it on the back of one of the pieces of this print, but they're attached to the bedroom wall at the moment-notice my trademark room collage bleeding onto it on the top)

This fountain was right off of Deak Ference ter. Metro stop, along the path I took to my favorite cafe next to the church that my grandmother used to go to in Budapest, Hungary. I used to go hang around that neighborhood nearly every day, either to visit the church, the cafe, my super cheap and awesome restaraunt or the international school's library (to research for my independent study paper on the effect of the Hunyadi kings in keeping the Ottoman Empire out of Europe-for which I was mentored by my fav professor of all time Marty Claussen, via internet)...mmm or the ice cream and dessert shop...mmmmm...

wait what? oh yeah the fountain. So I would always pass it en route to my old haunts and one day in May the light was just so amazing; casting the most triumphant looking shadows across the figures.

Early May seems to have the best light for shadow stencils.

oma preggers with minda

I love the original photo. My grandma looks huge! She always wore black and white, hence the colors I chose for this one. The pomeranian she's holding was some friend of her's dog.

Oma always wore her hair like that.

my plural cuz (ross and ryan)

This looks exactly like them.
Our friend Jason says it looks exactly like him and his cousin.
Weird.

(actually i've just been told that it looks like him and his childhood best friend.
whatever. it's still weird.)

my bro in vienna (kyle shadow stencil)

First of all, notice what it's printed on.

Hell yeah.

Other than that, i'm really stoked off this. This photo was taken in the spring of 2004 when I was studying in Budapest and kyle and my mom came out to visit me. The day they arrived I was like, go to bed early cause tomorrow we're catching a train to Vienna at 7:30am. Then I took them around the city for two days before going back to Budapest. In the original pic I'm standing next to him checking a map trying to find out how to get to Grinzing (which is where my grandma lived during the war when she met my grandpa).

I also printed this over a street map of Vienna for a Christmas present for my dad and Nieta.

vienna bumper cars (chel and steve)

Daniel Avalos

RIP Tonks

matt chel me in prague

Cisco

Matt riding gareth in Budapest (millenium monument)

dom nick chel rina (shadow stencil)