Self Portrait of the Artist as a Memory of a Rock Star

This piece is actually a culmination of 20 years of work. I started with a couple a drawings from my high school sketch book. One was a psychedelic portrait of Jimmi Hendrix and the other a study for a self portrait. I scanned these two drawings and overlaid them together in Photoshop. Along with a third image for which some back story is appropriate.

In high school my intrigue and enthusiasm about various rock stars led to me playing music and attempting to be a rock star myself. A couple years or so after high school I joined an indie "conspiracy rock" group called The Penny Regime. My "audition" was an impromptu sitting in with them at a live gig at EJ Bugs in Fells Point. I sat in on drums and having no drum sticks, played with coat hangers and rolled up City Papers. I continued playing in this band for 7 years, switching to bass after the first couple. In 2010 we had a reunion show at The Ottobar and Mike "Cheech" Simmons took some photos of our set. I used one of those photos as an additional overlay to create the final composite image used as the basis for this drawing. The drawing itself is on a piece of paper from the same high school sketch book. The "penny regime" scrawled in the top corner was written there way back in the late 1990s when I first started playing in the group.

When viewed from a close perspective the original two older drawings are more prominent. But when viewed from a greater distance of about 10 feet (or as a thumbnail on screen) the newer reunion show photo image comes more into focus as the older fade into memory.

This piece was inspired by and created for the exhibition Self Portrait as a Rock Star at the Current Gallery on Jan 28, 2011.
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Current Gallery Website

Mike's original photo is here: www.flickr.com/photos/haileysimmons/4656294495/in/faves-8...

Below are the three separate source images side by side.

paperwork

I had a meeting with a client this week at one of the cafe's downtown. He was running a bit late so I sketched the man sitting at the table across from me. The man was working away on a bunch of paperwork. Despite my trying not to be obviously staring at him I think he picked up on me looking over at him periodically and eventually he got up and left. I can't help but wonder what he was working on so intently.

Joey Cape

Joey Cape, originally uploaded by Mr & Mrs Speeed.

My friend Mel Fratta-Yukna commissioned me to make a drawing of musician Joey Cape to use for T-shirts and promo. I had to whip it out over night to get it to them in time. The label ended up up voting it down, so it wasn't used for the promo materials. But I'm still pretty proud of this one and I really enjoyed making it. I was working from a photo he provided that captured this great perspective of the guitar coming right atcha. If you haven't heard of Joey Cape, he's a great songwriter so go check him out.