I moved northward a ways, and am balls to the wall finishing the book.
Here's the newest time lapse, featuring the Coin Return illustration.
Read Coin Return Here
Coin Return
Due to time constraints, there will be no time lapse this week. I am in the process of moving. Here's a blog as a consolation prize! Thanks - Jon
Every armchair San Francisco anti-tech tankstopper has probably read all about the horrific nightmare that is currently happening in City limits: eviction rates are at an alltime high in every neighborhood, shady as fuck landlords "mysteriously" torching Old Mission ablaze and replacing the rich vibrant culture with filing cabinets full of cumfart Tinder tit fuckers who drive automated vehicles powered by poor people blood.
To downshift the hyperbole by a league, the saddest eviction stories happening in realtime here in Zombie San Francisco are the ones of the elderly and the disabled. We're talking about the original contingent, people who've lived in buildings and flats their whole lives for 20-50 years. Suddenly a 10,000% rent hike here and an illegal eviction slip there, and *poof*, HOMELESS ELDERS. Shitty to hear about, shitty to read about.
And certainly a shitty reality check when you come home one day to find two of them suddenly on a couch in your house. Art had mysteriously forgotten to tell anybody that we had company, so it rubbed everyone in the house the wrong way initially. But from the sound of the situation it didn't appear that he had time to create a 7 day pre-emptive memo on custom headers.
Joe and Jane OldFolksmith were nice enough. They were gallery owners downtown around the Union Square area, had moved to San Francisco in the 60's and caught the hippie wave right at the crown of the crest. Art explained to me that he was letting them stay on the couch, because in the span of a week, they had been evicted from the apartment they had called home since 1970something, and then their gallery landlord expired their lease and "renegotiated" at a 1000% hike.
Joe and Jane were easily pushing their early 80s (probably, I forgot to ask). And to see them without a home, without jobs and without any sort of retirement package certainly broke my heart. To see an elderly couple sleeping side by side in a transient state, with two suitcases full of all that they had left in the world, well that was just a fucking shitty thing to happen to them.
So Art kind of assured me and the rest of the house that he would assume responsibility for them, and clean up after them should the occasion arise. He thanked me for being understanding and apologized for the lack of notice.
Well that's just fucking terrible, I replied solemnly, and let the unannounced vacancy slide. For all of two days.
Let's talk about me for a quick second. I am a relatively reasonable person to live with. I keep clean, I do my chores at a C+ to A- performance clip, and I go out of my way to step on a grand total of zero toes, though it doesn't always end up that way. But when my shit gets fucked with, I turn into a short-tempered, impatient and particular creature. One could argue that most people act this way, on a median basis of polite discontent.
I woke up that first morning to the main floor reeking of piss. When I ventured into the bathroom, the trashbin was full of old adult diapers, and the toilet seat was covered in a shit stain pattern that I had never EVER seen before. I wasn't even really mad the first time, I was actually kind of impressed. It just looked like there was some poop hunter who was hunting poop, and this poop had done some weird backwards and sideways prancing to cover his true tracks.
"Oh man, I'm sorry," Art sheepishly recalled, "They're both incontinent."
This went on for about a week and a half. I could lie to you and say that I took it merrily on the chin and whistled while i worked. But the truth is I felt like such a douchebag for running out of patience. Here I am trying to donate to homeless organizations, and unable to fully practice what I preached because I couldn't handle the smell of old urine. It was a humbling reality check.
Thanks in large part to this experience, there are now two fringes of the modern living spectrum that I will do everything in my power to avoid, and fervently strive for a creamy middle that hopefully exists somewhere for me.
THE ASSEMBLY LINE JACKOFF
Even to this day I still have this odd pang in for "normalcy". Yes, I am aware that this idea of normal was handed to me. I'm supposed to reach these weird milestones like buy a house, maybe a car, marry and have kids and perpetuate the American dream. But at some point you look underneath all the car endorsements and the detergent intermissions and the 200 foot billboards and the pudding jingles, and you see that this is all rooted in fear of dying dickless, alone and broke.
My dad was forced onto a path not unlike this one by my grandma a long while ago. He was always a gestural, emotionally sensitive creative type. The first cartoon he ever drew me was of a Volkswagen Beetle driving to a McDonald's on a hill. Over the years he drew that Volkswagen Bug piddlepaddling to McD's, until one day he stopped drawing and just started yelling at me for getting B-'s in Algebra II.
His sisters all got to go to art school in Tokyo, but his mother, my grandmother, insisted on shoving him in the Assembly Line Jackoff Factory. You MUST get an office job. Computers are the wave of the future. Earn that responsible paycheck, buy that corner house in the suburbs, have children with your wife you met in college. It's predictable, it's boring and you'll want to gouge your eyes out staring at the Zenith TV every single night you bought with your hard-earned taxable income that is also going towards the mortgage and the kids' college tuition.... but BUCK UP!!!! It's a guarantee that humanity's gears are well oiled and built on the backs of hardworking, taxpaying citizens such as yourself.
My dad sat me down senior year of high school as I was looking at colleges and implored me to run with my artistic abilities and try and cut it there. He wanted me to live out my true potential, instead of getting shoehorned into another Assembly Line Jackoff existence like he was. I will never forget that moment in my life, because in particularly hard moments of Kale + Toast + Delinquent Bils, I think about that speech he gave me. At my weakest, I want that manufactured normalcy. I want to buy in. I want to fit like a square round hole for once. I want to wear a suit and drive a shiny car. I want bosses and corporate ladders, and office halls full of deceitful backstabbing co-workers who all want that meaningless trophy for biggest overcompensating yacht or house or breast implants on the wife.
I let these feelings flood my brain like a torrent of mindless pornography, and I expel it from my consciousness nowadays like ejaculate caught in a milk truck hurricane.
THE CARD-CARRYING KEROUAC STRAY CAT
I imagine a lot of Assembly Line Jackoffs often dream about being the Bohemian escapee. Light that silk full Windsor noose on fire, open a boutique selling hand made wares on Urbana Hip Cabana USA! Travel far and away, collect coasters with obnoxious ümlauts on the letters! Shoot pistols naked in the rainforest and do exotic designer drugs with circus freaks and moped mobsters!!! Sleep on bare floors until you're 95, then jump into a volcano and let the cosmos bend your delayed ray of light, like ACROSS THE GALAXY MAN.
Many will look at my life decisions and lifestyle aesthetic overall and declare me to be cut of this cloth. I guess I fit the bill on some level. I'm usually the outsider, even amongst outsiders, even though I am the topic of whispers down the hall and around the corner out of earshot. Is that guy serious? Did he get lost on the way to a Hunter S Thompson reject pile? Who let the pariah into the picnic with ripped Dickies and a Suicidal Tendencies baseball shirt?
On some level I take all that heresay and half smile patronage and it gives me a source of fuel. I look at Timmy Tesla and Gary Google and go "yeah, fuck you phoney-ass piece of shit. Good luck falling in slo mo into your billion dollar vanilla wafer coffin." Sure, they will probably live longer than me because they can afford to eat, sleep and fuck healthier. But fuck them, I'm a nonconFORMIST. YEAH! It fucking RULES being a working class creative with nothing to lose! I will NEVER buy into The MAN®!!!!! I don't need to SAVE any MONEY, when I have a whole community of FRIENDS I can rely that will live forever!!! I don't need to get paid, because Mo Money Mo Problems!!!
And then, for about a week and a half, I saw the end of the line of that train of thought. I saw Joe and Jane OldFolksmith, alone and huddled together in a borrowed den. Their eyes glimmered with faded hope, milky and glossed from cataracts and trifocals. They sing tonedeaf songs of yesterday, mixed with their current chalky existences, maybe some burnt shadows of memories fading slowly away in their crumbling cerebral facades. The kindness of the last nice man in all of San Francisco had kept them off the street. But almost everything they had built was washed away, grains of proverbial sand in a broken hourglass.
I suppose it's all fun and games until you wake up one day with nowhere to go but irregularly into your adult diapers.
I will never be Joe. I will never be a Kerouac Stray Cat.
Time Lapse V: Mausoleum
Time Lapse V.
Pen + Ink + Coffee
Various stages of this were drawn @ Henry's House of Coffee, San Francisco CA.
MUSIC: London Elektricity - Just One Second (Apex Remix)
Life Lessons From Sex Workers, Part I
According to her reply sheet, she was 34. Back in the Bay after 5 years in China studying martial arts, Isabel had a brand-new gray area medical marijuana license, "worked in the adult entertainment industry" and could pay first and last in cash. Quite honestly, she sounded like a walking party.
Read MoreTime Lapse IV: Ideals
Tried something a little different and recorded a 25 minute monologue and the SFO BART train.
MUSIC BY LOCAL BADASS SANTA CRUZ STONER METAL BAND THE BADLIGHT. track title "Mercury Ocean"
Masturbating Into A Black Hole
And expecting a newborn child to come back out the other side.
I was watching a car commercial that kept playing all weekend. It featured a woman sitting shotgun in a brand new outdoor-lifestyle utility vehicle, longingly caught in a fever dream of escaping in an adjacent boxcar on a slowly moving train parallel to their commute.
The commercial ends with Joe and Jane Mc-Lennial rifling back to reality, content with the vehicle they have purchased because this vehicle they have purchased is THE equivalent of escaping all of their $6 bridge commutes, their latté thunderstorms, their Matrix skull fucks, their digital umbilical exchange programs. Off into the wild blue yonder they go, off to their next adventure!
It dawned on me that these commercials, for better or for worse, actually work on some people. I bet there is some miserable asshole out there who thought "Well, I can't ACTUALLY escape this nightmare of my mouse wheel, but if I can get a car that invokes the SPIRIT of a great wild escape with no consequences or thought into the future, that's GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME."
I fucking hate being lumped in with Millenials. I was born in 1983, which unfortunately puts me right smack dab in the middle of generational purgatory. I wasn't old enough to enjoy the grungy, subterranean, first-wave rebels who put on long johns and Mudhoney albums. But I'm also way too fucking old to get any source of entertainment out of constantly swapping faces on an app built by frat boys. I am the angry middle child.
The advantage of being caught in between cultural vestibules of intellectual jizz is that I get a front row seat to two different age groups in vastly different stages of rot and decay. I look around and see nothing but greed, borne of insecurity, borne of desperation. Everyone aged 22-55 wants the serenity of an unshackled life, yet they all buy products and lifestyles and livelihoods that make them prisoners of society. The spirit of rebellion is sold to us, cheaply and blatantly, as material possessions. We are supposed to believe that the best way to carve a path of independence is to all listen to the same music, download the same apps, read the same blogs, buy the same cars, and wear the same clothes.
BUY A HOUSE IN A TRENDY, UPCOMING URBAN CITY. EMBALM ALL YOUR IDEALS, SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS AND IDEOLOGIES IN FURNITURE, DECOR AND FRIENDS THAT MATCH YOUR PERSONALITY.
In 2015, I desperately wanted to be a "normal" guy. I wanted to be like those idiot jackoffs in the car commercial, longing for an escape in an expensive Lumberjack Porsche. I wanted a nice paying design job, a desk with two monitors and three bosses. I wanted a nice paycheck for once and just coast for a while. I started the GoFundMe in January 2016, but indulged in this urge for "normalcy". The way I saw it, I could funnel any money earned into my charity project, which I wanted to do but figured "okay, let me get this quote-unquote CAREER thing started, because American Dream and white picket fences and $55 steak dinners amirite?!?"
So, after almost 18 months of several thousand amateur YouTube tutorials, I found myself with a digital portfolio that actually looked pretty damn good.
In 2016, I got as far as anybody could get using a work ethic and determination I didn't really even know I had. I picked up my first (and so far only) invitation to do a Video Game Company Art Test, which I didn't pass but acquired about 10 billion pages worth of amazing feedback.
And THEN, it happened! I got a career path job! A graphic design internment---er...internship.... that I earned all by my god damn self! I was in heaven. I loved every second of that horrible commute across the Golden Gate Bridge to Petaluma. I loved every boring meeting, I loved my desk that was too high and my monitors that weren't calibrated correctly.
I loved getting coffee 45 minutes before opening the door to my office, at the diner down the street full of truckers and single mom waitresses.
And then, 2016 decided I was off course.
In May, I got laid off, not even a week after getting hired. They were "very, very sorry" but they just couldn't keep me on given the amateur status of my digital skill set... even though, you know, it was an INTERNSHIP.
In June, I got in a car accident. I was T-Boned by Flywheel Cab Driver #8107. Some Russian guy living in the Tenderloin who probably drives for Uber now. It took their insurance company almost 30 days to cut me a god damn check.
And then, in the larva stage of July, my house got broken into. It's a really long story, but my Landlord/Friend (rare combo) basically lost his damn mind. I felt bad for the guy. Nobody should have their sense of safety taken away from them. Shit is more precious than any amount of money can offer, really.
But after a series of unfortunate events, I could no longer just dismiss this sequence of events.
In a semi-figurative/literal sense: I lost my job, my car, and my home, in a consecutive and arresting fashion.
It suddenly dawned on me that this was life's way of compelling me to really, REALLY look at my priorities. Everything that I ever wanted in my adult life, I got a very small taste of for a very brief moment in time. And when it was all taken away from me in a heroin minute, I realized that everything had changed.
Friends and well-wishers implored me to keep looking for another design desk job. And when they saw the look on my face, they paused and asked if I even wanted to. The instant answer was a resounding "No. I am meant for bigger things."
So here I am now. I gave my 30 days notice to my Landlord/Friend, because the idea of living in San Francisco is no longer a necessity in order to accomplish what I want to do with Lost Colony. Beginning in September, I am no longer a resident of San Francisco. I am now a resident of the West Coast. Hopefully someday, I will become a resident of the world. But whatever.
I have given about 60% of everything I own to Goodwill, because I came to the conclusion that almost nothing I owned meant all that much to me in any sort of sentimental way, except for my art supplies and my love letters from Bri.
The first thing I gave away was my mattress, which I folded in half, stuffed in the trunk of my totaled car (which I'm selling soon), and drove to 3rd & Hudson where I personally delivered the bed to a homeless tent resident by the name of Tyrone.
All I care about now is my art, the charities I want to give to wherever I go, and I care about loving and cherishing the people in my life who matter the most.
Everything else is just a fake car commercial telling me what to care about, ABANDON what i care about, be miserable and buy things that will substitute all that I USED to care about.
And honestly I feel at peace for once.
Time Lapse III: c/o Seattle
Time Lapse III of the Seattle Commission.
set to Daughter.
enjoy!
Time Lapse 2
7-20-16
Lost Colony's 2nd time lapse. the final segment of the Seattle commission, shot in San Francisco.
I PROMISE the next time lapse will feature coffee in it.
Primordial Birthdays:
Happy Birthday, Patrick Bisconti!
From time to time, Bri and I will stay with Grampa Pat down in Aptos. Bri was very eager to introduce me to him when we first started dating, probably because she saw a very large parallel in personal and vocational trajectories between the two of us.
She's correct, for the most part, except maybe for the giant clan of children he pro-created. He "was there" when art, culture and rebellion were at a crucial nexus point in Bay Area history. Kind of kooky and definitely a Santa Cruz surfer at heart, Pat loves a good alien conspiracy as much as he loves carving exotic sculptures out of driftwood or wrought iron.
He'll chat the earwax right out of you if you let him.
One terrible Santa Cruz weekend afternoon, I was feeling rather awash in a sea of my own emotional filth. Bri was off taking a nap and I had walked downstairs to try and clear my mind. Pat greeted me with the usual half-cheery mutter, and could see right away that something was bugging me. So rather than just pry away, which actually would have been just as acceptable, he took me upstairs. He began to show me books that he had drawn, essays that his friends had written in collections self-published volumes, wrought with grammar errors and sexually explicit acid trips (before self publishing was even a thing). He took me on a grand tour of his younger years, when he would play his custom-made octopus "DINGULATOR" guitars with his band Charlie Nothing®.
I began to open up to Pat about how frustrating it was to be an artist currently, now not only in the ashed over wasteland of Silicon Valley, but San Fran Fucking Cisco nonetheless, where creativity has been put in a chokehold by both greedy politicians and the arcade button penis billionaires who love them so. I often squint my eyes and indulge in visions of cartoonishly evil startup CEOs dressed in flannel and boating shoes, kicking dirt in the faces of minorities, handing them eviction notices and then burning them alive in houses they've lived in their entire lives when they refuse to leave.
I lamented to him that I was tired of grinding out shit job after shit job. I was tired of being a slave to the rich, seeing douchebags shop for Nest Cams in corporate t shirts and $500 haircuts. (yo Nest cam, hook me up with free SHIIIIIIIT)
I was tired of being marginalized like the rest of my creative class, and I confessed to him how badly I just wanted to sell out and feel "secure" and be "one of them"..... But that every waking free moment I still asked myself if I wanted to keep making art even though I will probably never truly feel like I'd "made it". The answer is rhetorical, because the answer was, and still always is, FUCK yeah.
Pat took this all in, chuckled, and looked me square in the eye, with a twinkle and a lifetime of paid dues, and warmly assured me.....
"I tell you what, Jon. You're basically screwed. Whether you've chosen the life of artist, or the art came and chose you, NOTHING in this life will EVER feel satisfying to you except for your art.
Time Lapse 1
Lost Colony's first featured time lapse. pen + ink only this time. shot at the Ortega Street Library in San Francisco, CA.
7.13.16
it's july. can you believe that?
we are alive.
Hey there!
I'm Jon.
I am an artist living my 12th year in San Francisco. Honestly I can't really believe it either. Darwin was right.
I infuse all of my Pen & Ink illustrations with coffee. Funny story, it happened by accident one jittery morning, and when I discovered how cool the sepia wash looked, the rest is history.
I am currently putting together a book of my favorite coffee washed illustrations from the past 2 years. The GOAL is to publish this book and then do an independently financed tour of the West Coast: SF, Portland, and Seattle, with large portions of the book sales going to local charities in each area.
This compendium would not have been possible without the generous donations given to me by many, MANY amazing people, donations which have just surpassed $10,000!!! Thank you all from the deepest depths of my heart. I have just under $1,700 left in my $12,000 goal, so if you would like to contribute, please click your preferred transaction method below!!! Thanks so much!
NEXT.
- Finish the Book! At the moment it is about 50% done. At the end of it there will be anywhere between 50-75 illustrations.
- Book the Tour! I am currently in talks with coffeehouses, comic book stores, and book stores in three different states to get this thing on shelves and counters. The tentative route includes San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. Straight up, straight down.
- Tour! I would be really stoked to do the tour this year, if everything falls into place. I have a ton of ideas, including bringing music into the equation. it's all happening really fast so I gotta stay corked. Trust me when I say, that if this all falls into place perfectly, I will be shouting every last detail from the mountaintops.
"If you work really really really hard, I promise you that you will get everything that you ever want in life."
-Conan O Brien's sign-offs from both Late Night & Tonight Show