Visual Art

This work was dedicated to Kobe Bryant and depicts a portrait of the late star, entirely colored in the Laker's purple and gold, over multiple different layers of poster paper. Using this layering there is a stylized LA across Kobe's face, the city where he played his entire career, as well a 24, one of Kobe's numbers, in the bottom right corner which also is painted with Kobe's likeness.  The layering and coloration of the poster board give a popping 3-D effect and provide a depth to the portrait that further attracts the eye.  

This piece was created as a final project for a "Drugs in Society" class I took during my undergrad, which depicts the effects of psychedelic drugs. Namely, this drawing depicts the sensory hallucinations that are common with such drugs, with the multi-colored drink spreading its effects throughout the body. This is seen in the coloring of the eyes, the beams projecting from the ears, and perhaps most strikingly the facial outline imposed over the primary face, which has already begun to melt away.

This painting is based on a photo of myself in front of a snow-covered tree in winter. For this piece I extrapolated the stark effect of the snow, creating the image only using that white or a deep black to outline my figure, the tree, and fill the void of negative space. I used this, combined with the face's lack of eyes, to create a striking tone meant to grab the focus of the viewer and hold it.

This drawing is in a style reminiscent of Van Gogh's "Starry Night", done with colored pastels to create a sense of depth with rich colors as well as an idea of fluid motion. Fitting with the astral theme of "Starry Night", the foreground depicts the earth, as it slowly melts into the nighttime scene. A bearded man is depicted under the earth, drawn with charcoal, which was used to create a feeling of somber humility, with the shadow and blurred lines resting under a bleeding earth.

This piece is created using a collage of different pieces of paper, each detailed with the repeated phrase "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth", which was famously uttered by my namesake Lou Gehrig at his retirement due to ALS, with the wording's font, size, and coloring differing to make up the image. The image fades away at the bottom, combining with the lack of facial features to create a sense of timelessness and ethereality fitting with the quote. 

Small pieces of paper from a multitude of magazines were torn and pasted together in order to create a landscape that is actually captured in the "Photography" section of this portfolio in the opening "Twin Peaks" photograph. The fracturing of the image creates a sense of movement and energy in the already striking photograph, twisting it slightly into a new piece of art, as if the viewer squinted at the original photograph and filled in the lack of detail with their own imagination.