...little monsters...

visual interpretations of the poetry of derek ender lee 

Pieces of great innovation, 
or Building little monsters and starting little fires Part 1-7

1. I am the clever fox, young hunter boy

Watch me run

Know I am already hidden from your stupid eyes

2. We pay with our teeth, dear

Dark as it seems

Betray our flesh

And sell our names

We pay with our teeth

3. The archers bow arches her back and she is akimbo

 

4. And she dances at night 

While others are hiding

And nightmares are present

She loved him in her lungs

Like she couldn’t fucking breathe

 

5. You can’t stand the way I have to write it out, to work it out.

         This is verbal terrorism.

6. We never ask for much

The smallest portion just to get by on

7. Tasting sweet tarts on her tongue and smiling

    These words like swords are dangerous to fall on

    Passing secret notes and love letters like junior high
    We collapse like pictures, I’m on the bridge and jumping

 

typed poetry on paper, copper wire, wood, foam board

stitched

for professor,

dedicated to his mama bear <3

robert has been supportive of my creative life since the beginning of our friendship. it broke my heart when i found out his mother became ill, and it broke even more when she passed. 

i asked him to give me the colors for how he felt:

black, blue, green, red, brown

then i asked it him to send me some of her handwriting.

taking all of that in, this was my effort to support and love him. 

“your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle,

and everything i do is stitched with it’s color” 

W.S. Merwin

cotton embroidery thread, polyester sewing thread,

nylon fishing line, steel sewing needle on salvaged burlap

august  2013

home game

when i moved to san francisco people asked me where i was from. since i consider myself to be from many different places i responded with where i was from most recently: los angeles. this would almost always guarantee a look up and down, change in tone from friendly inquiry to defense of territory, and some comment about why los angeles sucked.

i get it. LA does suck. but it is also amazing and filled with creative people whom i admire. some who grew up in the bay and magnetized me to their homeland.

needless to say these people annoyed me and i understood why others have their opinions of SF folk. but f_ck it, man. i didn’t want to play that us vs. them game. we’re all in this together.

i found conversation futile as they continued on their criticizing trajectory, and decided that convincing them different was out of the question. so, i ended the rivalry for myself.

Los Francisco San Angeles por vida!
suck on that. 

i have this crazy idea that i would eventually make hats of these and stick secret agent friends in each city wearing the proper colors but repping for their friends in SoCal/NorCal, respectively. i’ll have to find the most graceful way to drop the plan... knowing that it might ruffle some feathers and, well, getting shot is not on my bucket list.

side note: without knowing it these became a font and color study. the SF logo gets it’s strength from their colors, the LA logo gets theirs from their font. orange and black LA stomps blue and white SF.

eventually i tossed the latter and the duel was no more.

acrylic on wood

january 2013