JC/filter

The cover of the April issue of Transfuge magazine features my...

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 11:16:00 -0400

The cover of the April issue of Transfuge magazine features my illustration for their special on American novelists dealing with the subject of war. It’s my début on French newsstands.

There’s always a lot of us proposing art for The New...

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 02:12:03 -0500

There’s always a lot of us proposing art for The New Yorker, and even the accepted pictures may take some time to appear on the cover. Such was the case with my piece on this week’s issue. Read about it in the magazine’s blog entry by Françoise Mouly and Mina Kaneko.

Here’s my poster for the 2012 Gothams. For the third year...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 09:40:00 -0500

Here’s my poster for the 2012 Gothams. For the third year in a row I created all the graphic materials for IFP’s Gotham Independent Film Awards. See my picture from last year here, and images from the event live online tonight at www.ifp.org.

Slade Architecture has created the Virgin Atlantic Newark...

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 01:41:00 -0500

Slade Architecture has created the Virgin Atlantic Newark Clubhouse, a complex and entertaining lounge. (See details here, and see the one they did for JFK here.) I’m one of several artists who created pieces for the project. The screens above loop movies of three of my SoHo landscapes, playing as slowly as possible in case you have time to kill before your flight is boarding.

My contribution to the AOL Artists roster is an illustration for...

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 02:15:00 -0500

My contribution to the AOL Artists roster is an illustration for Veterans’ Day. The whole project is turning into a very nice series.

From 1991 to 1994 I was the art director of...

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 16:30:00 -0500

From 1991 to 1994 I was the art director of Chicago’s NewCity, a weekly alternative. Recently, founder/editor Brian Hieggelke invited me to illustrate the cover for their Best of Chicago twentieth anniversary issue. My drawing features a rendering of the first issue we ever did, with a cover by then-recent Chicago resident Chris Ware.

Hurricane Sandy’s New York invasion missed me altogether...

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 22:12:00 -0500

Hurricane Sandy’s New York invasion missed me altogether (I was in Siena, Italy) but still inspired an Artist’s Sketchbook page in The New Yorker: “Cabs for a New Climate.”

The exhibition “The New Yorker Couvertures,”...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 07:44:00 -0400

The exhibition “The New Yorker Couvertures,” at Galerie Martel, Paris, from October 26, 2012 to January 5, 2013, features cover originals by Benoît van Innis, Barry Blitt, Ivan Brunetti, Peter de Sève, Eric Drooker, Ian Falconer, Ana Juan, Anita Kunz, Jacques de Loustal, Lorenzo Mattotti, Bruce McCall, Ever Meulen, Françoise Mouly, Christoph Niemann, Art Spiegelman, Mark Ulriksen, Chris Ware… and also two of my own cover images, shown as artist proofs from 20x200.com. The show celebrates the French publication of Françoise Mouly’s book on TNY covers. I was thrilled that she and galerist Rina Zavagli curated me in. Some of these artists I’ve been a fan of for more than thirty years.

I had just started playing with the Photoshop Express app...

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:41:00 -0400

I had just started playing with the Photoshop Express app — love its Sketch filter — when my friend, choreographer Angela Harriell, told me she was plotting a grindhouse-themed ballet. Dancer Dorian Cervantes posed for a quick session, shot and filtered on the iPhone!, and here’s the poster.

Three small books featuring different series of my finger...

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 14:45:00 -0400

Three small books featuring different series of my finger paintings have become available for purchase at Magcloud.com. Night Windows contains NYC nocturnes. Vinalhaven is about an island in Maine. Close-Ups features a series of small objects, most of them with words printed on them, that I was painting on my iPhone in 2010.

Mildred’s Lane, an arts environment created in...

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:15:00 -0400

Mildred’s Lane, an arts environment created in Pennsylvania by my friends J. Morgan Puett and Mark Dion, holds a very special place in my life. A tiny bit of it was recreated as part of a show in MoMA’s Education and Research Building; as if a corner of Mildred’s Lane got teleported to 54th Street. An iPod on a shelf loops fifteen of my movies: three recent finger paintings done at Mildred’s Lane, plus several shorts shot there, or elsewhere but featuring some of its key players.

Music videos are everywhere, but Poetry videos are catching up....

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 10:12:00 -0400

Music videos are everywhere, but Poetry videos are catching up. For Dispatch from the Future, a book by my friend Leigh Stein (who I met at The New Yorker when I started doing covers for them), we created a short video set on the East Village, one of her main stomping grounds. I enjoyed drawing her sitting on the same stairs where Jagger & Richards pose on the video for Waiting on a Friend.

My early iPhone finger paintings were loose and tentative, and...

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 18:59:00 -0400

My early iPhone finger paintings were loose and tentative, and that probably helped making them interesting. As time went by, I became more proficient and precise; in fact I’ve gone back to pretty much the kind of line I used most of my life. Only instead of tracing successive sketches over and over, I now just dim a Brushes layer and refine the lines by re-doing them on a new one. Everything done with my finger, still: removing intermediate tools from between my hand and the picture always felt like a step forward. Here’s a work-in-progress, an example of how my Recliner portraits get done.

Vinalhaven Island, Maine, one hour away from Rockland by ferry,...

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 10:10:00 -0400

Vinalhaven Island, Maine, one hour away from Rockland by ferry, has been one of my favorite places in the East Coast since my first visit, in 2001. It’s always a pleasure to go there, even just for a few days. This summer I managed to paint on location a series of island vistas on the iPad. I could have done more, but I was set on having water on each image.

It’s easy to lose count of the many talents of Alexis...

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 01:12:00 -0400

It’s easy to lose count of the many talents of Alexis Karl, a dear friend and muse of mine for many years now. She paints, sings opera, she writes, she creates perfumes… She’s in a couple bands two: Anima Animus Animal, and Ondyne’s Demise. This year I got to shoot and design covers for a couple of their recordings.

I met Maria de Medeiros thirty years ago, when we were both...

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 10:30:00 -0400

I met Maria de Medeiros thirty years ago, when we were both teenagers. She has had an extensive career both as an actress and as a filmmaker, and for the past few years she’s been making records as well. Each song in her latest album, done in collaboration with Portuguese musician The Legendary Tigerman, is illustrated by a different artist. Here’s my video for 24 Mila Baci (24,000 Kisses), her cover version of an Italian rock ‘n’ roll song from the 60s. This was all finger-painted on an iPad.

Postcards from The New Yorker: One Hundred Covers from Ten...

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:24:00 -0400

Postcards from The New Yorker: One Hundred Covers from Ten Decades, a box of cards edited by Françoise Mouly for Penguin Books, included my 2010 cover picture of the Empire Diner. Find it in the mess above.

For the past couple months I’ve been doing portraits of...

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 12:27:39 -0400

For the past couple months I’ve been doing portraits of female friends and acquaintances. I call the series Recliners; you can see a sampler here. I have been working on this kind of thing since as early as 1984, but drawing them with my finger on an iPad (always from life) has been a refreshing change from the ink-and-watercolor approach I used for so long.

My finger paintings on 2012 network TV, twice in a week: on a...

Fri, 04 May 2012 13:02:00 -0400

My finger paintings on 2012 network TV, twice in a week: on a prop New Yorker on ABC’s Suburgatory, and on a 20x200.com print on the wall of Uma Thurman’s room, in NBC’s Smash. I never met Uma, but hang out one afternoon with Jane Levy (right before she got famous) so it’s nice to end up on the cover of her character’s bedside reading.

Portuguese newspaper Público has been publishing portfolios of...

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 23:24:00 -0400

Portuguese newspaper Público has been publishing portfolios of Instagram pictures by various photographers, and Pedro Almeida invited me to show mine. (My whole output so far is here.) I used the opportunity to write down some thoughts I had on Instagram at the time. Here’s the translation, titled The Challenge of the Limitations:

“My best stuff is not done with Instagram, but with Hipstamatic. You should check out my photo journal at ny1x1.tumblr.com. Instagram, I don’t really like it. I only use it as a challenge, to overcome limitations that bug me. The tiny portfolios, for instance, feel hodge-podgy; thus I stick to series of 4 or 8 images, to get consistency across each “shelf” on the grid. The coercive sharing is exasperating; so I only shoot mini-essays that follow each other as a narrative. (For images that do matter, there’s always Hipstamatic.) Worse yet, the option to apply filters AFTER shooting feels like cheating; so I simply chose ONE filter each few few weeks, and that’s what I use. (As when we loaded cameras with a certain roll of film, remember?) I’m basically designing sets of rules, and embracing restrictions from the analog era, to this contemporary and uncontrollable way of propagating images. I’m trying to slow down the future just a bit. But of course I’m gonna lose the battle.”