For those of you trying to get to www.jblowe.com you might find it is not there or "under construction". This is due to the irresponsible dirt-bag who hosted my site. I'm frantically trying to get things in order, but thanks for your patience.
In the mean time, i thought I'd post up some images here with some back story to them.
"Our Lady Of The Sea"
This is my take on the very popular image of "Our Lady of Guadalupe" with obvious embellishments. The model is my good friend, Zarah, who has many amazing and beautiful tattoos that helped inspire the work. I had to incorporate my growing love of sea life to add that extra element of "one of these things does not belong".
This has been an essential thought when I work on a new piece because it lends so much to deciphering what an image is about. Keep in mind, the squid is not present "just to be weird". I wanted to re-establish elemental meaning of what some might quickly read as gross or some kind of threat. In this setting, the squid is now a character embraced by the woman and can no longer be discarded as a lowly creature. Even the woman is not in the appearance of the unattainable "saintly virtue", but an actual person who you might see on the streets of a metropolitan city.
I've been talking about redefining the imagery to suit my needs, but in the end they are presented in an image of worship. I don't want to over explain this painting, but i want to consider the possibilities of the not so everyday life.
"Wake Up" was made over the course of a weekend with a rented Canon 5D and a cool new animation program i was trying out called Dragon Stop Motion. I had made a new puppet design and was dying to use it in something , so the result was a loose stream of conscious story line that i story boarded out ahead of time and elaborated on during filming. I really have no idea how (or even if) I'm going to finish it, but I'm definitely happy with how the new puppet performed (despite its little problems). I apologize for the cliffhanger, but I'm actually pretty content with leaving it off there. Maybe Roan will live on in our hearts.
While sculpting the head of Roan (the main character) I posted pics of the head online while it was in progress and asked people what they thought his story should be.. This is something i would never normally do, but it seemed like a fun thing to do and all I had was a head (no i didn't sketch him out ahead of time... Shame on me!). I got some great story ideas from friends
Ruth: a ancient guy that grows younger for every year.. magic... smigel... sees paralell universes......
Rachel: Five of diamonds? Spider?
Christoph: Deep Sea Troll with gills and fins
Emily: He is definitely a troll or gnome of some type, lives in the darkest of places, but is the humblest of fellows, he likes his afternoon tea and enjoys collecting odds n ends around his dark realm...
Next week Roan will be on display in the 2009 faculty/alumni show at the San Francisco campus of the California College of the Arts (and Crafts).
