Cai Guo-Quiang. This guy makes, among other things, enormous drawings by setting off fireworks on paper. He uses different kinds of fireworks and stencils for specific marks. I'm interested in his processes, the way he uses controlled fire for organic but intentional marks. (He also made the fireworks for the Beijing Olympics.) There's a great Art 21 about him.




This drawing by Sam Weber is one of a set of illustrations he made for a new edition of Lord of the Flies. I am influenced by his aesthetic, which combines frailty and childhood, a sort of softness and narrative, with the stark & grotesque, the real. His drawings make those potentially oximoronic sensibilities exist in the same world without contradiction, the result of which is pretty disturbing in an unusually gentle way.









This is from Andy Warhol's Death and Disaster Series. Here I'm interested in his materials - his source materials for all the works in this series are photographs of disasters that Warhol appropriate from journalistic sources, mostly newspapers.