Coffee Table Things

Subsidy

This piece didn't really do what I wanted it to do. I'm doing a series of pieces on food politics. This particular piece is about how the government only subsidizes 2 types of crops: corn and soy. They consider all other farming to be "exotic" or "specialty." Meaning, that the government doesn't think that diverse fruits and vegetables are essential enough to maintain their mere existence. Not that they're doing all that great by corn or soy either.

Bobby C's Classic Barbershop

One of my favorite things about sketchcrawling is the people you meet when you sit in one spot for any amount of time. I met my friend, Blaine, downtown to draw in Mall C. When we got there, the sun was in our eyes. We decided to go to plan B, which is something I spotted when I took Tabitha (my Lil Sis) to the Bodies Exhibit. It is the coolest looking barbership ever.

In the historic Colonial Marketplace, it almost feels as if the shop is set on a stage. While we were there, we met Bobby C and his partner, Cosmo. We also met, Chris, a security guard at the Marketbplace, though he'd said that he worked in the Key Bank building.

"Tear it Down!"

You can click on the image above to enlarge it to read all of the writing. I hadn't planned to write that much, but a security guard for Quicken Loans arena had stopped by, and we'd talked for a while.

Not sure if you can see them, but there are 4 very tiny workers tearing down the banner. The proportion is about right, because yes, the banner is THAT big. I believe that it's 10 stories tall.

New Project

This is a bad photograph, but this piece is too big to stick on the scanner like I normally do. I'm working on a large piece that is going to be part of a series about food politics. This is the beginnings of one of the pieces. It's the capital building, if you couldn't tell. There's going to be more going on which I can post later.

For the last couple of years, I've been reading a lot about the American food system. My belief is that the entire system from farmer to consumer is broken (and, yes, I believe that the consumer is broken too). The thing that really amazes me is that even though I know so much about what is "good" and "bad" in the realm of food; I continue to make "bad" decisions when deciding what to eat. Why is that? Why do we do that? Why is most of our supermarkets full of unhealthy food choices? Why is it that you go to a drug store to get things to help your health, yet they offer the worst possible food choices avaible? Shouldn't a drug store offer healthy alternatives? Or, do they have a vested interest in us being unhealthy?

Lots of quesitons I've been asking while I've been doing this reading.

And, that's not even getting into the waste of it all.

Okay, was that depressing enough for you this morning? If so, just click on the picture and enjoy the bad photograph of my drawing.