Dan Witz

"I believed that the truth could only be found by a violent rejection of the status quo."

     Dan began creating street art in the late 1970's. Witz received his BFA from Cooper Union in New York in 1980. His talent emerged in the 1980's in New York, using walls to send the public a message. One message raising awareness of the heroin epidemic in the early 90's. Witz had many of his friends pass away due to HIV and overdosses so he created one of his favorite works, the headless, sweatshirt hooded grim reapers. He pasted over 75 of these "Hoody's" strategically around the city, primarily at methadone clinics and the lower east side of the village where the trafficking was high.

     Dan Witz not only does street art but he also paints which he exhibits in galleries. In 2005 he worked on a series of 'Night Paintings'. The series included portraits of delis and convenience stores in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. He captures these moments in the night and rain in order to create an aura of mystery and isolation. His paints combine Old Master glazing techniques with 21st century digital technology. He begins with a digital print as an underpainting and then layers oil paints on top in order to regenerate the artifical light and quiet mood. Witz explains, "I am concerned with exploring what oil paint on canvas can uniquely do
that no other visual media can. Above all, I am fascinated by oil
painting’s extraordinary ability to create light – not just evoke light,
but to palpably reproduce the experience of light."

http://www.helium.com/items/464595-dan-witz-street-artist

http://www.dfngallery.com/exhibitions/dan_witz.htm 

Hieroglyphics

     Hieroglyphics are believed to date back as far as 3000BC. The language was used throughout six primary periods in Egypt and is thought to have included thousands of symbols collectively throughout its existance. They were not all used in the same time period but roughly 700 symbols were used at once, some holding multiple meanings, making the language very difficult to learn. A single symbol could hold up to three meanings which could be phonetic or a representation of the picture depicted. The language began to fade after the Roman Empire began its rule of the Egyptian nation.

     Papyrus paper was created as an easier medium to write on other than stone. It was made using the Papyrus plant, a triangular reed which symbolized ancient lower Egypt.  Papyrus was also used for mattresses, building chairs, tables, mats, baskets, and other furniture. Its root was a source of food, medicine, and perfume. It grows in freshwater marshes along the river Nile.

http://www.ancient-egypt-online.com/history-of-hieroglyphics.html

Charles Burns: Black Hole

      In a brief summary of Charles Burns, Burns is an artist who has gone from gallery work and photographic novels to comics. His career with comics began when he met Art Spiegelman, founder of Raw magazine, who invited him to contribute his works to it. His primary theme in his comics are that or terror and gore. Burns continued working with Raw magazine until 1991, contributing works such as ‘Dog Boy’, ‘Big Baby’, ‘The Voice of Walking Flesh’ and ‘A Marriage Made in Hell’. Burns moved to Europe and began to be printed in magazines in Italy, France, Germany, and Spain. In 1993 he cooperated with MTV to release an animated version of his ‘Dog Boy’, and in the following year began to work on his novel ‘Black Hole’.

     ‘Black Hole’ is roughly a four hundred page comic novel about a sexually transmitted plague which causes mutation throughout a group of high school teenagers.  He began working on the work in 1994 and it debuted in 2004.  Though the story appears to focus on the plague, it is actually a physical manifestation of the inner turmoil that the characters face.  In an interview Burns states that “he imagined it as a sort of metaphor for adolescence itself, for growing up, for changing so much so fast you get to a point where you no longer recognize yourself.”  

At the start of the book there is a ‘yearbook’ page of the students and at the end of the book is the same after the students have mutated (photo above).

http://www.fantagraphics.com/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&page=shop.browse&category_id=263&Itemid=62&vmcchk=1&Itemid=62