Us at the opening preview night of "SuperAwesome: Art and Giant Robot", a group exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California curated by the museum and Eric Nakamura of Giant Robot. We wanted to make a playful, trippy, nostalgic image revering the beautiful land that we have called home. We depict a sort of far-fetched, utopian, hippie rewilding of the landscape. Humans, newcomers to this place are appropriately scaled down small to be dwarfed by the majesty of the land, plants and animals. The central figure is a child that represents us all, as the child dreams of a future California in which we have returned to some sense of balance with the natural world.
It covered 3 walls, totally about 37 feet across and topped out at 17 feet high, with the floor between also covered with imagery so that people could "step inside" the piece and be engulfed by it. We had the intention of trying to express the grandeur, the vastness, the variety of natural wonders of our home state of California.
A bit about the process: After sketching out ideas, and then moving to comp sketches, final drawings for each character or environment were done separately, with the largest drawings being about 30 inches tall. Dozens of separate pencil linework drawings were scanned in and then colore separatly in Adobe Photoshop. More than 30 "painting samples", abstract washes, markings, and patterns of color were painted with watercolor and acrylic gouache and then scanned in. These samples were manipulated, adjusted and cloned out in Photoshop (along with details painted directly in Photoshop with a wacom tablet) to fill the various animals and landscapes with color. These colored drawings were then composited together to form the massive image. Added to that were dozens of human figures painted with acrylic gouache on black paper, which were also scanned in and then composited into the environment. Final adjustments to color were made and the flattened file was broken up into separate files for each wall for printing by our printing partner, Mighty Printing, onto 3M adhesive vinyl strips, each 44 inches wide.
The "Prime Creator" character - the central massive figure of the image, is more than 12 feet high in the installed mural. It is many things in our head - it is a shamanistic hallucaination, it is the spirit animal of the state of California, it is bear, and coyote, and condor, it is the whisperer of Universal truths.
The best part was watching and listening as children explored every bit of the mural. Questions were asked, and answers were provided, all by the kids themselves.
The kelp forest wall of "An Ode To California" pays testament to the bountiful life and unique nature of the undersea ecosystems of coastal California (Giant Kelp grows only along the Pacific Coast of America - undersea forests the grow to well over 100 feet tall provide shelter for intense amounts of varied marine life feed but nutrient rich waters). We also made sure to include humpback whales, who pass through those waters annually, as we have had personal encounters with the creatures that have simply left us in awe.
The "desert" wall depicts an amalgamation of various parts of the massive Mojave desert, with the Sierra Nevada Mountains rising in the background. Tiny naked people are all at play in the natural world, evocative of the active lifestyle of California, and recalling the "Nature Boys" of the mid 1900's, a group of guys who lived in the wilds - migrating from the Sierras to the caves of Palm Springs, practicing yoga, vegetarianism, and making art. These figures had an influence on the later hippie movement, and their lifestyle seems very much like one being popularized today.
Sitting in meditation below the Prime Creator is a child ( androgenous, and of indistinct ethnicity - the child repesents some utopian, idealized hope that we will move past petty discrimination based on external appearance). like a shaman on a vision quest the child is experiencing the Prime Creator and all of California nature ALL AT ONCE, like some psychedelic experience.
California Gray whale and calf floating in the clouds above an amalgam of Joshua Tree and Death Valley? Sure, why not!
As are featured in a number of paintings - we tiny naked people that are dwarfed by the immensity of the natural world, and alwasy seem to be in awe of and at play in the surrounding nature. This is a recurring theme meant to convey the humility we should have towards the grand perfection of the natural world (before we mucked it all up anyway).
We made two different types of prints of the mural image - one is a smaller, offset printed poster.
The second is a much larger, limited edition, signed and numbered,giclee print
The spirit of the desert - the coyote character from "An Ode To California" mural. An inital pencil drawing is scanned in and cleaned up in Adobe Photoshop. Kozy marbled acrylic paint onto blank paper to make a trippy, abstract jumble of shape and color, which was then scanned in and used as the fill for the coyote, with other details painted in with wacom tablet directly in Adobe Photoshop.
Initial drawing of the "forest" wall with Prime Creator and child characters. We always have a soft spot for our initial preparatory drawings and sketches.
Kozy photographing the installed printed mural the day before the first preview ofthe exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California.
A fan in front of the "desert" wall of "An Ode To California" mural.
people enjoying "An Ode To California" at the "Super Awesome: Art and Giant Robot" exhibition that runs from April 19-July 27th, 2014
We loved seeing the kids pose with the Prime Creator character! We saw SO many pics like this taken at the opening night preview.
Crowds from the opening night preview at the Oakland Museum of California.
