Top 100 2015

The Beastie Boys
16" x 12", oil on canvas, 2015

Yes, the Beastie Boys, they are starting off a brand new top 100 edition. If the first two months are any indication to what the music year 2015 has coming, then it's a shift away from female singers' dominance towards a more equal distribution. After a decade of painting Kathleen Hanna, I now, for the first time, portrayed her husband Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz. He's situated in the middle flanked by Michael "Mike-D" Diamond and Adam "MCA" Yauch. The CD Ill Communication, bought for 20 cents at a thrift store, has provided many hours of rocking out while driving. Three songs are already guaranteed a spot in the new list, of which the biggest hit from the album, Sabotage, is one.

Spring Break!

Azealia Banks
8" x 7.5", stencil print
ed. 75 on paper, 2015

It's spring break, and that means beach, studio, and taxes. Midterms are wrapped up and graded, and the customary stencil prints have been traded. The stencil print is becoming a tradition, and now in my fourth semester at FSW, I have collected, by trade, over two hundred original prints made by students of the art appreciation class. My fourth stencil design, printed in an edition of 75, is once more depicting the portrait of a popular musician. I chose to do Azealia Banks, thinking that she would be popular by the students. I did not nearly get the response like last semester, when Jay Z was a big hit, only two students showed any interest in Miss Bank$. Yet she represents a fast-rapping sub-genre of hip-hop that is rapidly gaining popularity. When I heard Lady LeShurr, the British/Caribbean rapster, perhaps in a tradition of Jamaican Dancehall, rap in a style similar to that of Banks a couple of years ago, I thought it was the greatest new development in popular music.