Dear AT&T,

Please take the money you shower upon the hacks at your advertising agency ( BBDO Worldwide ) and instead install more cell phone towers or hire more nerds or do whatever it’ll take to improve your stinkpie of a network. I can’t make calls from my studio in Redhook, Brooklyn so that’d be a good place to start.

love,
Tonky

Background:

2005-
Artist duo Christo and Jeanne-Claude finally realized “The Gates,” a massive ephemeral art installation covering NYC’s Central Park with thousands of yards of flowing orange fabric suspended from orange plastic gates.

The concept was 20 years in the making and was funded entirely through the sale of concept sketches/collages rendered by the artist.  In the words of the artist, “an expression of joy and wonder.” No corporate funds, no government sponsorship, just pure aesthetics ( open to argument of course )

2010-
AT&T steals the work to sell its snake oil to the masses as part of its sponsorship of the World Cup soccer tournament. Despite a disclaimer stating, “The Artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude have no direct or indirect affiliation or involvement with AT&T” the advertisement is a straight forward pillaging of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s intellectual property.

DRILL BABY DRILL!!!

Ok another sublime set of photos. I PROMISE the next post will be warm and fuzzy. Perhaps puppy related.

Don’t deny this great followup to the Icelandic volcano. These images posted at AMERICAblog, taken by a DOE (http://www.energy.gov/) contractor  depict the  burning and collapse of the BP owned and operated Deepwater Horizon, the ginormous oil platform that is now sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Beyond Petroleum my ass.

This began unfolding just over a week ago and now an underwater oil gusher threatens the gulf coast with all kinds of black greasy misery.

I really had no idea how big these offshore oil platforms were. Since they drill in water over a mile deep they aren’t actually attached to the bottom with a tower of steel like you’d imagine, rather they FLOAT and are anchored with epic lengths of cable.

Note the tornado created in the weather systems caused by the fire. Reminds me of those alien ships falling at the end of independence day. So big.

All that sweet precious buried sunlight gone to waste.

-Tonky

(link thanks to BoingBoing.net)

<gulp>

I picked these night photographs by Marco Fulle from his shots of the Icelandic volcano shutting down Europe’s economy called Eyjafjallajökull. (pronounced: “AY-yah-fyah-lah-YOH-kuul”)

Ljósahönnuður means lighting.

Fulle masterfully shows us the violent electric storms inside and around the plume of ash belching forth from Eyjafjallajökull.

For me, these evoke notions of what the crucible that is our rocky crag earth must have looked like for the first 100 Billion years or so. And where it will return in another 100 Billion.

Simply sublime.

-Tonky

My new drawing explores that which is beyond the edge of the Universe.

Known Universe – 2009
10″ by 8″
Pencil on gessoed parchment paper.

BUY IT NOW at ETSY – $25 + FedEx shipping

one-of-a-kind

-Tonky

Yes, many people are hungry and down on their luck, but I can’t help to hope that this too shall pass and the nation will emerge the better for it.

Here in NYC, this country’s empire city, time rolls on. Despite the abstract turmoil of finance, trains run on time & people are scurrying about making business and money. New York City is yankee ingenuity.

Let us build wind turbines, feed some mouths, heal the sick. My fellow Americans, get to work.

-Tonky

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the World Premiere of HBO’s Ricky Gervais: Out of England – The Stand-up Special at The Paley Center For Media in NYC.  The evening was part of the Paley Center’s fall programming series Paley After Dark. After the 1 hour screening, Ricky sat down with Time.com’s editor Josh Tyrangiel for a quick Q&A.

The HBO special is a riot and if you aren’t an HBO subscriber yet, get the DVD when it is released. Apparently Ricky honed the act over the course of several weeks by performing it in front of audiences at small clubs who bought tickets that were quietly released over the internet. The final filmed performance took place this summer in New York City.

I laughed my arse off at Ricky’s astute flights of fancy that nimbly dissect such contentious subjects as illness/mortality in cancer stricken children, the sexual behavior of gay men in a era of AIDS awareness, and the oft overlooked morals hidden inside nursery rhymes.

I won’t make the mistake of paraphrasing comedy, but during one particularly poignant bit, Ricky reflects upon the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty and is appalled that society would teach its children a moral that says “Don’t sit a wall if you are an egg.” Flabergasted, Ricky progresses to assert “certainly don’t send horses to fix an egg, maybe a surgeon or a faberge expert but not a horse! I couldn’t think of a more perfect implement to crush an egg than a hoof.”

I laughed hard at Ricky’s 1-hour HBO special but not to the point of nearly dislodging my esophagus as I’ve done with some of his more spacious projects like the Ricky Gervais Podcast (Guinness World Record Holder for “Most Internet Downloads”) The reason is that we love to be in on the joke, we love to see the process. And most importantly we love to hear Ricky’s ear splitting cackle once a gag had come to fruition.

Even though past Gervais and Stephen Merchant projects like EXTRAS or The Office are edited to a sheen, we know from viewing the outtakes that each scene is just one Gervais snort away from an all-cast crack up. It looks like so much fun and we get giddy to be part of it. So while Gervais looks to be having a hoot during his stand-up act, he doesn’t appear to be getting the jokes for the first time. There is inherently more artifice involved with a filmed stand up bit and so Gervais’s freshness and impromptu nature are marginally muted. I wonder how Gervais plans to maintain his edge, process, and style as forthcoming movies and projects increase in budget and scope and thus in refinement.

During the Q&A after the screening, I was delighted to see that Ricky has stayed human during all his deserved success. Even as he fielded questions from the most awkwardly earnest of audience members he maintained the utmost respect and forthrightness with his answers.

-Tonky

ps: Has anyone found a leaked version of the HBO special? info [at] tonkydesigns.com

[UPDATE]

Thanks to Perry Garvin | perrygarvin.net for the heads up on the leaked video torrent. Apparently it is from an LA performance, the HBO special was filmed in NYC. Same routine, different night

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4298903/Ricky_Gervais_-_Out_of_England_LA-VBR-2008-88

Hah!

I’m back in the midwest for yet another wedding and my mother pointed out that M&I bank posted this delightful orange memo to all customers, trick-or-treaters, and would be robbers:

“For your safety, please remove all masks and hats when entering our bank lobby.”

-Tonky

I snapped these two pictures over a year apart on the same corner of Times Square in NYC. The images are part of an ongoing series I’m calling “The American Diorama” that looks at contemporary Americans through the fictional lens of 19-20th century colonial sociologists.

So, I saw the guy with the yellow sign this Friday and he announced, “People! Your money isn’t real. Get smart to what’s important in this life.”

While I don’t insist that choosing Jesus as one’s personal savior is the best way out our society’s many problems, we should listen to this guy. Money is the ultimate abstraction and the current economic turmoil/bubble burst resulted from us humans and particularly the ones working in downtown Manhattan worshipping our own financial inventions.

Let us all get back to the real world. Take 10 deep and measured breaths and focus on the analogue. This rallying cry from your humble narrator who just spent an hour crafting a digital blog post. <sigh>

love,
Tonky

NYC based artist Julian Laverdiere generously beamed over some images of his own investigation of the obelisk trope.

The piece shown above is a diazo print of a graphite drawing depicting Prime Mover, a fictitious cultural siege device that transports an obelisk and erects it where it is needed.

While working for Julian as a studio assistant, he explained how the Romans hauled artifacts like obelisks from Egypt and plopped them down in the middle of public squares and built fountains around them. A very curious way of adopting a sense of history for one’s own culture.

More work here. Click the link now: http://julianlaverdiere.com/

-Tonky

I am creating a limited edition poster showing global flights paths without the map. Imagine a peppering of black dots connected by colored lines. They should sell for about $100 ea.

Maps showing airplane paths are testaments to the profound interconnectivity we humans have attained. I contend these maps have taken on a different meaning since 9.11.01.
Growing up I would gaze with wonder at maps showing flight paths and think how close and accessible the world is.

Today, flight path maps still evoke a feeling of sublime interconnectivity – but now our hope for a plural global utopia seems premature if not naive.

While the WTC attacks could have been prevented with $20 locks on cockpit doors and a competent administration at the helm of our intelligence agencies, better yet would be to have had leadership that inspired worldwide trust in our great country instead of hatred

All sensible people desire peace and to feel connected with their fellow human. A prerequisite for peace is mutual trust.

I pray that Barack Obama will be elected president because he is an honorable statesman who can repair international trust in us and who will fight the conditions that breed terrorists, so we can once again hope for peace.

*WTC Attacks Memorial Mural by Scott LoBaido located near Gowanus Canal | Brooklyn, NY