12” x 12”
Charcoal & Graphite on Gesso
This is a drawing of a man I man this past February in Nazareth. He was a Catholic priest, standing outside of his church (Saint Joseph’s Church). The complexity of identity struck me upon meeting this man, a Christian Arab in a majority Palestinian-Christian city. Nazareth, the so-called “Arab capital of Israel,” has been an invaluable hub of Palestinian culture in the Galilee and northern Palestine in the contemporary period as much as Nablus and Jenin, even since Nazareth’s incorporation into the State of Israel in 1948.
This man’s memory and experience would doubtless paint an intricate picture of what it meant, and continues to mean, to be Christian and Palestinian under Israeli Authority. The gravity of such identity compounds when one thinks of the timeline in which the aforementioned terms receive their contemporary definitions. What struck me in this instance was the readiness, the almost over-eagerness, of this man to tell us, me and two fellow Arabic students, of his identity as an Israeli, not a Palestinian, Arab. I am still confounded by this, as if O’Brien had brought this man to Room 101 as well, and he too learned to love Bibi. There is certainly potential interesting inquiry surrounding his belonging to a Franciscan church. How are Saint Francis’ hallowed orders made manifest in the current conflict in Israeli-Palestine? Most every other person I met carried themselves differently, most often diametrically opposed to this man (although most all of these people were not clergy and as such would understandably hold different sociopolitical views). The strongest was a Muslim woman who spent an hour in a haluwayyat telling me about Fairuz’s impact on hijab trends in Palestine decades ago.
12” x 12”
Charcoal & Graphite on Clay Board
While walking through Nazareth’s suq, market, I was taken aback by an olive oil vendor. He was selling hand-pressed olive oil in 2-liter Coca-Cola bottles with the labels stripped off. A decrepit, little cardboard sign displayed the price, and there was so much sediment from the pressing process that the bottom fifth of the bottle appeared as black as the Coca-Cola that had once occupied the vessel.
What I am attempting in this piece is similar to the prior one. I want to expose the mundane non-movements of modern Nazarene life, at least that which I was/am able to deduce. Based upon Asef Bayat’s Life as Politics, and overall sentiments of passive defiance found in Emile Habibi’s The Secret Life of Saeed; The Pessoptimist and Elia Suleiman’s film “The Time that Remains.” I find the fact that the sign is exclusively in Arabic, in a city that sees thousands of non-Arabic speaking tourists, annually, to be very curious. It would take barely any effort at all to add English, Hebrew, or even Russian to the cardboard sign; nonetheless, the sign is only in the one language, potentially reflecting elements of the vendor’s political non-movement, his desire for a prosperous, self-actualizing and self-perpetuating Nazarene Arab community. One can assume that a tourist would be more inclined to purchase a bottle of olive oil if it were advertised in the language of the consumer; therefore, this man is making an intentional decision to sacrifice profits in an act of passive protest. This is significant for a Westerner, like myself, to acknowledge when inquiring into the Middle East for two reasons. One, because it shows the “Eastern man,” as defined by the Westerner, representing himself which is something that historically has not been presented often to a Western audience: the Oriental representing himself on his own accord, in this particular case seen in the use of language. And two the viewer is offered a glimpse of what this representation is employed for, namely a tool used by a member of a minority group to contend with the might of Israel. The Arabic text takes center stage over the characteristic shape of the Coca-Cola bottle—why Coke and not Pepsi? Is there significance in why that specific object was used or even there in the first place?—or the symbol of the New Israeli Shekel. In essence this scene can be, as I have clearly portrayed it, viewed as a political forum of passive protest that places Arabic language atop a foundation of Israeli and American production and hegemony.
12” x 12”
Charcoal & Graphite on Gesso Board
First of all, light. The light in Nazareth at night, like that of Acre and other ancient towns in the Galilee, is beautifully yellow and refracts off of town’s stone walls and palish green metal doors. At night, amidst the dueling adhans and chickens in roost, the walls spoke when people fell in prostration.
This work speaks to the complicated matrix of social and political life in Nazareth. A city with a Christian majority and Arab majority, inter religious polemics between Christians and Muslims are thick in air, as are nationalistic ones. Throughout the city, we see evidence of these contentious debates competing over Nazareth’s identity itself. God is Great, one phrase says, speaking to the voice of the Muslim minority (but a voice white washing the inner debate as well, i.e. the parent of whomever tagged allahu akbar would probably be frustrated with their child for presenting Islam in such a light and in such a manner, and they would definitely chastise them for spelling it wrong). To the top left is a universalist critique of religion and Islam: Allah written as feminine and using the star of David and the crucifix to make the alif, the first letter of the word. This is a scholarly addition, a “commentary,” for lack of a better term, representing the presence of contemporary Israeli interest in Nazareth.
A quickly rendered Palestinian flag is clearly visible, maybe done by the same artist who misspelled Allah, maybe not. It is just as likely, if not more so, that the flag icon was tagged by a Christian or that a Christian Arab could ostensibly have done both, if not all, of the markings we see. More immediately important, or relevant for the viewers, are the hearts. What is the take- away of having them in the composition? Is it to say that one side is right, or superior, to the other(s)? Such a claim falls into the snare of polemics that the graffiti represents.
Instead, I argue something of value can be gathered from viewing the wall as a whole, as a cultural matrix. One ought not essentialize the East. In trying to push a bit beyond Carl Ernst, can the Westerner not just view the Easterner, the Muslim, the brown man, as human but view the communities from which these “others” originate as just as alive and real and in flux as our own. Let’s continue bursting that superiority complex bubble, Spivak.
12” x 12'“
Charcoal & Graphite on Gesso Board
Mary’s well. The Annunciation. Profound images for Christians. The Westerner imagines finding something divine, magical. Scouring the East for Truth. Is that not objectifying and essentializing? I was waiting for a bus across the street from the well. I didn’t know what I was looking at. I wasn't in Nazareth for religious purposes. This piece is deeply rooted in my fascination with Emile Durkheim’s distinction between the sacred and the profane, between socially religiocized objects heralded by distance, respect, and devotion, and simple tools and trinkets.
I also am familiar with common images of this well that are the threads that weave the tapestry of exoticized Orientalist thought pervasive in the modern-day West. So I wanted to produce a different take. One without the attachment to orientalized figures. My actual memory has in it some of these problematic orientalist fragments: There were three men smoking and drinking tea in the little plaza, and a fourth came out from behind the well a few minutes later, zipping his pants. I wonder what he was doing... This is a common theme in the show. I separate individual from place in order to do justice to each individually as a means of facilitating cross- cultural understanding. If I placed all of these things in the scene, I would be asking a lot of my audience to deduce what I am prioritizing as a scholar.
I rather draw attention to the sign in the middle of the well, almost comically, prohibits drinking the water. There was something mundane, profane, yet tranquil, about the the scene. Relaxing because Mary’s well simply was there, in and of Nazareth. Sometimes a bathroom, sometimes a spot for ablutions, sometimes a holy site. But all of the time it is alive to be used as a site of memory for the viewer, whether foreign or local. And there is something interesting and beautiful in that. I learned last February that Mary’s well cannot be claimed by any group but serves as a mirror almost for the inquirer.
24'“ x 24”
Charcoal & Graphite on Clay Board
Fall 2018
This is not from a photograph. The only image so far that isn’t. I found an object in Nazareth, a figurine of Ronald McDonald in a Jesus-on-the-cross pose. Was this a happy meal toy in a Christian-owned McDonald’s? I’m not sure. But it is the object that first led me to producing this show in the first place. The confusion and frustration I felt holding that figurine, the Judeo-Christian centrism that it represented in Israel-Palestine unnerved me. Utilizing memorial accounts from figures such as Emile Habibi, Elia Suleiman, and Anton Shammas of the Galilee, Nazareth, communism in the Arab Israeli experience, I’ve tried to play with historical symbols found in the city, ex. the figurine and the graffiti, to encapsulate individual empowerment within the region’s quagmire of conflict. started to become aware of the varying modes of expression that lead to individual empowerment.
A feminine image, but not a Western feminist image (Elizabeth W. Fernea). Is there something to be gathered from the fact that when I held the McJesus, that I felt uncomfortable on behalf of a community to which I have very few ties? Yes; however this is problematic and analogous to Elizabeth W. Fernea’s entire work, In Search of Islamic Feminism. It does not mean that Arabs in Nazareth experience the same level of alienation I felt. To assert such would render a Westerner unable to understand how a Christian could wave a Palestinian flag with pride in their eyes. And along that vein, ostensibly they would not be able to ontologically categorize a communist Palestinian. McJesus meant something to me, but in the hands of a Muslim Arab woman why should one assume that this object would shatter or challenge her identity? It’s actually more moving that she can hold this symbol, undoubtedly American and indebted to a modern globalized capitalist system (for the most part supporting the State of Israel’s agenda), and stand impregnably strong, empowered by her history, and her stalwart community. Also ‘Am Israel Chai,’ ‘The children of Israel live,’ the graffiti to the bottom left of the composition, ties with the previous graffiti drawing as a testament to the minority Jewish presence in Nazareth. It also alludes to the long history, of course, of infighting between ethnic groups that predate the current economic and political relations between these groups. There should be a powerful movement produced by the viewer cognizant of the history of Israel-Palestine when seeing the juxtaposition of the saying “The children of Israel Live” and the figure herself, a Muslim Nazarene who herself is a communist (one can gather from the title, the Israeli political designation that pooled the majority of Palestinians who stayed in Israel post-1948). I based this character on a woman I met at a haluwayyat shop in Nazareth and spoke to for about an hour. She told me of Fairuz, having her husband fumble with an old iPhone to pull up YouTube clips of the artist. She told me about the differences between the era of Fairuz, the impact she had on Arab women like her, and where how hijab became a point of contention in her household. It was one of my favorite moments in Nazareth and one I am happy to imbue into this piece, if only minutely.
The last overall impressions I hope the piece leaves one with are: Who are the children of Israel now? Who gets to define that? What is my own problematic points of inquiry in relation to Israel-Palestine?
24” x 36”
Charcoal & Graphite on Clay Board
This was one of the most moving moments I had while in Nazareth. While wandering around I encountered a man, potentially homeless, ripping a plastic bag with his teeth and eating it. This image was seared in my mind as being a terrifying anomaly. I saved the memory, and months later came back to it. I asked my peers who I had traveled with, “Do you remember seeing this man, etc. etc.. He was sitting on the ground down Al- Bishara Street that day we bought “toot” and bought old books and fresh olive oil in the ‘suq’?” The response from them both was no. One says they would have repressed it if it had happened; the other said that it sounded vaguely familiar. Neither were set in their memories. They couldn’t, or wouldn’t, remember, NOT because it didn’t happen. I went back through my notebooks from that timeframe and lucky enough I had recorded a few days later about the event. So, yes. Maybe it did. Maybe it still didn’t. Either way, I fell down the rabbit hole.
There is documented a culture of doing inhalants with rudimentary objects. This is, not surprisingly, a rampant issue in refugee camps. The origin of the practice is of no importance, but there was something moving about learning what actually was happening. There was a man so high that he was eating a plastic bag. In Nazareth. A stone’s throw from the market. What social conditions produce this behavior? What kind of existential question marks produce behavior I’d expect to see on Delancey Street, and not a touristy section of Nazareth? Palestinian identity manifests itself in variegated manners, ultimately depending upon one’s age, physical ability, mental acuity, and the levels that these attributes transgressed into daily life (layman’s terms: old Palestinian is alcoholic and suicidal; whereas the young Nazarene Palestinian is graffitiing and vying for weapons (?)). After finishing this piece of art, I began studying Elia Suleiman’s work. I found solidarity for my depiction in his work. I find, as a book-end, this an interesting image to pair with the man with the beautiful mustache from the beginning. Not one of these images sums up Nazareth, no standardized poster. Just traced, images, and impressions. To claim anything more would be closer to fraudulent and appropriating.
36" x 24"
Acrylic, Charcoal on Canvas
According to Hegel, there are three components that go into a successful work of art: the thesis, the antithesis, and the synthesis. In simpler terms, it means chaos and serenity combine to create unity in a work. This also means utilizing the soul (the thesis) and the real world (the antithesis) to create the product (the synthesis).
18" x 24"
Charcoal & Graphite on Bristol
“. . .In our narrative, at first only mimesis [imitation] was art, then several things were art but each tried to extinguish its competitors, and then, finally, it became apparent that there were no stylistic or philosophical constraints. There is no special way works of art have to be. And that is the present and, I should say, the final moment in the master narrative. It is the end of the story.” Danto believed that any expression is artistic expression and that that is the end of art—in response to Hegel’s concept of the end of art.
This is a two part process drawing. First, a person slept on the bristol with their head covered in charcoal. Later, the marks and indentations made from the sleep process informed a surrealist dreamscape.
24" x 36"
Acrylic on Canvas
Adorno’s ideas on aesthetics combined Immanuel Kant’s notion of the existence of “high art,” Georg Hegel’s concept of art requiring intellectual import and Karl Marx’s idea that art must have some amount of embeddedness in society and put these thoughts together into what he referred to as “the social antithesis of society.” He means this insofar as art’s resolution can only be understood if society transformed as a whole to comprehend it.
14" x 18"
Graphite on Gesso Board
Dewey believed art to be representative of experience. “… An experience in a product, one might say a bi-product, of continuous and cumulative interaction of an organic self with the world.”
24" x 32"
Acrylic, Charcoal on Canvas
When I think of what my bed would be, I immediately thought of my posters. They are what I associate with being home, being comfortable. So this work is how I would express my room, my bed.
18" x 24"
Charcoal and graphite on bristol.
In the Republic, Plato says that art imitates the objects and events of ordinary life. In other words, a work of art is a copy of a copy of a Form. It is even more of an illusion than is ordinary experience. On this theory, works of art are at best entertainment, and at worst a dangerous delusion.
24" x 24"
Charcoal & Graphite on Gesso Board
There is a point where individuals lose touch with their social connection, their adhesion to the people and system around them. Karl Marx referred to this estrangement as alienation. He argued that the type of work that people were subjected to under capitalism separated them from their production, and in turn their labor. But what is one’s goal in life if not to work? Like many German thinkers, Marx believed man’s essential meaning to be in its labor, in loving and fully realizing one’s work. But we have defaced that natural notion under industrialized systems. We become hollow shells, cogs in a grand machine; we lose the self, the very spirit that gives life meaning. There is no more creativity. It willows away as technology lessens laborers’ work which consequently pays less money. Life becomes a fight for survival just to regenerate ourselves and the individual is alienated. Prickly and conformist.
24” x 24”
Charcoal & Graphite on Gesso Board
Innovation has brought about the greatest shift in human society: from ones based on lineage and shared traditions to new ones based on the interdependence and specialization of the members of a society. However, these new organic societies, as Emile Durkheim describes, suffer from not being able to effectively regulate society, to draw all of a society’s members together under an effective regulative system. Without this, people feel unbounded. People as infinite vessels of desire will become overwhelmed by the possibilities and become lost and confused in the societies they reside. Durkheim referred to this notion as anomie. There is not enough societal glue to connect people because the current system of law and regulation is irrelevant in a new, updated, innovated society. Society is running off the rails and the individual is left behind. Stuck and melancholy.
24" x 30"
Acrylic on Canvas
6 ft x 6 ft
Ink, Vinegar, Coffee, Ashes, Acrylic on Canvas
6 ft x 6 ft
Vinegar, Acrylic, Charcoal, Colored Pencil, Ink
A group of over 20 people were involved in the process of this piece
24" x 30"
Acrylic on Canvas
5' x 3'
Acrylic on Canvas
12" x 12"
Acrylic on Canvas
18" x 24"
Gouache on Illustration Board
One of my first paintings. Ahhh, this sucks.
8' x 4'
Spray and Acrylic on Drywall
10" x 10"
Gouache on Illustration Board
24" x 24"
Charcoal & Graphite on Gesso Board
12" x 12"
Graphite & Charcoal on Gesso Board
Union Square Station
12" x 12"
Charcoal & Graphite on Gesso Board
Rose in the Abandoned Lot
12" x 12"
Charcoal & Graphite on Gesso Board
Susan Delgado
18" x 24"
Charcoal on Bristol
18" x 24"
Computer Manipulation, Charcoal on Bristol
18" x 24"
Charcoal on Newsprint.
18" x 24"
Charcoal on Newsprint
18" x 24"
Charcoal on Newsprint
18" x 24"
Charcoal on bristol
18" x 24"
Graphite on Bristol
Winner of a 2015 New England Press Association Award.
18" x 24"
Graphite on bristol
18" x 24"
Charcoal and graphite on bristol.
8.5" x 11"
Graphite on cardstock.
Graphite and Charcoal
18" x 24"
Graphite on bristol
8.5" x 11"
Oldie. Graphite on cardstock.
18" x 24"
Charcoal on bristol
Ink in Sketchbook
38” x 26”
Pine, wood dye, steel
This was made from one piece of pine, including the frame. The diagonal pieces are carved with a dremel for an allusion to natural rock formations.
Short 2-D animation made at the Savanna College of Art & Design
18" x 24"
Charcoal on Newsprint
18" x 24"
Graphite on Bristol
