The Lee Bolton Gallery

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2008- With student activism and political upheaval engulfing the school, the media began circling above, casting their large shadowy wing across the campus, ironically because of what started over one student’s annoyance over a styrofoam cup. The president and his administration attempted to quell the dissent, and let go of an employee after she spoke up in favor of the Education First movement. (The administration attempted to portray it as her job was abolished.)

All the while the president and his staff dodged my questions. In this they failed to address the fact that their arrogance or lack of transparency there in on issues encouraged me burn with righteous crusadic fervor towards an end goal of fixing priorities.  I had become jaded and filled with a deep, dark smoke as my gears began to wind up into faster and faster revolutions. The whole movement began taking its toll on my spirit and soul. Friends were feeling ostracized because of my distance from them. Others who did not embrace with the same fervor the problems we were trying to address felt put off by my aggressive behavior.  It was at that moment the vultures began to feed off the carrion, and the walls began to collapse.  

The president had a meeting with the board of the school. The board seemed…. unaware… of what had transpired, and was surprised by the silent protest. It was a balmy 100 degrees or so and around 100 students showed up in the end to show their discordance with the administration’s viewpoints. I showed up late, but wanted to show my support of the student body, eventhough I disagreed with the student government’s passive protest. Admittedly it worked to some degree, and I was wrong.

Within a few days it was announced that my adversary, the president would not have his contract renewed after it expired in 18 months. People were excited, but myself, I felt a bit grim.  I don’t see any gain for anyone when we tapdance on a dying man’s epitaph- and to complicate things, with such a resounding focus on my attention now released I struggled to find myself back in my work. 

Nightscraper was done in the midst of all the turmoil at the school. I added a filter glow to the windows and cast the clouds above the dark building tops. Based on the Chrysler Building it took me a few hours to complete with the pen tool, and utilized perspective lines to form the angles properly.

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2001- During one of those sprees of working in Bryce 4/5 I decided to work on a piece that would focus mainly on the underwater view.  I never really put any thought into the fact that I was using a 3D program to make 2D art. - I just did it because I enjoyed the program and seeing what I could accomplish and make. Some days I would spend literally 8 hours in front of the PC, while the machine itself would take upwards of 2 to 3 hours to render in that day and time. Sure, there was a lot of the “Oooo Factor” involved with what I did then, but it was the experience of experimenting and discovering that I really enjoyed.

I had it made as a broker during this period of my life, but I just wasn’t completely happy. Understanding the market gave me wonderful knowledge into the insight of how people act and justify their behavior when it comes to managing money, -and there also- managing other people’s money. I was hired based on my ethical and moral values, and my hard work had paid off. Regular promotions, raises and employee of the month helped me bide my time while I was deciding what I really wanted to do. The market was in complete collapse, and the company I was working for was hemmoraging. In an attempt to boost revenues they imposed contraversial fees on inactive and low balance accounts. The results were disasterous, and customers erupted with anger and threats of lawsuits, eventhough the problem was, most people were ignoring their financial straits that they themselves had caused by their mismanagement. It was not my fault that they put all of their eggs in one basket and it was not my fault that they got greedy and didn’t know when to sell, see value properly, understand risk or attempt to research the things they owned in their accounts. None the less, people utilized cognitive dissonance to ignore what was going on and bluster forward and ignore what they had done. 

Company politics ranged from subduing the customer with countering them with the value of what they were receiving to outward encouragement of departure to informing the customer that they should have read their mail. It was unfortunate that all this occurred, but in reality it allowed me to understand the dirty underbelly mechanations of how business financial transactions and people interact. 

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2008- I had a fundamental disagreement with the president of the school and we did not see eye to eye on many issues. After the face to face discussion at the Alumni Potluck, (which felt like a knife fight after it was all over,) the biggest stumbling block was the failure to provide me with sound numbers on the amount of money in which the school had paid Frank Gehry, (- a well know ’starchitect’).  Knowing these numbers would be key to understanding if my suspicions were correct on where money was being spent. Furthermore, it would allow me to move forward in correllating data and matching it up with key figures such as scholarships and the like to truly get an objective overhead of where student education stood as a priority.

The student body had a meeting the Friday after the “Student/Administration Question and Answer”. It was hastily called because we had information that the president was going to move forward with an extention on his contract at the board meeting the next week. About a hundred students showed up, at the little used pavillion, which all of a sudden was double booked somehow. Oddly some students were still getting into the game and were not fully aware of what was going on. A few students didn’t understand that the conflict was not over whether or not the building should be built, rather it was about the timing and focus on such an endeavor. One of the outspoken few had done research with the administration and came bearing piles of data, to debunk anyone who spoke. - I felt the timing was odd, and mused that, ”He probably still thought that there were still weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” Regardless he did bring a different opinion to the table that wasn’t there before, and I respected his valiant effort to gather information from the administration, but unfortunately as routinely as it had been done in the past, numbers and percentages can be spun anyway a person wants. I thought that the student government would not waffle at this time, however as they had in the past, they decided not to come outright against the reelection president, (in fear that it would cloud the school’s reputation,) separated their campaign of education from the faculty’s, and  made plans to hold a ’silent protest’ at the South Campus on the day and location of the board’s meeting.  I fundamentally disagreed with all three of these stances, and vociferously noted that, “We may have gone to the playoffs for a few years, but now that we’ve had a few losing seasons, it’s time for him to go,” making one of my noted anologies, but this didn’t seem to dissuade the sentiment in the crowd, which felt like passive resistance.

I saw this wonderful Illustrator poster around the school that I liked. It correllated a lot of information and data that I wanted to highlight. What is most striking of this piece of propaganda is how it notes how little in comparison was given to scholarships as opposed to spent or accepted in other categories.  The simplicity of the orange dot represents the school’s mascot and the futura typeface seems well placed and organized in a smart hierarchy. A slight fade gives the impression of a burning flame, and catches the eye easily as it flows by from right to left. - Posthumously I noted that within a day or two all of these posters that I had seen had been removed from the walls of the school.