Studio⎈Log
Symbols Archive
Drawings, film vingnettes, objects, & stop-motion animated loops organized by symbol (more info in the dropdowns)
Star, ⭐, ✨, ☄️, 𓇼, ✯
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There she was, a mummified woman named Artemidora. Died: age 27, lived: 90 A.D. and you can hang with her (like I did) in Gallery 138 at The Met.
Her sarcophagus was decorated with long lines of handpainted stars. 𓇼𓇼𓇼𓇼𓇼𓇼... This is when I became obsessed.
These star decorations were cool because they werent the typical graphic I grew up with in the US. This wasn’t the five
★ pointed Gold stars from my elementary school behavior ⭐chart, or the stars and stripes on the American 🇺🇸 flag. It didn’t match the 🤘 punk/political ✯red and black star I saw tattood on this drummers calf leg.... and they werent the Hollywood Blvd celebrity 🤩stars that tourists eat up. This was a 90 A.D. star. Someone painted it way back then--- and I am looking at it here and now. The coolest part of this star is that it had five points, but they looked more to me like a splayed out human body than a figurative ☄️ image of light. Now I’ll admit this was in my grass smoking era, and I for sure was locked in just standing, staring, ✏️drawing those things for a while. But the whole thing made me wonder... Where did we get our (modern/”classic”) star shape anyway? And how does any culture (or era)end up with their default being this⭐, this 🟡 , or this✨, or this𓇼?
Dang, I love that human shaped star. I wondered where they got it. You know, I just looked it up, and some Egyptologists think that this graphic shape could have started off coming from the starfish of the 🐟 Red Sea. That makes sense. Though the mummy star I saw was much more human like than this...𓇼. (The perpendicular spokes were much flatter and chunkier on Artemidora... but alas I digress.) 𓂀 Egytologists also conjecture that later their graphic starfish shape eventually migrated from a meaning of the thing in the 🌊 ocean... to a that bright thing we see in the ☁️ sky. Regardless, of the origin story... here it was in front of me, 𓇼 and it was beautiful. This decoration (or power symbol) on a cacoon for the dead to rise again. The star became my favorite symbol.
The more I noodled on it, drew it, and the more I looked at it- the star to me began (for me) to symbolize “Spirit”. Not dead ghost 👻 spirit-- but eternal/alive spirit.... an embodiment of our innate creative🌀potential. At times in life, I wondered “Have I lost my sparkle?”. So during that time I started to draw my star in a 📦box. Eventually it came out. So I made an animation of that too (see below). More recently, I became a VHS collector I saw that star-birth scene in the movie Contact. Dang, Carl Sagan and Jodi Foster-- they really got something right. The Contact star birth scene is the kind of star energy I am talking about and hands down one of my favorite cinematic moments.
Some other types of star shapes I love is the 1950’s spur/wonder pop ✦ object star. It’s very popular right now (I think because of the ✨emoji). You can see it tons of editorial illustrations or branded icon sets. This spur star gleams and shines. It also convieniently can highlight the awesomeness of a🧃consumer product. Huzzah! This spur star style is a huge go-to for illustrators at the moment, but hold up millenials-- we werent the only ones. The spur star ✦ look was super popular in 1940’s Googie 📐Architecture... yes googIE, not googLE. Google it, it’s cool. They used that shit everywhere.
Another type of star which is pretty pervasive is the concept of north ✴️ star. A type of star we follow 🧭 or are led to. I like that one a lot too-- heck it’s in the Bible, so I’m not the only one.
Candle, 🕯️, 🔥
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I often bought brightly colored candles from the basement spice shop around my corner on 2nd avenue. During that time, I woke before sunrise, ate breakfast by candlelight..
I’d light this meditation candle and prep for 6am bikhram yoga. I had a lot of uses for candles then. I’d light them over dinner or before a working studio session. I stared at it’s flame, inviting whatever would come as I drew, ate, made, danced, filmed, or burned things. Later I learned I had also been practicing trataka; a meditation technique where one uses a candle as a single point of focus- sitting before it like a student.
A few years later I suffered a major loss and my body went through a process of grieving. During this time I picked up a different type of candle. On the bottom shelf of the grocery store at the corner of Halsey and Malcom X Boulevard. Between the airfresheners and ziplocks, I found them. Tall unmarked Santeria-style votive candles. Pulling out a paint pen I’d don them with a mantra, whatever needed to get me through to me those next couple of weeks. When the candle runs out-- maybe I absorbed the learning? The candle made me feel less alone.
Kundalini was another concept absorbed into my candle studies. Birthday candles also.
Sprout 🌱, 🌿
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In the beginning- I drew a picture of two sprouts and throught it represented two people. Specifically two partners (guess who) who grew steadily and inexplicably intertwined. But with more time, I realized the sprout represented new growth in me..
From there, I began to draw it solo and stopped attributing my worth to someone outside myself. I think in that way I’ve used the image of a sprout to work through self doubt and imposter syndrome.
Sometime after that first intertwined drawing, and after nearly a decade living in NYC concrete I moved from a place with 8.5 million people into a midsized city called Durham, NC. Suddenly, I was surrounded by green. Spring was absolutely miraculous. It felt unreal. It had been a while since I experienced it this way: surrounded by foliage. The tinest spurts of growth here were finally perceptable to me. I learned (or was forced) to slow down. Growth registered in the calmness. On those spring mornings I sipped my coffee alongside a smilax vine. Everyday it inched its tendrils over a chain link fence towards the sun. Each day brought a few centimeters more. During that time I also struggled with boredom. Leaving behind the fast paced life made me antsy. One day at a time, I accepted that things usually happen just one day at a time.
This collection of drawings and things includes everything from a cassette, to a sewn felt patch, to a sprout on a notebook I kept while in hospital. I am still working with this symbol, watering as we go.
Circle, ⚪, ◌, ◉, ❍, ⊙, ∘
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Circle as a void or a portal. Circle as the first shape we see upon birth (the pupil and the sun). Circle as an originator of life..
Between 2017-2018 I used source texts to study both complex symbols and simple shapes-- including the circle. Out of it came vignettes captured in film plus a few ink and pen drawings. The vignettes were staged with simple household objects: mirrors, matches, disgarded hardware. Other moments were captured in real time/space by peering into peep holes, binoculars, and coffee cups.
Unsuprisingly, circles can be spotted everywhere and hold in them a multitude of meanings. This collection also includes circle variations via 35mm slides which I’ve been developing as a part of a larger low-tech slide projection project. The circle always feels very zen-- so I am happy to return to it in those slide experiments. Some of which include a sun-like portal, a circle collapsing within a grid, and an accidental finger smudge. Each 35mm slide is created by hand with Roscolux gels, paint, posco pens, ink, gel polish, via scratchiti and collage.
Snake, 🐍
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In eastern philosophy the snake appears coiled at the base of the spine. This concept of Kundalini references an untapped energy source held within you. Once awakened this force uncoils and rises within you like intertwined snakes..
This stands in stark contrast to the classic Judeo-Christian image of a snake tempting humans with forbidden knowledge. I explored the tensions between these two traditions but ultimately the concept of life-force/awareness (grown within) won out. Plus snakes are just fun to draw.
Other snake ideas include Caduceus (snake coiled up around a staff with wings) representing all things medical and adapted from ancient Greek myth. There is also the Hermetic symbol of Oroborous (a snake eating it’s own tail) which has a multitude of mind-blowing meanings that are worth cruising on Wikipedia. For me, my obsession with snakes likely started when I took up a Kundalini yoga practice a coworker recommended. It was a 30-minute meditation session, sitting in easy pose, holding a lotus hand mudra, and cycling a 15 second suspended box breathing exercise along with short mantra. It was pretty out there and an interesting trip for a few months.
My interest in the snake was further solidified when I learned about the Gnostic Ring which Carl Jung designed and wore from the 1920’s until his death. On it were several symbols including a coiled snake, a womans face, and the figure 8 (representing eternity).
Flower, 🌸, 🪷, 🌹, 🥀
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After a few solid years of therapy I started drawing flowers. When I started a vegitable garden I learned that flowering took plants tons of energy. For a plant to flower means it’s basic needs have been met and most of it’s conditions are right. The bees come out with the flowers. Pollination offers the opportunity for the seed to spread.
In these collections of flowers I explore both plenty and emaciation. I once cried my eyes out in an art gallery and a stranger comforted me. I later learned this stranger (turned friend) had their share of sorrow. They shared that their personal symbol was the wilted 🥀 rose. As an artist, they even changed their name to follow suit. It was a revelation to me that someone could embrace their pain in this way. I had also never noticed this quite poetic emoji.
Our early experiences with flowers are usually more humble than the epic red rose. As children we collect wildflowers from feilds, concrete cracks, and schoolyards. I know for certain my grandmother still holds dear her earliest memories of flowers, and in her 80’s still found her greatest joy digging in the dirt. There’s something temporal and rare about flowers that speaks about beauty and hope.
Various Symbols 👁,🌏,♥️,🪜
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There are a lot more symbols I have worked with but have yet to curate into groups..
Until then please enjoy the following in this varied collection. Many of which are stop motion loops... How fun!
Shadow, 👤, 🕳
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Jung revolutionized our concept of self. While Freud proported our actions all trace back to places of shameful desire, Jung fought against his predessesor (and teacher) by healing himself and presenting a brand new idea to the world... the subconsious as a place of infinite creative potential, just waiting to be alchemized.
Imagine a part of ourselves that is chock-full like an attic. Tons of stuff, lots of junk, who knows what’s in there? Everytime you get something you don’t want you throw it up there. Piles on piles. While Freud said “Ew, theres lots of gross stuff in there. You’re gonna need my intense help to get over it”
Jung sang a different tune. Instead of making us afraid of the dark things under the table, he dared that we could step into that place and alchemize it for our own healing. Inerestingly, Jung himself expereinced some pretty difficult circumstances as a child. I won‘t elaborate or I’d need a content warning. He wasn’t just testing his theories on his patients, he was one.
The brilliant thing about Jung was, not only did he believe this subconcious shadow space was powerful, he believed it to be a place of unending creative potential. If it’s sitting there--heavy in you--it’s just sitting there- untapped. What do we need to do? We gotta get in there and work with it. Suddenly the weight and the space of dark... will actually become your superpower. Below is a stop-motion film I created to capture these thoughts. It reflects a little bit of my experience working through some shit. There are also a bunch of black and white drawings. They are around the shadow too.
More on the drawings: I also once helped launch and brand a womens group. It took about a year of my time. We hosted these big dinners and invited people all over the world to host them too. At each table we had one woman who was a trained moderator. This was the easy part, because we worked all worked in brand insights. At each of these dinners everyone around the world would discuss one topic. The moderaters would conduct group discussions and then report back. We covered things like grief, courage, money, sex and boundaries. This was 2018 so it was easier to talk to eachother. Active listening was the primary goal of these dinners. No one should give advice. Listen, remain non-judgementally, follow the thread, and then share from your own experience.
During this time I made some radical changes and I became obsessed with this idea of the shadow. I quit my fancy job at my fancy office for Sylvain Labs in Little Italy and I joined a scrappy but sweet co-work space in Chinatown. I designed and launched the site and then made illustrative reports for each topic. These went into online articles as well as on the socials. It was kinda fun, but a hell of a lot of work. The more I got into the content, the more I saw the power of the shadow. I designed the entire branding system around this, as well as a bold interlocking female mark. You’ll see that in some of the illustrations below. Ironically, the project ended my friendship with both the ladies I had started it with. So I guess you could say I still had some of my own shadow shit to deal with!
I’ve come a long way since that project, both in terms of mental health (whew) and in controlling project scope (hah!). I was a young designer then, with lots of big ideas. It wasn’t until after I made more work and had more stability that I could truly see, dippin that shadow space can take some time. But hell, that Jung guy... I think in the end he was pretty right. I mean hey, You’re reading this now aint you?