Ahhhhhhhh, Friday.

Ahhhhhhh Friday.  As an artist that does in fact work for a non profit org as well (fighting the good fight for the future of our drinking water no doubt), Friday's still do hold a special place in my heart.  I love Friday.  Tonight I even have rather wonderful plans after work and I think it is going to be a late night.  What can I say, life is good.  So as I have been working on pieces for my Fecal Face solo show in the studio, my commission piece for an awesome collector of mine, planning my east coast journey in the winter and much much more, I found myself thinking back to some nostalgic moments in the past few years and wanting to look at some things that I hold dear memories of.  I have always thought phrases like "throwback Thursdays" and "Flashback Friday" were corny, but nonetheless I am kind of having a flashback Friday.  Here are some photos of some great moments in the past few years. Thanks to everyone out there for all the support, those that have brought negativity which made me grow stronger, and to those who work hard and make the world a better place to be.  Thank you all. -JFA III 07/25/2014

Full Circle

   New Astroknot drawing 2013, for Shooting Gallery solo show in 2014 Life is a trip you guys and gals.  Three years ago pretty much to date I was sitting exactly where I am right now working on my website, getting ready for a couple big shows coming up in the spring exactly as I am right now.  I was sober at the time, but a couple relapses away from real sobriety as some would say.  I was digging my heels in and grinding my teeth and typing furiously at press emails and blog posts and copying and pasting show descriptions in art site calendars like FecalFace.com and Impose magazine.

Panels for my exhibition at the SFMOMA Artist Gallery 2013

I was still a virgin to Hi-Fructose and Juxtapoz and was with my girlfriend (now ex-girl) at the time who lived a block from the cafe on Mason & Washington that I am typing from.  I had opened Unstoppable Tomorrow Vol.1 at Old Crow with Chris Burch and D Young V not 20 days before, and was freaking out as my show Past From the Blast was coming up at Queens Nails in just two months.  Life felt electric and on fire, and as I sit here typing this for you to read it still feels electric and on fire, a bit more so now to be honest.  The intensity is different, the short term gratification has given way to long term hustle and a much bigger vision and state of mind, which coincidentally demands a much deeper, and fully sustaining sort of internal electric source and fuel for a much hotter and longer lasting fire.

Piece for Unstoppable Tomorrow Vol.1 in the works...2010

The world and the gods have been good to me as I have continued to dig in my heels, hoist up my sleeves, make, write, draw, copulate, glue, talk, laugh, cry, hunker down, take little breaks, get excited and continue to explore this epic world we live in together.  It really blows me away at how funny this moment is and how special it is as French lounge music plays in the background and the cable car dings and roars by with its San Francisco history soundtrack following it everywhere it moves.

Skull and handle bars detail from The Great Debate Sculpture in the studio 2012

I am really lucky and really grateful to have made it past that moment three years ago.   It proved to be very much a major hurtle, a major proving ground for where my life would go.  I had fought and surrendered my way to a new type of life so different than the one I had become accustomed to for so many years, and it really was those events in 2010 and 2011 and the people who remained in my life and the new ones who became a part of it that shaped the path for where I am going now.

Flyer for Unstoppable Tomorrow Vol.1 2010

I have never had disdain for the holidays, and I am lucky for that.  So as I sit here and sun is going down and I can here the kids outside and the parents in the Chinatown meets Jackson Heights area of San Francisco, I can only imagine how many stories I am surrounded by.  All those stories give me energy.  All those stories to build the fabric of what so many of us create from.  Bus drivers, business women, art school kids, swaggy street kids, skateboarders, old chinese ladies with 20 plastic produce and dim sum filled bags, the crazy man on the block with the cart of hoarded newspapers, yuppies, tourists, wanna be thugs, real gangsters sitting in their blacked out Mercedes' with the windows down dragon tattoos wrapping around their arms with cigarettes in their mouths, new parents pushing strollers, old parents of every race with their grown up kids in town for the Holidays, they all pass through leaving freeze frames of motion and character in my mind.

Past From the Blast 2011

This post goes out to the ether.  To the powers at work outside of our tangible vision that make the movements of the universe ebb and flow.  To all the artists in the Bay and New York and Japan, to the South, Europe and beyond. The world is happening all over all the time.  I am glad this moment in the massive fabric of time has happened for me where I can suddenly have a sort of deja vu memory trip.  A moment where I can sit in the same place I was three years ago fighting for my life in a very different pair of shoes, and where I gathered my energy for a great Hadouken and went for it.

Makenzi James from a modeling shoot for painting reference images 2013

It feels good to sit here right now and look back on all that has happened in the last three years and be thankful as Christmas is approaching that I have the capacity to work hard and stay creative and dig deep within myself to contribute what I can to this world of ours.  Much love to everyone! IPD, 57, RTS, The Basement, Screwed Arts, Doppel, and every one that is busting that ass and making it happen. #makeworkson

Bright on Time Collaborative installation piece with Koutaro Ooyama of Doppel at Spes-Lab 2013

Press & Pilgrimage...

The work has really begun for Pilgrimage, a new green and orange color fusion that feels really amazing and new for me.  Out of the darkness we see the light. Speaking of light, I recently got some shine of the Juxtapoz website for the Triangle Magic show at Littlefield (which is actually part of the Gowanus Open Studios art walk this weekend).  It is a couple weeks belated to be posting on my blog but better late than never.  Also soon I will be updating a press section to my website, and finally getting my online store together so there will be all sorts of goodies and things to be had from the world of Unstoppable Tomorrow.  Here is a link from the Juxtapoz piece, just click on the image...

And while we are on the press hunt...here is a link to a Fecal Face post from this summer about the final chapter of the "Bright on Time" Japan adventure...

And for now Angie and I bid you farewell...

Japan is Crazy...

I have been so busy with the organization of this trip and residency, and the traveling, and now the actual project work that I have not had a chance to get to my blog...So my apologies to everyone out there in blog land....I will be returning in the morning with a more in depth post about the travels, visions, and work going on with "Bright on Time" at Spes-Lab!!! Good to be back in touch with you...

And on this Day to Come, January 16th, 2013, I Celebrate Another Year on This Earth! IPD!

So there are these things called "the promises" in this arena of study I am engaged in that are spoken of often and are a guideline that people work toward. Some may call "the promises" simply a better life in whatever way and shape it comes to you.  A better life that one can be thankful for, can appreciate every atom of, and one that is fulfilling and enthralling because the one experiencing it is willing to put forth the work it takes to change things, be willing to accept the world as it comes, and do what it takes to better themselves and seek a future of productivity and appreciation for all things.  At the age of 32 I am beginning to understand, or comprehend some semblance of this search, this journey for these promises.  

2012 was the best year I have ever had, I mean that.  I, for the first time in my life, felt what it meant to see years of hard work reach people, communicate on many platforms with people all over the world, create a better living situation for myself, and in turn afford me opportunities to continue to grow and learn and love the world I am a part of.  Throughout 2012 I felt like a Phoenix finally exploding out of the grime and filth and sludge, the chaos and friction and anxiety and self hate, the self imposed fears and restrictions and bars that I had to evolve out of in order to get the perspective on my place in the world I have now.  Suddenly things made sense, and the knowledge that so many things will never make sense became something I could swallow.  I didn't have to wake up paralyzed by anxiety and fear of life everyday.  The ability to be okay with the world no matter how one thinks it "should" be reconciled, to have ideas and opinions but be able to love life regardless of "if" those ideas and opinions matter or not and simply let life be what it is no matter the outcome is perhaps the biggest "promise" of all.

It is the difference between breathing or suffocating, loving or hating, being enveloped by fear of the unknown or embracing the unknown because it is what we are born from.  And it took over a quarter of a century to have this way of seeing beaten, massaged, sliced, explained, recommended and finally born into my psyche.  On the Wu-Tang albums I grew up listening to they call this "knowledge of self God".  Thank you RZA and the rest for setting a young framework for generations to be influenced by.

So this all brings me here.  It isn't even about me, but for intensive purposes I am the one writing this as I turn to a year further in the development of my spirit in the universe, as my body gets one year closer to its end.  I really feel that the end of the physical will only be the beginning of a higher stage, but I will do the very best I can with this life  as it is all I know and as I work toward a relationship with all things.  I feel my physical being, every inch ounce hair fiber cell tingle.  Getting older has been amazing thus far.

I have work up at the Shooting Gallery in SF right now as part of their Winter Group Show and I am honored to be a part of their movement in the art world as it helps to define, reinterpret, investigate, and communicate with the world we are a part of.  I have work up at LOAKL Gallery in Oakland as well, and I am proud to be a part of the early stages of Ken Harman's new addition to the Bay Area art world as well as he will continue to thrive and spread amazing things to so many people.  I will be in a group show at Ocean Avenue Tattoo in SF with my good friend SALEM on January 26th.  In March I will be a part of a group show curated by Michael Cuffe who runs Warholian.  Then it is off to Japan for a Month long residency at Spes-Lab in Tokyo.

And then in June the first installment of a year long program I have at the SFMOMA opens with three more series of work in the SFMOMA space going up each three months until June 2014. I will finally be having a huge solo show in the Fall of 2013 that will be my last big exhibition of the year and coincide with the second (fall) program I am installing at the SFMOMA.  All of this is really happening now, and if not for every bit of life I have survived on this planet leading up to now, none of it would be happening.  I am more grateful now for the life my parents created that I have become than I ever knew was possible. Many more updates to come very soon!  -John Felix Arnold III, 01/15/2013  IPD FOR LIFE!

SF Weekly Article and New Updates.

So first and foremost I would like to thank Kate Conger at SF Weekly for doing an awesome article and interview on yours truly and the world of "Unstoppable Tomorrow".  It feels really good to open up about some of the finer and darker points of my life that has sculpted my art making to what it is today!  She is a great writer, really made me dig deep and I do thank her for the opportunity to do this piece.  It feels good to spill your guts sometimes in print.  Here is a link, click on the image below...

Lastly, I have amazing news.  I will be doing a residency at Spes-Lab in Tokyo in April of 2013, and then when I come back it is time to do my first installation of a year long program of the SFMOMA windows in downtown San Francisco.  More on this to come!!! Things are looking good!

The Adventure in Japan Part 2 : Painting Commission and More...

So the latter half of my trip was begun with a painting commission for a native New Yorker.  My friend I-Am-Jesse, a killer DJ who has resided in Japan for many years now, hit me up around the same time I was contacted by Ken South Rock to make a painting for his amazing Shibuya apartment.  I crashed at my good friends Frankie and Emi's house for a couple days near Shinjuku as I began to work on the piece, and then made it over to Jesse's in Shibuya to finish.  Upon completion my last few days in Japan were numbered and the insanity ensued.  The latter half of the trip was full of art making, book buying, amazing food, awesome city lurking, people watching, mad partying, building new relationships with some amazing artists, spending time with really good old friends, and all around general mayhem.  I was even introduced to a group of artists who run an alternative space called Spes-Lab in Ebisu, Tokyo, and was coincidentally invited to come back in the Spring to rock a solo venture at the space.  I was dumbfounded, honored, intimidated, and pretty much floored when I was asked to do this, as I have always wanted to have something like this come about and had never imagined it would be this soon.  Big thank you to everyone and everything that made this experience possible.  It was amazing.

The video store near Frankie and Emi's crib was pretty cool.  I was into the character design on this one and...

I found John Rambo in Japan.  Japambo!  Then I found the "adult section"  holy shit, craziness.  Also they have some truly bizarre and intense porn out there...

This temple is right down the street from Frankie and Emi's place.  One of the most amazing things about cities like Tokyo is that you are bombarded with a truly modern even futuristic high tech setting all the time.  Yet every few blocks you are reminded of the city's rich, thousands of years of history shown in structures and places like this amidst the Blade Runneresque developments.

Super sick monk statue at a temple in the middle of Tokyo.

Temple Graveyard near Frankie and Emi's.

So after the graveyard it was time to get to work and start painting my commission...

Commission Painting Stage one at Frankie and Emi's House.

And then...

So I got the back ground worked up to where I really liked it at Frankie and Emi's place.  Honestly once I got it to this point, I seriously considered not taking it any further for I felt I had never gotten an abstract piece to this level before and really questioned letting it just be.  It felt good to just sit there and stare at and it felt balanced, so I took a break and distracted myself with other things like...

Talking deliriously to Emi's stuffed animal friends, like this pig, and...

Watching Frankie and Emi come in from the hottest fucking day of all time and totally zone out on the couch as the air conditioner cooled them down to "human" levels.

Then it was time to get on the bus to go to DJ I-Am-Jesse's crib and finish working on this piece.

I had to get some sushi before I got back to work.  This was a wopping $7. True Talk.

I-Am-Jesse's crib in Shibuya, sickkkk!

Sayin cheese for my own lens.

So after a lot of pondering, a lot of reference research, and a lot of plain old compositional thinking, I started putting down line work.  It literally took about three hours of looking and adjusting the direction and order of the two panels to finally make my first marks.

Work table in full effect.

And boom, just about finished product.

Detail.

Right Panel Detail

Right Panel Detail

Finished Paintings.

What a view from I-Am-Jesse's Crib.  Talk about an amazing place to make art!

Shake Weight is even weirder in Japan!  Japanese TV time.  The pieces are still "Untitled"  but they as a Diptych should just be called "Dream Adventure" because that's what this trip was. Each Panel was about 2'x3' and the paintings were a mixture of spray paint, house paint, and plastic model kit enamel. Here are a couple more shots.

Left Side Panel "Things Do What They Will" I think I should call it.

And the right panel should be called "Learning How to Fill My Lungs".

So the night I finished the commission we went out on the town, and we ended up at the amazing Spes-Lab.

Next Post to Come.  Japan part 3!!! The final installment, Spes-Lab, Yoyogi Park, and getting weird all the way to Haneda airport.