"Good artists copy;

Great artists steal."

Like all artists, I am constantly collecting inspiration, particularly from other contemporary artists.

Here are some of my favorites.

Pony Reinhardt

Pony currently operates a private, custom tattoo studio in Brooklyn, after having gained world-wide notoriety for their exquisite tattoo design and execution.

Personal Message

aka MICHAEL DUMONTIER AND NEIL FARBER

"I am not ready to die yet"

by Aracelis Girmay

after Joy Harjo

I am not ready to die yet: magnolia tree
going wild outside my kitchen window
& the dog needs a house, &, by the way,
I just met you, my sisters & I
have things to do, & I need
to talk on the phone with my brother. Plant a tree.
& all the things I said I’d get better at.

In other words, I am not ready to die yet
because didn’t we say we’d have a picnic
the first hot day, I mean,
the first really, really hot day?
Taqueria. & swim, kin,
& mussel & friend, don’t you go, go, no.

Today we saw the dead bird, & stopped for it.
& the airplanes glided above us. & the wind
lifted the dead bird’s feathers.

I am not ready to die yet.
I want to live longer knowing that wind
still moves a dead bird’s feathers.
Wind doesn’t move over & say That thing
can’t fly. Don’t go there. It’s dead.
No, it just blows & blows lifting
what it can. I am not ready
to die yet. No.

I want to live longer.
I want to love you longer, say it again,
I want to love you longer
& sing that song

again. & get pummeled by the sea
& come up breathing & hot sun
& those walks & those kids
& hard laugh, clap your hands.
I am not ready to die yet.

Give me more dreams. To taste the fig.
To hear the coyote, closer.
I am not ready to die yet.
But when I go, I’ll go knowing
there will be a next time. I want

to be like the cactus fields
I drove through in Arizona.
If I am a cactus, be the cactus
I grow next to, arms up,
every day, let me face you,
every day of my cactus life.

& when I go or you go,
let me see you again somewhere,
or you see me.

Isn’t that you, old friend, my love?
you might say, while swimming in some ocean
to the small fish at your ankle.
Or, Weren’t you my sister once?
I might say to the sad, brown dog who follows me down
the street. Or to the small boy
or old woman or horse eye
or to the tree. I know you I knew I know you, too
I’m saying, could this be what makes me stop
in front of thatdogwood, train whistle, those curtains
blowing in that window. See now,
there go some eyes you knew once
riding the legs of another animal,
wearing its blue sky, magnolia,
wearing its bear or fine
or wolf-wolf suit, see,
somewhere in the night a mouth is singing
You remind me You remind me
& the heart flips over in the dusky sea of its chest
like a fish signaling, Yes, yes it was me!
&, yes, it was, & you were there, & are here now,
yes, honey, yes hive, yes I will, Jack,
see you again, even if it’s a lie, don’t
let me know, not yet, not ever,

I need to think
I’ll see you, oh,
see you
again.

"To Those of You Alive in the Future"

by Dean Young

who somehow have found a sip of water,

on this day in the past four syndicated

series involving communication with the dead

were televised and in this way we resembled

our own ghosts in a world made brief with flowers.

To you, our agonies and tizzies

must appear quaint as the stiff shoulders

of someone carrying buckets from a well

or the stung beekeeper gathering honey.

Why did we bother hurrying from A to B

when we’d get no further than D, if that?

On Monday, it sleeted in Pennsylvania

while someone’s mother was scoured further

from her own mind. A son-in-law smoked

in the parking lot, exhaling white curses

torn apart by the large invisible indifference.

The general anesthetic wore off

and someone else opened her eyes to the results.

In this way our world was broken and glued.

But why did we bother shooing away the flies?

Did we think we could work our way

inside a diamond if we ground more pigment

into the paper’s tooth, tried to hold fire

on our tongues, sucked at the sugars of each other?

Many the engagement rings in the pawnshop.

Many the empties piled at the curbs.

A couple paused on a bridge to watch

chunks of ice tugged by bickering currents.

One who slept late reached out

for one who wasn’t there. Breads, heavy

and sweet, were pulled from wide infernos

of stone ovens. My name was Dean Young,

I wrote it on a leaf. Sometimes

I could still manage to get lost,

there was no guidance system wired inside me yet.

Laughter might have come from a window

lit far into the night, others were dark

and always silent.

Genne Laakso

Laakso is a metal-smith with a particular interest in extreme body modifications.

Nikki McClure

Nikki McClure is a papercut artist

working in Olympia, Washington. She is the author and illustrator of several children's books and publishes a yearly calendar.

Hope Gangloff

Hope is a contemporary

painter who focuses mainly on colorful and emotive

portraits of family and

friends. She currently

resides in New York.

Jacob Van Loon

Firelei Baez

"Firelei Báez was born in Santiago de los Caballeros and lives and works in New York. She makes intricate works on paper and canvas that are intrinsically indebted to a rigorous studio practice as well as large scale sculpture. Through a convergence of interest in anthropology, science fiction, black female subjectivity and women’s work; her art explores the humor and fantasy involved in self-making within diasporic societies, which have an ability to live with cultural ambiguities and use them to build psychological and even metaphysical defenses against cultural invasions." (from her website fireleibaezstudio.com)