I Believe They Call It 'Primitive'... by CoreyBlack
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Description
Primitive? Urban Primitive? Crudely-rendered photo realism? Neo Sophisticated Abstract Representational Primitive? I don't know what you'd call it, but for a change of pace I thought I'd subject perfectly innocent people to some of my non-photo art.
This illustration is typical of one of my drawings; I recall my high school art teacher, Mr. Conroy (who looked like the late CBS News correspondent Charles Kauralt,) saying with manly admiration, "I can always tell one of your pictures, Mr. Black, because it has everything in it, including the kitchen sink."
I was teacher's pet. It was easy to be teacher's pet in a class where all of the other students were throwing clay wads at each other.
I drew this picture at the window counter of the Kentucky Fried Chicken that used to stand on the southeast corner of Broadway and Belmont, on the sultry afternoon of July 7th, 1991. This spot was directly across the street from where I'd made the photos "New Town" and "New Town Redux."
I inadvertently captured a bit of history by including the "MISSING" poster of Jeremiah Weinberg in the window of "Ricky's." Everybody knew Jeremiah, at least casually; he worked at the heavily-patronized gay-haunts, Cafe Pergolisi and the Bijou Theater. Seeing his face on a Missing Person's flyer posted all over New Town was kind of shocking. The news was even more horrendous, two weeks later, when the infamous Jeffrey Dahmer serial murder story broke and we learned that Jeremiah was one of his final victims.
Comments (11)
elfin14doaks
Great picture. Very nice work.
jocko500
cool and the history is wonderful
tennesseecowgirl
This is wonderful, and I really enjoyed your story..
JuliSonne
Cool street scene.
lwperkins
I love this kind of slice-of-life work! It's original and fascinating!
beachzz
You caught so much here, a slice of life as it happens. The related story about Jeremiah simply makes it that much more real.
IO4
Great picture! The detail is wonderful, and the little piece of history adds to it.
durleybeachbum
I love it, Corey! So much about it is perfect..It fills the frame, there is no non-space and every shape counts, the composition is so satisfying,there is exactly the right amoung of information about each component...Marvellous. You'd have been teachers pet in my class too (although any clay thrower would have been nursing his crushed gonads in a corner.)
myrrhluz
This is wonderful! I can look at a picture and do a pretty good sketch, but to look out of a window and do the same thing is beyond me. All the things that Andrea said, doing all of that, without the aid of a picture on a 2d surface is excellent! I love all the detail! Did they really serve peanut omelettes and have parking in a lot called evergreen? The perspective is excellent, the complexity and busyness of the scene, fascinating! Terrific drawing and very interesting narrative. The bit of history is a chilling reminder of that horrible serial murder story. Superb work!
helanker
AWWWW ! How could I miss a drawing. It is awesome Corey. So beautiful and detailed. I hope you have more of this kind, as I´d love to see them. This is good.
anahata.c
lol on your struggle for a "category". "Categories? We don't need no stinking categories..." I threatened to comment on this for, ohhhhhhhh, 3, 4 decades, and now I finally am. It's so free & whimsical, but you still have all kinds of disciplines throughout. The way you shade the walls, the lines of modeling in the architecture of the right-side doorway, the simple detailing in the bricks, etc. (It almost looks like you used washes here too.) What I'm trying to say is that it's spontaneous and very playful, but very disciplined & thoughtful as well. And I love how you tilted each side as if it were a photograph with a not-so-pro-lens (like MINE), which naturally curves the edges towards the center. That may have been intuitive on your part, but it's a delightful choice. I love the guy upfront, I love how you did his hat and head-band (yes?) and his lips and somewhat blank street-walking expression. And the details of the cars & their passengers, and all the things that made this block what it was. I ate at Ricky's more times than I can count, only it was in the 70s & 80s. And had some reeeeealllly bad meals there, and some really good ones too. You got that "from a snack to a meal" down pat, and its window on Broadway too. And that newsstand, and the general city-but-also-small-neighborhood feel of the block. I love this drawing. I wonder how many you have of chicago. It was wonderful to see this go up. I noticed, a day later, that you corrected "inciteful" to "insightful" in a comment to me, lol. (It was something like that---incite was in there somewhere.) It was fine, I truly knew what you meant! (I understand why you changed, it but just so you know, I didn't even think about it at the time.) But it would've been great if, after writing inciteful, I rounded up 200 people and we came to your gallery and stormed the place, tearing down the advertisements to the side, spraying red paint all over your descriptions, changing the number of fav's, and ripping down the artwork with some epithets written all over it. Speaking of Art vs art. That would be a new genre of Rosity art. (You're welcome to do it to my gallery if you want: I'd welcome the "next step" genre.) I've thought of making such an image for my gallery, but 1) it would be too big to fit, and 2) I'm not freakin' good enough. Then I also thought, as I was reading the revised comment: "Hey---this is the same comment!". (I didn't see the spelling change till the end.). So I thought: This guy's one of our most creative people, maybe this is his response to the Art vs art thing: He's gonna go around to all the galleries he's commented on and delete his comments, then put back the same comments afterwards. And maybe he'll do it for 30, 40 days. You gotta admit, that would be a helluva piece of art. Comment Art, maybe. So even though you were just correcting a spelling, you bordered on some terrific art choices. Anyway, thanks for your wonderful comments, Corey, and this drawing's a delight. Made me wanna go back there again...it's been a long, long time...