On Paper

In the summer of 2004, I was asked to design a cover Michigan State University's Journal of Medicine and Law. Their editor-in-cheif felt in previous years, their journal covers were a bit plain for his tastes--almost always white with a black and white picture of their law school building on the cover, all-centered text stating the name of the journal, and usually a table of content’s right on the front cover. But they felt that the presentation of the journal should hold as much weight as its contents, so they wanted to invest in the design of a slick, eye-catching cover that would lend the journal more credibility from a first initial glance. The woman watermarked on the cover is part of the MSU logo, and the left side of her shoulder wrapped around the binding and bled a bit onto the back cover of the journal.

A group of 16 people, including myself, performed a choreographed bhangra for one of the two national bhangra competitions at the time Bhangra Fusion. The lead choreographer and I designed a stage set for the dance, which included a base platform that was 4’ high, 8’ wide and 3’ deep made out of 2×4’s and plywood, and we painted the front of it with latex paint to look like a tractor with words on the right side of the tractor actually saying ‘Chicago’ in Punjabi. On top of this base platform was two people holding another platform on their shoulders, and standing on top of that THAT platform, was me--about 20' in the air! All the outfits were designed by us and made by a woman on our team. We danced with dandas (long sticks) that we painted striped with silver cloth.

Honorable mention in LesClaypool.com’s Art Contest (Printscreen).

Les Claypool the bassist for the band Primus, and was a major point of inspiration for my bass playing while I was younger. His style was unlike anything else I'd ever heard, and his attitude towards the instrument was free-spirited, and I felt he was unafraid to push his playing and music in new and unique directions.

In this work I tried to capture the quirkiness of his style of playing, and how he seems to make his bass an extension of his body, and himself an extension of his bass guitar.