Rove versus Bannon

Here's a recent piece for The New Yorker, exploring the mutual animosity between Karl Rove, and Steve Bannon. Wow, that's like a contest between Jabba the Hutt, and a guy who goes around kicking puppies. Who do you root for?? Either way, like we used to say in school: FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

Thank you to my A.D., Kara.

What we do is secret

This piece for the Boston Globe's Sunday Op-Ed section was a really quick turnaround. Last Wednesday afternoon/evening, basically. The op-ed is about the Senate meeting that took place out of view of the public, behind closed doors, at night. And something was actually accomplished! The GOP agreed to confirm Obama's appointees for various posts, in exchange for the ability to filibuster. The author suggests that transparency in politics may not be such a good thing:

It's an interesting thought, and I was eager to try my hand at representing the idea visually. Here are the other sketches:

I liked the idea of showing the Capitol blurred, obstructing public view. I also tried using the "off the air" screen over the Capitol, since the meeting took place late at night, off camera- although that may have worked better had this piece been in color. The last sketch shows how the politicians' statements being redacted leads to agreement. The point of the article is that our leaders grandstand and ape for the cameras far too much for any compromise to be achieved. SOAPBOX ALERT: While I do agree that playing to the cameras, and offering sound bites instead of solutions can be extremely frustrating (and this was a meeting about confirming nominees and filibuster rules, not drafting some specific legislation), I personally disagree with the premise. It all seems so backwards nowadays. Private citizens' every electronic communication can be collected, stored and analyzed, with barely any oversight, much less a warrant, and we're expected to allow our elected officials- whom we've hired to work on our behalf- to conduct business in the dark?
Thank you to Greg and Dan for the assignment!

Changeling

These past couple weeks I had been thinking that my illustration in 5280 would be out in next month's issue. Oops, nope, it's out now. Here's the piece, for an article about how Colorado has turned from red state to purple, and soon enough, due to the high number of Hispanic, young, female and urban voters, will be a pretty blue state:

Having a woman changing from red and purple clothes into blue seemed like a good idea, and combining the changing room with a voter booth just fell into place.

Like I said, the issue is out now if you want to check it out. Thank you, Dave!
Up next: L.A. Times.

Crossing the line with Village Voice

If you pick up your city's free weekly paper this next week (if it's part of Village Voice Media) you'll see the cover story that's running nationwide. "Crossing the Line" is a series of articles/columns on the state of affairs we find ourselves in nowadays in the good ol' USA. From "papers please" laws, to new laws attempting to keep as many people of color as possible from voting. I was asked to illustrate a few of these essays:

  
"Welcome Back, Jim Crow." This essay discusses the attempts in states across the U.S. to keep people from voting. From purging voters, to ending Sunday voting, to requiring various forms of identification to vote, politicians nationwide are finding different ways to make voting harder. Completely by coincidence, the people most affected by these laws are minorities.

"Days of Rage." This essay lists the many ways that Mexicans/Chicanos and Latinos have been targeted in the last few years, and the inevitable Civil Rights-like action that's bound to follow. When I was given the assignment, we didn't have the story, and were under the impression that the column would make more of a connection between the Civil Rights Era demonstrations of the past, and the need to do the same today.

"Love the Beans, Hate the Beaner." Gustavo Arellano's hilariously tongue-in-cheek essay on the United States' historic attempts to repress Mexican culture by purging Mexican cuisine. Long story short, the attempts failed. Americans surrendered to Mexicans, according to Gustavo, when they surrendered to their food.

This was an awesome project to work on, and I was honored to contribute. As the son of a once illegal immigrant, these articles are a welcome wake up call- not only to people concerned about their own family members, but also those concerned about basic civil rights for other human beings. Thanks so much, Tom!

Even the pet cemetery voted for Bob!

Yes, that is a Simpson's quote. Here's an interior illustration I recently finished for Columbia Law School Magazine, for the feature article on gerrymandering and the redistricting process:


One of the issues the article touched on is the way the redistricting process can affect elections. By re-drawing the borders of districts, minority communities can be split up, thereby having no impact on elections. The process can also separate an incumbent from his original constituents, or draw two incumbents into a single district, forcing them to run against each other. This link was passed to me while working on the job, and explains a little more. I wanted to show how drawing the district borders could potentially disrupt people's votes. The client requested that the image involve a district map in some way, so I drew some of the districts in the shape of a hand dropping off a ballot, which is cut off by the newly drawn border.

The art direction and page design was provided by the wonderful Barnett Group. Thanks again, Aileen and David! And thank you, Matthew.

Not quite quick enough on the draw...

I started and finished a piece yesterday, in response to the developments in Egypt over the past week. I had planned on sending it to newspaper ADs I've worked with before, to see if they could use it in connection to any stories running on the subject. I had a concept in mind in the morning, and started working out the final. I had been checking the Opinion section on the nytimes.com site throughout the day to make sure nothing had already run. As I was finishing the piece, and getting ready to send a jpeg out, I checked the site one more time... wouldn't you know it, the brilliant Christoph Niemann had beaten me to the punch! It wouldn't have been a big deal, as I'm sure there will be dozens of illustrations about Egypt in the coming days, but we coincidentally thought of a nearly identical concept! Here's mine:


Here's a link to Christoph's.
Very different styles, and actually, mine was more addressing the possible repercussions of a revolution in Egypt. Christoph's appears to be illustrating the idea of individuals, working collectively, bringing down the entire Mubarak regime? But after seeing his piece had already been published, I figured it would be pointless to send mine to any ADs. I thought it was a funny story though, so I sent it to Alexandra at the Times, and she agreed it was pretty crazy. Oh well. If I may flatter myself, I guess great minds do think alike.

Also, my limited edition self-promo booklets are done! More details to follow...