My ideas for the project are centered around communication and the ways we find to say something, literally or not. If my ashtray could speak, it would say many things but the look of a full ashtray, cigarettes half buried in ash, can say a lot too without using the words. This cigarette was burned under stress. Another cigarette crushed into oblivion with a growing rage, of pain.
I worked with a song by Wilco with the song lyric: "Ashtray says you were up all night". It got me to thinking about the ways we can communicate besides spoken word, as sometimes the verbal can make one uneasy. Suggestive speech is more profound.
My cigarette butts are stamped, where the brand name would usually be, with a words that might have been symbolized by the end of that particular cig. "Fuck", it could be. "Cock! TITS CUNT" etc, etc. Whatever might have permeated from that last lit ember on the tip of a dying cigarette may very well have been a speech bubble. A memory. Shit
The first few sketches i did were too sketchy for me.. too busy with lines organized into patterns. I scanned an image into photoshop and began painting over the pencil work and treating it as if it were an under painting. The effect i got made the image look like an ink wash with some line work showing through from underneath. I decided this light, watery feeling was interesting because it somewhat mimicked smoke clouds, like the cigarettes are made from the very stuff we suck down. I added some hints of brown on some of the filters to break up the white space of the cigs.
I guess its hard to understand the relief, the light headedness, the grounding, yet the freeing feeling of that first FIEND after drag if you don't smoke. Its sticky and dirty and warm warm warm! Even in the summer. It travels down your trachea to your lungs, which will probably curse you when you get older, but at the time, tighten up with joy!
