HEY APATHY! Rise of the City Monster ...

Rise of the City Monster! All the cars, people, wires, and bricks of the monstrous metropolis take influence from an unseen energy. The hustle bustle shopping and routines over flow the concrete walk as the spring sun and warm weather touch the city. Unstoppable and unknowable the force of the activities initiates a transgressive metamorphosis as the inhabitants, both animate and otherwise, are pulled forth into a new existence. As a giant mecha-beast of Kong like qualities, the city monster is risen! This 30 x 40" pen and ink illustration was made on site at Queen and Spadina, downtown Toronto. The drawing took approximately 60 hours to complete, however as one might surmise from the illustration, the streets were quite busy with distraction. In fact such a drawing could likely have been achieved indoors in a third of the time, however the imagery could never have been realized if such were the case.

HEY APATHY! is an ongoing artistic investigation of the city, people, monsters, and existence in general. My entire body of artworks reads like an unconscious narrative slowly revealing the true nature of the big city. In my earliest artworks I used simplistic imagery depicting people as faceless bubbles and the buildings like an ominous gear. Since then I have persistently moved both my artist's processes and exhibition techniques into the public forum. At first I started working in cafe and bar patios, and performing at outdoor festivals. As I spent more time drawing around the city the little faceless bubble people started to identify themselves.  Eventually I took the show to the streets and set up shop in downtown Toronto on a regular basis. It was during these experiments that I found the most inspiration. Although technical processes were at the whim of the elements and much craftmanship had to be either sacrificed or adjusted, the experiences and interactions more than made up for the lack of ceilings and studio walls. Each year since I've been doing this I have managed to completely reinvent my own perception of people and of buildings, and likewise each season I have unintentionally recreated   my artistic expressions. I've curated the whole ordeal as a thirteen chapter catalogue over at http://www.heyapathy-comics-art.com/ .  The city monster above is from chapter 10, one of my favourite collections in the ink stained mythology.