People are Sheep

By 1998 I'd been living in Athens long enough to be thoroughly educated and disgusted with most of college life. The self destructive behavior, passed off as "finding oneself," manifested in binge drinking, drug use, casual sex, and weekend parties, moved me towards isolation amongst my peers. Skateboarding and art served as my escape from my surroundings, without which I could have gotten involved in something cultish like church. Luckily I didn't, and put all my thoughts and energy of the moment  on a skateboard for a few people to see. Everything I had to say was written directly on the board, which was a first for me. Previously, I'd felt that if someone didn't understand why I did something questionable, they could at least confront me about it, but in this case I didn't want there to be any confusion. People are sheep. I believe I had watched Taxi Driver an unhealthy amount of times before completing this drawing which is why it's so dark. It's been years since I've read this, but I still believe that most people will willingly screw themselves out of a future to avoid the present.

Barcode

1997 was the year  I had an opportunity to go to London for a week and test the European market for raped inc. At this time I had just released the barcode graphic which was the first full color design for raped inc. The drawing was inspired by conversations with others about consumerism, Orson Wells, and the Mike Leigh film Naked, which I highly recommend. I was happy with the simple design which visualized the of application of the creative arts practice to an economic brand. What I like most about this one is the concept of "revenge rape" that art enacts on business by turning a graphic soulless symbol into an artistic statement against capitalism. 

Somebody's Watching You

This board marked another series of first for raped inc. Although I continued with the war theme, I decided to use a black and white pallet again to enforce the cold feeling of being watched. The image was taken from a book at the UGA library on events leading up to WWII. I'm not sure exactly what the image is because I lost the notes, but the original covered only 66% of the deck. In order to make a functional layout I had to create the another 3 buildings and wall to cover the entire right side. I was enrolled in an American art history class focusing on Architecture making it easier to complete the buildings in a manner that matched the time period. At the time I also wanted to use ink on transparency instead of paper, forcing me to spend more time on the details of the board graphics. I was also living on my own, so I had plenty of time to draw.  All the time spent researching and drawing paid off to produce one of my favorite graphics of the raped inc. line. I had also stopped using the same graphic for every shape because sales had actually grown.  This was the last board to have raped inc. written out, to be replaced by the "r" logo. 

With the economy in the crapper, I've been searching for some older work to post related to my thoughts about capitalism. I found a few that I produced onto skateboards in the 1990's under raped inc. Luckily, I also found my noted for this graphic as well. "Always keep the originals of your artwork. Always make a copy. Always send the copy to production in case something goes wrong. The climb of the cooperate ladder created many problems, most difficult being the loss of the original artwork that I foolishly sent to the printer where it was misplaced. In hindsight, it would have been worthwhile to redraw the bodies entirely, but as luck would have it I only mailed the background stock market numbers. If I had the chance to do this over again, I would have drawn the bodies directly onto the newspaper. At this point (2000), raped inc. was losing it's fire, and rather than make a meaningless graphic, I decided to end it after 12 boards and five years. I had grown tired of debating with people about how irresponsible I was for using the word raped for "commercial profit and other nonsense." Besides, I had said everything I wanted to with raped inc. and wanted to do something different. The inspiration for the composition of bodies came from Gericaut's The Raft of Medusa, 1819.