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Friday, March 28, 2008

Civilization

Recently, Zach Franzen, our once-peaceful Keeper of the Blog here at Portland Studios, in a moment supreme enlightenment, discovered that civilization, as a concept, is best described with the tea. (strange, I know, bear with me)
When he arrived at this illumination, he was immediately impelled on a terrible, terrible crusade. In a stupor, he went downstairs to the Dollar General and acquired ten thousand packets of the most inferior and evil looking tea I have ever seen. He threw all those packets (and a rock badger and a spare tire) into a huge vat and boiled them for 3 days and nights. When he was finished he brought in a super concentrated brew of semi-liquid death and held all of the artists here at gunpoint, forcing us to paint pictures of "civilization" with only this evil concoction of his. Waving an AK-47 in the air he cried repeatedly, "Either you paint with this bulwark of civilization, or I'll make you drink it! What's it gonna be people!?" He threw out all our computers, he burned our pencils and he flushed all the watercolors down the drain.
I hid under my desk while he cried, "In the new millennia, there will be, only TEA! No longer shall we wear the stains of our high fructose corn syrup! No longer the cold, synthetic hum of fluorescent lights! No longer shall we be shackled to the chains of these poisons and greasy black machines! NO! Society will be green! Civilization will be pure! No longer bereft of the blessed sap we, as a collective body, united in Tea, shall be transported to new heights! TEA! TEA! TEA!"
Fearing for my internal organs, I painted...



He has written his sinister manifesto on the Portland blog, for any who are discerning enough to see through his glittering generalities to the underlying poison written between those tea-stained lines.

11 comments:

  1. This is beautiful! Her face is exquisite. In the back of my head I'm thinking I should toss my paints and grab some Earl Grey.

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  2. Beautiful painting and bizarrely entertaining post - nice work on both parts!

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  3. I love your & the rest of the Portland crew's stuff. Just awesome.

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  4. and ooooh you paint beautifully, she says as she sips her Constant Comment.

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  5. well if tea in the new millenia can bring forth more stunning work such as yours, than im all for it! nicely done.

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  6. Your art work is wonderful. This piece is really beautifully drawn and with a great use of unusual medium!

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  7. Awesome wrant, ah, er, story. The painting is also superb. The blending is so clean yet there is a very graphic element to it too. Great work.

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  8. You are one of the few I've seen in awhile that understands line quality. The delicate nature of the girl is so touching, I'm surprised that you pulled it off with vile tea and a gun pointed at your quivering face. I think I would fear the tea more then the gun, bad tea is of the devil. Keep it up.

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