z o s o _ o n e _ b l o g

oh, hey there internet....

2011-03-08T16:38:00.001-08:00

i must admit that i have been letting my internet presence lack. my website has been out of date for a couple years now, and my blog, which sort of ended up taking over the website has been neglected as well. I've been out of town quite a bit (thats a whole 'nother entry) and i let my web hosting lapse and i think i lost my whole old website. but its more of a blessing than a curse as i desperately needed to start fresh with a new format. I'll be getting together a new site in the coming weeks focusing on just my later works and illustration projects. it needs to be done.

but for now heres my latest painting:

for the INLE show at gallery 1988 this friday (march 11th), curated by greg 'craola' simkins, its gunna be a great show and i'm proud to be a part.

REP THE WEST!

2010-07-26T17:58:00.000-07:00

RONIN.GALLERY PROUDLY PRESENTS
WEST COAST HAND PENDANT by ZOSO
rep the west! big and beefy, about 2 1/2 inches long, solid cast
white bronze. choose to rock it on a 30″ chain or a keychain.

click the pic!

on point with the ballpoint

2010-06-24T16:42:00.000-07:00

recent scribblings in tha ol sketchbook:

in other news, i'm brainstorming on my next solo show. it will be late 2010 or early 2011... just in the concepts stage right now... stay tuned for more info...

"spirit trifectum"

2010-05-30T02:50:00.000-07:00

first oil painting in a while, i'm pretty happy with it:

showing at the cave gallery 5/4

shanty installation

2010-05-14T22:26:00.000-07:00

for the ronin gallery's NEX GEN show.

stage one:

stage two:

NEX GEN 2010

2010-04-08T17:09:00.001-07:00

been working towards this for a while... the grand opening of ronin 2.0.
should be a great show, make sure to come out and join us!

skritch skratch sketch

2010-03-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

select scans from the sixteenth sketchbook.

more here.

RONIN 2.0

2010-03-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

dear internets:

sorry for ignoring you lately. i will be making a conscious effort to keep you posted a little better on my happenings.

since i last posted, a lot of things have happened. india blew my fucking mind, came back, worked a lot, traveled a bit more; texas, new york and virginia mainly. visited close friends and had some times to remember. been working on some great little projects, mostly playing with pen n ink. life's been busy, but its been good. 2010 is already beating the pants off 2009.

the BIGGEST news in my life right now, the most exciting, comes in the form of a partnership with my homie, mr. peekaboo.

he as run the Ronin gallery in echo park for about a year and a half now, and i've partnered up with him to re-locate it to a great location in silverlake, currently housed by Thinkspace gallery. the space is a huge upgrade, and along with my involvement is a perfect opportunity to re-invent what ronin means and who we work with. we are working on putting our first show together right now, its right around the corner.

here it is:

go to the website and sign up for emails to keep posted!

peace, be back soon I PROMISE

2009-07-19T00:58:00.000-07:00

So I'm off to China in a few hours. I'm really excited! its my first time to Asia. I'll be in Shanghai, then New Delhi and a small town in the Himalayan foothills. possibly Kathmandu also. I'll try and update a bit from the road, but i dont know if i'll be able to post pics...

In other news, i'm in a couple more group shows coming up, bot are great lineups and i'll be showing alongside some great artists and long time friends.

Philly at the end of august:

but since i know if your reading this there's a better chance you in the LA area, so i also got a piece in this show at Ronin in echo park:

peace!

SF show at PUSH gallery

2009-07-14T13:42:00.000-07:00

i'm on my way to China and India next week! I've become addicted to travel.

finishing up a few pieces to represent myself while i'm gone in this great little group show up in san francisco :

spotted in an Eels video!

2009-07-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

EELS - In My Dreams - from HOMBRE LOBO

look! at about the 1 minute mark!
thanks to "josh" and "prince parise" for pointing this out to me.

Flatteryx1000!

2009-05-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

a friend pointed this out to me:

http://www.juxtapoz.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6191&Itemid=121

made me all warm n fuzzy for a second.

2009-05-20T20:53:00.000-07:00

i'll be throwin some paint around at the culver city artwalk:

check sour harvest for details

2009-05-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

i just got back from a medical missions trip in Ecuador. the following is a letter to a friend that had asked me to tell him all about it. i figure it sums up my trip pretty well so i just did the ol' copy n paste, and added a couple photos for effect.

yeah, shits crazy down there. it was a very surreal trip, an amazing experience. many moments i'll keep with me forever. it was hot and sticky, torrential downpour about every other night, blazing sun every day. the city, guayaquil, is a pretty big one, the biggest in the country but not the capitol (and also not very touristed). just a big polluted grimy mess basically. lots of poverty everywhere, chaotic traffic (whats a lane?) (4 guys on a pile of plantains in the back of a jerry-rigged pick up with a rope tailgate and one odd tire), basically straight up 3rd world shit. the first weekend we were there fell on the presidential elections, so shit was extra crazy. (also included a liquor ban which we worked around). i only exaggerate slightly when i say it felt like martial law. lots and lots of army guys with their m-16s posted everywhere, and throngs of people at demonstrations and polling places. and beyond the election madness, there were security and military people posted up outside of shops and places everywhere, with the flack jackets ammo belts and massive assault rifles or stockless shotguns.

so thats the vibe. and what made it surreal is that we were staying at a 5 star hotel and eating at fancy restaurants every night. bourgeois living while we are surrounded by all this poverty and social messiness. oh also i was hanging out with mel gibson's son... kind of a mind fuck.

not to mention the actual mission we were on, giving heart surgery to little kids. we (they) did 20 open heart surgeries and as many cath procedures (where they go into the heart with a device through an artery and are able to fix certian types of holes). i was able to sit in on a couple open heart surgeries. THAT was a trip. way more intense and fascinating than i expected. a little 6 year old girl, you see her ribcage sawed through and ripped open, and they use whats basically a soldering iron to do most of the cutting. it instantly cauterizes it so it doesnt bleed, but it also smokes and smells of burning human flesh. ...didnt expect that... then they get to the actual heart, thump thump thumping away. you can see all the way inside this child, and then (after putting the blood through an oxygenating machine and a million other steps), they stop the heart by literally spooning ice onto it, then they take the heart apart and tinker with it. they cut off a membrane from the outside and treat it with a chemical and use it to make a patch to repair a hole inside the heart.

on and on. a million steps that i only understand half of them. crazy shit. then you see this child a little while later in the ICU semi concious, you see her eyes and her face and just 40 minutes ago you were looking at the inside of her heart. mind fuck.

another moment was being able to tag along while we dropped this kid off. he lives in the slums. i seriously saw the kind of crooked ass shanty shit that i draw all the time. dirt roads, shacks made of warped planks and corrugated rust, the whole nine. no cars either. but the whole hood came out and greeted little miguel, checked out his scars, there were a ton of kids and by the end of the hour or so we were there they were crawling all over me. not sharing a language but laughing and playing anyway. the vibe was super laid back and happy there. no possessions, no worries. the kid to adult ratio was a little out of hand, which makes you think a little. its the same trend here of the poor/ uneducated breeding at 5 times the rate as the people that can actually afford to raise a kid, but amplified a lot. lots of things on the trip made me think along those lines.

some of our people got robbed at gunpoint in a cab one night, it was a crazy dramatic ordeal that involved one girl biting this fuckers face off. they fought the robbers off (but still had everything taken) but were separated from each other and stranded way outside of where the hotel was, in a dark deserted industrial neighborhood in the pouring rain with no money. everybody eventually made it back but for a long time we didnt know where 3 of the 5 were. thats the very abbreviated story of a very dramatic evening for everybody. scary shit.

more photos:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoso1/sets/72157617755640414/

2009-04-22T18:33:00.000-07:00

i'm leaving america again for a minute, i'm really really excited. going down to Ecuador, but its for a philanthropic cause this time not just dustin' off the ol' ramblin shoes.

so while i'll be out of town, i'll be here in spirit in the form of a couple group shows:

peace!

STREETARTGOEVERYWHERE!!!

2009-04-04T00:30:00.000-07:00

proof of existence accomplished on melrose: see unurth blog.

my biggest yet

2009-04-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

i've been challenging how big i can go with paste ups, and this one is the biggest yet. complete with paint splatters, this ones on a billboard above la cienega. the poster is about 8x11 feet.

also featured on the sour harvest blog. thanks again hoz!

ZOSO1 FUN PACKS!!!

2009-03-24T15:39:00.000-07:00

OMG!

4 BUTTONS!

6 STICKERZ!

THE FUNNEST PACKS EVERR!!!!1!

including one block cut postal sticker (crudely) hand made by the artist. the other stickers are clear coated vinyl stickers that'll out live you.

numbered limited edition of 100.

$8 FREE SHIPPING IN THE US! no tax or nuthin 8 bucks straight up. (international orders add $5) paypal prefered, if you want to pay another method email me.

PUSHERS SHOW

2009-03-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

gunna be dope, quite a lineup, really stoked on my little guy.

this thursday at munky king on melrose

CAVE gallery!

2009-03-05T13:53:00.000-08:00

c'mon out!

venice beach! art show! yeah!

ronin grand opening

2009-02-26T18:04:00.000-08:00

come out and support the grand opening of Ronin, the new coolest gallery on the block!

consider NY hit.

2009-02-25T16:45:00.000-08:00

photo by luna park

photo by SliceOfNYC

photo by SliceOfNYC

my influences in a blender

2009-02-24T15:40:00.001-08:00

the following is a rambling free-writing exercise i did several months ago. half political rant half beat prose about my neighborhood, i never intended to share it with the world. but reading it after the fact i kinda like it, so here:

an exercise in futility an exercise in creativity an exercise in spending my time.

the world is sick! god has coughed out of him a salty slime called humanity. we are organisims, we eat and we breathe and we shit and we fuck. a synapse in the frontal lobe causes a a chemical reaction. the surface area of the small intestine is the size of a tennis court.

old lady with gold teeth stands behind bulletproof acrylic plate an inch thick and open shirted blue collar boys with belt buckles and worn down paint sprayed cement sprayed work boots hang outside. lady of guadalupe, the virgin mary, six churches are open between here and vermont five blocks away. tacate. behind the scratched plexi and below the stale spice packets, behind the old lady that stands eye level to the counter with her huge glasses covering half her face, stands jesus christo four feet tall and pale like porcalin, with faded robes of purple clutching a staff. picture of a little girl, rosary beads. dollar bills in his fist. heinikin. chillado. calling card. bikini girls bud lite with lime fade in the window. marlboro lite 100's.

the corner bus stop a social club for those without a kitchen table or a coffe table or a leg to stand on. a story is written on that wall if you know the language. lady floats by on bended knees, a walking skeleton with skin stretched so tight around it its shiny. low cut blouse and biker shorts, lucky us. anatomy lesson of how frigile the human pelvis looks without all that flesh hugging it. carniceria that doesnt sell carne, will it be a forty or a duece-duece? swisher sweet or garcia y vega? how you doin tonight man, excuse me. hey there how ya doin, spare change help a brotha out? car ran outa gas, trying to get a taco, need to make a call help a brotha out? okay, i aint gunna lie, the other guys all lie, i aint gunna lie i'm trying to buy a beer. c'mon whaduya say man i got this drum kit for sale.

dead grey buff paint 50 coats thick, flaky and dusty and chunky and grimy. no matter how many times they repaint it it never stays clean. never looks fresh. the soot and the smog and the paint and the posters, they cover no matter what. a little girl's shoe.

dead beat down beat blue collar hombres play poker on a tuesday afternoon in a second story victorian bay window breakfast nook.

we all owe money to the system. even me with no debt i have debt. we all have debt. the dollar is debt. roses on the freeway onramp, i love you mom. thanks for bringing me into this mess, what the fuck was everyone thinking? america with its shiny rims and toaster ovens, i want my six hundred dollars. print a bunch more money and dole it out, that'll help. more meaningless credits to trade for shit from over the seas were that money came from in the first place. its okay, no payments till 2009, go ahead. lower the taxes and make more money, make a shit ton more while its still good.

money-makin' manhattan

2009-02-08T17:55:00.000-08:00

i'm off to NYC for a couple weeks, so hopefully my next post will involve some new street work

high school arts building

2009-02-04T18:39:00.000-08:00

i was recently invited by a high school art teacher (whom shares only one degree of separation from knowing me in a couple different directions) to contribute to decorating his school's art building. he is a huge fan of graffiti and street art, and is using it as a medium to teach kids that art cannot only be cool and within their reach, but also to encourage them to stand out and make a statement. Manual Arts High in South Central has a bad rap and is a typical institutionalized inner-city school with all the problems associated with them, but with the exception of the art building with Mr. _______'s help. As you can see i am in good company and there are several more well known heads on deck to contribute very soon. the kids were stoked and it was a rad experience! i wish my high school had this going on!

hidden gems series

2009-01-24T14:24:00.000-08:00

i recently took a trip up to the bay area, and drew up a bunch of goofy little flyer sized messages warning of the impending doom facing humanity. then i walked around SF for a couple days gluing them to things. they all look see through because they are still soaked with paste:

its for fun!

zoso hits the westside

2009-01-24T14:21:00.000-08:00

some of my recent street art is posted up in this blog here:

http://unurth.com/2009/01/19/zoso-santa-monica/

wintertime and the livin is easy

2008-12-14T14:19:00.000-08:00

this was just brought to my attention- Joe Hahn of Linkin Park let some photographers into his house to document some of his rediculous art collection and crazyness. this is from his "halo room", that is, a room that is dedicated to playing halo, and features a street sign of mine that was taken from the streets about 3 years ago. i heard about this before, but i had never seen it. when i first heard of it i was a little annoyed that he had someone take it down from the streets instead of try to find me to get one, but even more flattered, and now that i see what good company i'm in i'm even more flattered. this guy has the likes of big banksy, shep, craola, and ekundayo originals for daaaaays, and thats just the tip of the iceberg.

nga!

source: http://www.thehundreds.com/wordpress/?p=7557

was that a secret message?

2008-12-06T21:07:00.000-08:00

i have neglected this blog lately, i lost my camera in mexico city... well actually somewhere outside mexico city but thats not important. heres something to tide you over:

2008-10-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

in the johnny cupcakes store on melrose before it opened a few months ago. photo by johnny cupcakes.

2008-09-11T17:55:00.000-07:00

i think the best way to handle an emberrassing situation is to own it. Kurt of CO. made a little montoge of some footage he shot at redrocks and the tattoo shop (my memory of the footage in the latter is foggy at best):

Zoso takes a trip to Denver from Kurt Barbee on Vimeo.

good press on the livermoors

2008-09-10T17:53:00.000-07:00

on TOY CYTE

mile high ink

2008-09-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

denver is a lovely town, i wish i used the camera more liberally. the one place i whipped it out was red rocks:

tattoo attempt #1:

tattoo attempt #2:

NO REST preview pics

2008-08-18T18:46:00.000-07:00

heres a sneak peak from the studio for my upcoming show! many of the paintings arent finished yet, and will all have black beefy box frames. these sculptures are cast in resin from a sculpt i did, they will be a super limited edition of 5, each one hand painted in oils!

Timmy McHoodz came back from a knife fight

the studio in work mode!

NO REST FOR THE WEARY
Aug 28th 7-11
munky king melrose
7308 melrose ave, los angeles, 90046
www.munkyking.com

interview in an italian art blog

2008-08-14T16:11:00.001-07:00

click

babbling story of a completely mundane event.

2008-08-04T00:36:00.000-07:00

after the friends that had been keeping me company that night, important people in my life, left, i sat down to my familiar seat in front of the computer. i was turning off the video that was playing, i was showing off the david lynch podcast to the girl who had introduced me to sifl and olly. i went to go choose what i would be listening to on the ol' itunes while i got back to work. a fly flew in front of the computer and i instictively grabbed it out of the air. this summer i've had a hard time keeping them out of the house, they like to hang out on my porch and do laps and socialize in the shady shelter it provides, and my metal security screen door has a hard time reminding me to keep it shut religiously. truthfully the ugly black metal door barely lets light and air in, and i get a nice cross breeze with it open. my LA air conditioner. so needless to say i'm not anal about bugs in the house, although they do get on my nerves. little moths and gnats are more common than the fat summer housefly that i just ninja grabbed. i had him cupped in my hand and could feel him frantically buzzing around in my hand. i gave him a squeeze to kill him and dropped him in the ash tray on my desk. its actually a tiny tea-lite holder and serves as my small indoor ash tray for when i smoke my spliffs inside, which i do occasionally, lately while i'm painting a lot. in fact i had just lit one. i realized my light squeeze of death wasnt enough to kill him, and as soon as i popped him the the ashtray (which did have some ash in it), he started buzzing around, i had only startled him (or her) (for story-telling purposes we'll call it a him). I quickly poked him with the lit end of my spliff, but i just grazed him because he was buzzing around like a maniac. he was still quite alive, but lacked the will or ability to fly. so i poked him again. again, it was not enough. so i poked him again. then in the head, and held it for a second. still walking around. i had to suck on the spliff a little to get it going again, and when i got it close to him he still freaked out and buzzed all ovet the place. the whole time i was doing this i was kind of fighting my concoius. after 3 or 4 times i started to feel bad for the fly. what did he do to diserve this treatment? all he was doing was cruisin around lookin around for something to eat probably, he was probably distracted by my bright computer screen. i was torturing this insect, and it started to become an internal conflict. i stared at the little guy, his metallic green body covered in ashes and his wings all burnt, staggering around in a dustbowl of ash. do flys feel pain? i'm sure they do, they must. just because they run off pure instinct and have no real intelligence doesn't mean they dont have the capacity to feel pain. i have already experienced this same debate in my head when i was a small child, so frankly my internal dialog at the moment was nothing terribly worked up or heavy. i think the result of my chain of thought over the fly-torture debate, and also my kind of intuitive not thinking about it self, came to the same decision i had as a little kid: torture the fly, feel a little bad, keep doing it because its pretty entertaining to see how long they last, feel a little more bad because i'm doing some fucked up shit to this creature, keep doing it a little longer, then finially put it out of its misery. i never feel bad for just killing a fly or moth or anything in the house, i mean they're pests. i suppose on some deep level i believe all life is valuable and that what right do i have killing another organism, but on the other hand give me a break. i'm not even a vegetarian so that would be a really naive way to think. but torture? thats different. no living thing disserves to be tortured for the fun of it, and just because he happens to be a house fly doesn't mean his pain and panic isn't valid.

on the other hand though?

its
a
fucking
fly.

i grabbed a pencil from the desk and smooshed his body with the butt end of it (it was one of those drawing pencils with no eraser). his body still moved when i pulled it up. so i smashed his teeny little head against the side of the glass. that did it. his big red eyes popped. his exo-skeleton still seems pretty intact.

then felt like procrastinating some more and wrote a story about it.

z

2008-08-03T14:04:00.000-07:00

a while ago i did a custom munny for a canadian hip hop magazine, Thick. well they got on INTERNET TELEVISION!!! holy crap!

nno rrest

2008-08-02T04:47:00.000-07:00

hard at work!

I'd love to see everyone there!

i'll post some preview images at some point before the show.

heres a video i made for the painting on the flyer:
the warriors of shake-town shanty (timelapse painting)

put ya quarters up

2008-07-17T06:42:00.000-07:00

sneak peak: my piece for I AM 8-BIT. "Sir Thelonious Dupin and his loyal steed Pebbles"

4/6

2008-07-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

when the boys are in town, good times are had

LBC house party rock band

bumblebee's cardboard @carmichael

my section @carmichael

2008-07-09T13:47:00.000-07:00

house guests (photo credit josh taylor)
taco truck. (i eat here more than my kitchen)

grand enterance to the blogger world

2008-07-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

so here i am, joining the hordes of people with their very own blog. why? i dunno. i guess just a way to ramble, share my rants, observations, and internet discoveries, show off my art stuff, and all that without feeling to silly about it because thats what this is for. its seems like a more productive waste of time than watching TV on the internet...

for instance, i could tell you how rediculously busy i've been getting ready for my upcoming art shows, or i could just show you a picture of my newest roomate, Phyllis:

(not a fan of luke apparently)

i'm basically procrastinating right now, i need to be getting some art ready.

for......................

this show!

more soon
zoso