JOHN THE REVELATOR

Superman illustration for Warren Ellis contest

2010-03-07T19:19:00.001-05:00

Superman illustration for Warren Ellis contest

2010-03-07T19:19:00.000-05:00

REVELATION ONLINE!

2009-04-22T12:57:00.001-04:00

Hi everyone,

Just a note to let you know that the entire Revelation Illustrated project is now online. You can view the illuminations here.

Enjoy!

2007-07-04T18:10:00.000-04:00

Closer and closer....only two Chapters left for my Revelation Project. I thought I would provide another teaser. This is Chapter 20, which describes the final judgement of Satan and the "lake of fyre". I have a large collection of old War photos and various medical images from 1970's Science Encyclopedias (thrift store fodder). I came across this great image of a crowd of gasmask-wearing humans. I have typically avoid more contemporary 20th century references but this seemed to work perfectly.

Here is how I used the gas mask crowd shot in Chapter 20 (part one). Those of you who know my early carson-newman college era work will notice a resemblance to an old painting that once hung in the Omega Gallery. CLICK TO ENLARGE

2007-07-02T11:15:00.000-04:00

One of the things that has limited me in working with video is not having a lot of space (notice the outdoor woodsy settings for my work last year). Our new place has a nice big basement which I am working towards converting into a studio for both painting and low budget music and art videos. It is beautifully unfinished, naturally air conditioned, and has nice dirty concrete floors perfect for spilling paint!

The End is Near!

2007-06-02T21:10:00.000-04:00

My illuminated book of Revelation is nearing completion after over 2 years of work (of course, I took a long hiatus when I, um, got married, got a new job in a new state, and bought a house). I have gotten a lot of support over the months for this project and I really like that I was able to find a topic (the end of the world?) that almost everyone seemed to have a reaction to.

The last month has been a real burst of energy for me. A new friend in England wrote me after an Asthmatic Kitty post by my wife led her to this blog. She was not only really supportive but she is buying a couple pages. This unexpected enthusiasm really made me think....if I didn't plow through this project then it could be years before I finished it. Knowing that I had 9 Chapters left and some other unfinished pages, I have been tearing through Revelation with new vigor. On a couple of days I completed a whole page / Chapter. I am now at the point of having only 4 Chapters left before the whole project is finished. That will be a very good day. Until that day and the launch of a "permanent" Revelation website with the complete works, I will probably hold off on revealing some of the pages. However, in the spirit of this blog...I will post a couple to let people know that Operation Revelation illumination IS still active.

Chapter XVI (click to enlarge)

Chapter II, part 2

OUTVIDEO in Russia

2007-05-23T14:01:00.000-04:00

I just found out I will be in a show in Russia called OUTVIDEO. The theme of the show is 30 second silent videos that will be played in public spaces in Moscow and other highly populated areas. I reworked my short film Nocturne into a half minute piece that I'm pretty pleased with. It is short and sweet and even more mysterious in it's truncated form.

I'm assuming no one I know will be able to see my work shown. However, here is the link to the show. Should be interesting: OUTVIDEO

DEERMILK: The Werewolf Youth

2007-04-05T13:49:00.000-04:00

Last weekend I traveled to Washington, D.C. for the opening of an art show entitled DEERMILK: The Werewolf Youth. I was apart of the "collective" organized by the intrepid Mike Lowery a.k.a. Thomas Michael Lowery a.k.a. Babyface. The show is at The Warehouse Gallery downtown and is running until April 21st.

The opening was a great success and I enjoyed making new connections and meeting some talented young artists. If you are living in the D.C. area then stop by and check out the interesting art that ranges from stuffed plush preternatural wolf-children to paintings / drawings / photographs to my 3 minute video. All of the work centers loosely around Mike Lowery's "feral youth" characters and all of the work is also reasonably priced. Congrats to Mike for all the buzz around D.C. for his great show.
You can view one of two versions of my video at my Youtube account

See images of the show below:

2007-04-05T13:48:00.000-04:00

Downstairs gallery view of the DEERMILK show. My work is on left.

2007-04-05T13:46:00.000-04:00

"Antler Girl" from the DEERMILK show. Ink, watercolor on paper. $120

2007-04-05T13:44:00.000-04:00

"The Owl Girl" from the DEERMILK show. Ink and Acrylic on paper. $65.

2007-04-05T13:38:00.000-04:00

A DEERMILK gallery shot that I took right before the show opened.

2007-04-05T13:35:00.000-04:00

some of the talented artists in the show

2007-02-18T15:05:00.000-05:00

I have finally finished my video for http://www.asthmatickitty.com. The song is a remix of My Brightest Diamond's "Disappear" by Cedar AV (a blip-hop group from Wisconsin). The Owl-girl dancer is Kasey Nichols, a student in my painting class who graciously filled in at the last minute. The zooming woods footage was shot in sequence with my cheap digital still image camera...imported into Premiere Editing and then pieced together frame by frame.

Asthmatic Kitty has asked 7 other video artist besides myself to create remix videos. Mine was the 4th posted. I look forward to the remaining videos to see the full set!

2007-02-11T16:35:00.000-05:00

My website is updated! I finally have moving images on my video page (thanks, video google!). I've kept the original design with a few graphic additions. http://www.jymdavis.com

Nosferatu the Vampyre Pajamas

2006-11-20T22:17:00.000-05:00

As mentioned in my last post, I have the school's enormous screenprinting machine up and running! My first endeavor with the photo emulsion was a Nosferatu screen print. Nothing says Christmas like a Vampyre from Prague. Anyway, the image above is my T-shirt and, my favorite, my new Nosferatu pajama bottoms. More screens to come and you can be sure it will be worked into Revelation projects.

2006-11-18T11:02:00.000-05:00

As you might have noticed, my ambitious attempt to illuminate / illustrate the entire book of Revelation has taken a vacation for a few months. With roughly 8 or 9 chapters to go, I got distracted with working on music videos (http://www.myspace.com/jymdavis). However, recently I have found some new inspiration. The first part of my inspiration was figuring out how to use the massive screenprinting machine at school. This will allow me to readily screenprint and duplicate images using a photo sensitive screen. The second part of my inspiration was discovering a blues song entitled "John the Revelator" by Blind Willie Johnson. Hearing this song was a jolt of ideas. A host of artists have covered this song including Beck Hanson and Marianne Faithfull. There is a particulary energetic version by Nick Cave from the Harry Smith tribute concert:

Watercolor and Nocturne.

2006-06-15T02:15:00.000-04:00

I am teaching watercolor class this Fall so I am reacquainting myself with the medium. I'm pretty feed-up with Acrylics anyway and the fake plastic look of the hues. Watercolor provides nice deep, rich colors. I thought I would work with the Nocturne theme again...this time without using video stills and being a little more fantastic with the room and the trees. I hope that reads to the viewer. Anyway, here is my hestitant return to painting. Hopefully more to come with better results! *click to enlarge*

Nocturne short film DVD cover. This is the version I am settling on. Hope to send these out in a couple of weeks.

2006-04-20T20:23:00.000-04:00

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Hand stenciled DVDs are on the way. The movie is finally done.

2006-04-20T20:21:00.000-04:00

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2006-02-24T23:12:00.000-05:00

This is the second part to the below Chapter...it kind of spilled over. This is another page that is a challenge: the famous 666 page. I worked the numbers in red at the bottom and they are also copied inside the white smoke lines. The little smeary icons are the 4 gospel writers (or at least there traditional symbols).
click to enlarge genius.

2006-02-24T23:09:00.000-05:00

I just recently finished this one (as of January). One of the things that I have really been thinking about is making graphic design that can be easily photocopied. Don't ask me why, artist's get weird things stuck in there heads. Maybe the challenge of only working in monochromatic positive and negative space appeals to me. Anyway, all of these elements are scanned drawings that have been inversed in photoshop. The only "computer generated" lines are the circles at the top and bottom. Man, this page messed a week of my life up.
click to enlarge genius.

2006-02-24T23:02:00.000-05:00

A new page!!! This is Chapter XIIII and as you can see I am continuing my pen and ink / color in photoshop approach. I decided to just go nuts with the cross hatching lines to build up mass in the clouds. This is obviously the famous beastie described in this Chapter. I knew I couldn't mess this one up.
click to enlarge genius.

www.jymdavis.com undergoes updates

2005-12-03T23:25:00.000-05:00

I have been updating my "official" website alot in the last month but I have finally settled on a satisfactory page. Check it out and let me know what you think. Thanks to friends for their feedback...you were very influential on what I put up and what I took off the site. Anyway, the digital art and the painting and drawing sections are the main changes so be sure to check 'em out.

2005-12-03T23:20:00.000-05:00

"Nocturne" drawing...the movie and comic are coming along nicely. More on this later. And more on the Revelation project, I am falling behind but am still determined!
click to enlarge genius.

2005-11-24T21:35:00.000-05:00

Tiny red man in the woods hopes you have a nice Holiday season.
click to enlarge genius.

2005-10-27T22:59:00.000-04:00

again, not "Revelation" related but isn't this photo great? I can't take any credit for this one...Allison set up comp.
click to enlarge genius.

2005-09-18T20:30:00.000-04:00

This is a drawing I recently finished. It will be worked into Chapter X but I figured I would post the drawing by itself as well...it turned out alot better than I thought it would. It is of John / Ezekial eating a Bible as described in this Chapter...very vivid text. I used myself as the model but hopefully that is not too obvious.
click to enlarge genius.

2005-09-03T17:28:00.000-04:00

Probably Nothing Post Card
click to enlarge genius.

2005-08-19T21:51:00.000-04:00

This is Chapter 8...where the some major pain is really unleashed on terra firma. I really wanted to go with a more contemporary approach because this section of Revelation has such chilling repercussions for us 21st century folk. In fact, the russian word for "Wormwood" is Chernobyl...a translation that freaked quite a few Ruskies out during the cold war. I've actually spelled out Wormwood and Chernobyl in the upper right hand corner...the letters came from a sheet of printed paper that went haywire (I cut up the letters to make the words but the garbled effects are pretty much as they were). The exploding planets are stills from my pixel-vision fischer price toy camera...I love lo-fi equiptment.
click to enlarge genius.

2005-08-19T21:30:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about this page all summer. All of the elements are scanned in and the only "photoshoped" elements are the yellow and the red color of the wings. The wings refer to the first line of the text and "four angels" who bring some major hardships on the earth. I'm a little unsure about the bar codes but I like the idea of bringing in some modern elements. What do you guys think, more color?
click to enlarge genius.

2005-08-19T21:16:00.000-04:00

This is my design for Chapter VI. I thought I would push the Golden Ratio one last time. The smeary figures in the upper left are some more Durer prints from his famous 4 horsemen pages.
click to enlarge genius.

Back from slumber

2005-07-31T20:43:00.000-04:00

The blogitty blog is back from summer vacation...I am still working on the Revelation Book (I have 4 pages that are almost ready for posting) but as you can see I am also dividing my time with this "Nocturne" short film. The good news is that Allison and I filmed in Tennessee for one long night and day and we got some great footage. I set up the "sleep lab" in my parent's house and rolled the cameras for over 2 hours of material. The most exhilirating (and exhausting) filming was in the nearby woods. Locals driving by got to see a girl in a night gown running around in 100 degree humidity and a bearded creepy guy chasing her with a toy camera (me). And after all that we had to walk back home because my car battery died because I was using the headlights as a lighting source...now that is low budget filmmaking. Now I am dreading going through the 150 minutes of footage I plan to weed down to 15 minutes for the final short.

2005-07-31T19:56:00.000-04:00

She is ready for her close-up, Mr. Demille.
click to enlarge genius.

2005-07-31T19:52:00.000-04:00

"Nocturne" film still.
click to enlarge genius.

NEWS

2005-06-19T22:29:00.000-04:00

News.... A strange little film distributor has picked up a couple of my short experimental films. I don't know much about the organization except that they are San Francisco based and the stuff on the site looks unreal. I'm not on a DVD compilation yet but it might get picked up, who knows?

http://microcinema.com/filmsResults.php?director_id=1557

Also....I received a North Carolina Arts Grant to work on a new short film. It is tentatively entitled "Nocturne" and focuses on a young girl (played by Allison) who finds herself in a sleep clinic being treated for a variety of terror inducing sleeping disorders and out of body experiences. I shot some of the film last summer and I have resumed work in the last month. I am using a variety of "experimental" formats for the film including 8 MM, PixelVision (a Fischer Price toy camera made in the 80's), and Mini-DV O Lux night vision. The experience is partly based on my Dad's experience working in a sleep clinic in Mississippi this year. Above is a still from the footage shot thus far.

2005-06-16T21:52:00.000-04:00

This page is connected with the text on the below page. This text references eagle, ox, human, and lion creatures (symbolizing the 4 Gospel writers) singing praises to the lamb. I smeared the text by moving it on a copy machine...the same technique was used on the creatures (which I found in medieval scripts). I'm following Andy's advice on focusing on the text more (which is the Geneva Bible from 1500s).
click to enlarge genius.

2005-06-16T21:43:00.000-04:00

This may be my new favorite maybe because I'm happy with how well the seven-eyed, seven-horned lamb turned out. I drew the lamb and hand cut out the eyes from various medieval woodcuts. Most of this page was created that way. I wanted to find a unique but minimal way of portraying the lamb figure so vividly described in Chapter 5. The above page is really a continuation of this page (too much to cram into one design!)
click to enlarge genius.

2005-06-16T21:42:00.000-04:00

A new entry for Chapter 2 of Revelation. The text smear was done on a copy machine by moving the page as it scanned...a technique I borrowed from German artist Sigmar Polke. The Celtic design on the right was drawn by me, scanned in, and color reversed in Photoshop so that my black ink lines became white. It was important to me to have a reference to illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages.
click to enlarge genius.

2005-06-16T21:37:00.000-04:00

A newer version of one of the early posts. I added the candles at the bottom (a reference from Chapter 5 that some artists have interpreted as a menorah). I took the candles from a Durer print.
click to enlarge genius.

2005-06-05T00:32:00.000-04:00

A couple of people have asked me about the source material for my Revelation project so I thought I would explain a couple of things about what I am pulling into the pages. My friend Carla asked me about the Golden Mean references. As I said in my previous post all of my Revelation pages are based on the Golden Rectangle which relates to Phi (1.6180339887…..etc, to infinity), the never repeating number of the Golden Ratio (not to be confused with Pi). All of the Math diagrams in my Revelation pages somehow relate to this Golden Ratio. As I said, the pages of my “book” are the proportion of this ratio and if you look at the first image I posted you can see the Golden ratio proportion placed vertically within the overall proportion of the page.

Let me say that I am not a Math person at all (beyond Geometry). That is to say, I did not perform well in Math class and Mrs. Durrell and Mrs. Frye had to basically drag me through high school Algebra. I am interested in Math though, at least how it relates to cultures, the construction of the Universe and the big man behind the curtain. Almost all of my Golden Mean fascination comes from a wonderful little book by Mario Livio entitled “The Golden Ratio”. Although the book is written from a secular point of view, Livio doesn’t shrink from attributing a Holy status to the Golden Mean. He mentions several times that this special number and proportion is often known as God’s signature or The Divine Proportion. This is because it is so prevelant in His creation…from the spiral of the galaxy and the shell on the beach to the pattern in seeds in a sunflower. If you have seen the movie Pi you know what I’m talking about.

How does all of this relate to John’s Patmos Revelaton visions? Well, if you have ever watched 10 minutes of Jack Van Impe (brilliant and possibly mad doomsday Revelation interpretor televangelist that I have linked to the right) you know that the study of numbers and the Bible goes back 5,000 years. Again, see the movie Pi which actually has some historical basis in the Torah / numerology section of the film. The book of Revelation is a particular hotbed of number speculation. If you are into Norwegian black metal bands like Gorgoroth (like my Mom is, she loves cookie monster vocals) then you will know…666 is the number of the Dark One, right? Revelation was written in numerical and symbolic code. An example of this connection is 666 itself as described by Thomas Cahill in “Desire of the Everlasting Hills”:

In his (John’s) world, letters were used as shorthand to represent numerical values, as is the case with the Roman numerals we are still familiar with. So we need only find a well-known historical figure (the writer implies clearly that it is a ‘man’ known to everyone) whose name ‘adds up’ to 666. The Hebrew alphabet contained now vowels. The name of the emporer under whom the Jesus Movement’s two greatest ‘prophets’ were executed wasNero Caesar, in Greek Neron Kaisar, in unvoweled Hebrew nrwn qsr or, giving these consonants their conventional numerical value, 50 + 200 + 6 + 50 + 100 + 60 + 200, which equals 666. The Beast is the Roman empire - more precisely, all the cruelties of Roman political domination – personified by Nero Caesar. "

John himself claims in Revelation that his vision “calls for insight; but anyone with discernment may figure out the number of the Beast. It is the number of a man, the number Six Hundred Sixty-Six.” It is the multiple levels of meaning and the elastic symbolism that make Revelation so interesting for me. I also love how the Revelation throw out timelines and chronology all together and enters directly into a world of dreams….as Cahill also points out “Christ, the slaughtered lamb, is first seen in heaven, after which the Savior is given birth by Isreal”. I will reference more of this symbolism later. The more I haved delved into Revelation the more I have seen the cleverness of the symbols that are, again, not always as murky as people assume. The challenge to illustrating the Book is that it is so amazingly dense in its references. To illustrate every detail mentioned would be to cram a page beyond recognition.

In looking at Artist’s who have taken on Revelation I have found one who, for me, is the golden standard (pun intended). And he seems to have pulled off doing what intimidates me…cramming in a gonzo number of references (including the Golden Mean!). This artist is Albrect Durer (see below example), a German Northern Ren. Artist who lived in the 15th century. His mind-blowing woodcuts are full of detail and he found so many creative ways to include even the most abstract symbols (a lamb with seven eyes and seven horns who is given to opening a scroll with seven seals for instance). He was close to being a contemporary of Heironomous Bosch if that tells you anything about the day and age he lived in. His work would be extremely detailed if it were pen drawings, the fact that they are woodcuts are unfathomable. Anyway, I am actually including or referencing (or stealing) some of Durer’s prints in my Revelation work and I will point out what is his to give the dead guy some credit when I post them. Just remember before you judge that Warhol did an entire series using DaVinci’s “Last Supper” and no one cracked wise on the little white wigged man.

Durer is included in the aforementioned book “The Golden Ratio” along with a variety of other artists throughout the ages. Actually, I will conclude by saying I am especially amazed by the information about all of the artists who incorporated the Golden Mean in their work. It isn’t too unpredictable that Da Vinci used it but what astonished me was that this kind of thing had precidence to him. Several early Renn. works are shown to precisely inscribe the ratio in the figure or composition in the 13 th century. A famous more contemporary example is “Sacrament of the Last Supper” by Dali…the paintings proportion is the Golden Ratio (105.5 X 65.75) and to make it as freakin’ obvious as possible he included a huge dodecahedron behind Christ. A dodecahedron is a 12 sided regular solid in which each side is a pentagon…most importantly it is directly related to the Ratio. I will let the conspiracy theorists note the pentagon and take it from there.

2005-06-04T21:31:00.000-04:00

Albrecht Durer presents: St. John eats a Bible.

2005-06-04T21:24:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my Revelation.

2005-05-29T00:09:00.000-04:00

This is a blog by Jym Davis to showcase my artwork in progress. Over the course of the next year I plan on illustrating (or "illuminating") the entire book of John's New Testament Revelation. Because of the enormity of the project and because I want your feedback, I want to experiment with posting pages that are unfinished or at different stages of completion. I hope that this will create a kind of dialogue and hopefully improve the quality of the "book". At the completion of the Illuminated Book of Revelation, I will create a website with the final project in its entirety. Thanks and look forward to hearing from you.

I also hope to post personal photos and more general entries.

love,

Jym Davis.
www.jymdavis.com

2005-05-29T00:06:00.000-04:00

Jym Davis and his hula hoop of Math.

2005-05-28T23:59:00.000-04:00

This page is unfinished. This text describes John's vision of the four beasts singing "Holie", the emerald rainbow, the 24 seated elders, and the 7 candles,etc. The material is so dense that I am doing another page after this one to spill over. This page is not finished.

2005-05-28T23:54:00.000-04:00

Revelation page.

2005-05-28T23:46:00.000-04:00

Chapter 3 title page. I hand drew over orignal Celtic letters...this letter is an "A" if you couldn't tell. All the pages are based on the Golden Rectangle ratio (which is also featured on the left of the page).