When I finally purchased a full size color TV in the early 1990’s, I felt somewhat self conscious that I was finally participating full time in contemporary dumbed down video culture.  I systematically polled all my friends and coworkers and was surprised to discover that some owned as many as 7 televisions!  Was this some kind of inescapable burden that we were all bearing?  Was it so ubiquitous that we couldn’t see it in plain sight? To make this point visually manifest I had tried to photograph myself in a wrestling match with my smaller TV in front of my new behemoth; but a freak light leak spoiled the results. Eventually I turned to Frank Navin as a model.  He seemed to instinctively understand what I was going for.  He was able to physically dramatize the conflict with the screens as well as demonstrate a kind of luxuriating on them - almost using them as furniture.  The low midwinter sun's streaming in through the window gave the photos a lush kind of light that competed with the light of the screen.  Also, the fact that someone who (sort of) looked like Charles just happened to come on TV during the shoot proved to be a nice touch.

 

By the time I began to work on this project in the Spring of 1991 my stippling skills were at a high water mark.  It definitely shows in the execution here.  I managed to keep what I was now calling “the base” size of the stippling consistently large and, thereby, avoid chasing unnecessary detail down a rabbit hole of increasingly small dots.  Also the full range of light to dark is in play.  I had managed to keep the finished drawing away from a mush of mid level light values. It was a drawing I was very pleased with at the time.

DRAFT