“All Bodhisattvas” at Core Art Space March 6

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“All Bodhisattvas throughout space and time,” chant countless Buddhists around the world, invoking a multitude of awakened beings in past, present and future to help ease the suffering of the world and liberate all beings from delusive ignorance. In my upcoming show “All Bodhisattvas” at Core Art Space March 6 – 22, I draw on millennia of Mahayana Buddhist tradition to present these powerful archetypes with renewed vigor, grace and poise.

My drawings are particularly inspired by Himalayan and Japanese traditions of painting on black backgrounds, making special use of metallic gold pen and pencil on black paper for strikingly rich palettes and contrasts. The figures’ compositions likewise owe much to these traditions, along with nods to Buddhist lineages in Thailand, China and India, the flowing lines of Art Nouveau and the body-punch of Japanese tattoo design. At once lifelike and highly stylized, these figures glare and glide, leap and laugh. Fudo Myoo brandishes his sword and bugs his eyes in challenge; Manjusri bursts from the underbrush on a lion; Kannon surfs serene through the ocean tumult. Together they cry, “Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”

“All Bodhisattvas” opens in the Annex at Core Art Space Friday, March 6, with an opening reception from 6-9 p.m.

Fudo Myoo, Immovable Wisdom King

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Fudo Myoo, Immovable Wisdom King. Color pencil on black paper, 22″x30″. As usual sharing these images online is a cruel insult, since the camera never comes close to showing the scale, the depth of hue and the play of light on the metallic gold pencil, which is used extensively here.

However, I’ll be showing this piece and more at Core Art Space at a small solo show opening March 6, so come out if you’d like to meet Fudo in person. Announcement to follow.

Om Namah Shivaya

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Color pencil on black illustration board, 32″ x 32″. Om Namah Shivaya translates as “I bow to Shiva,” though it can also be interpreted with each of the five syllables (na mah shi va ya) corresponding to the five elements (earth, air, fire, water, space), Shiva having dominion over them.

Charybdis

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Charybdis by Joel Tagert | Art by Chris Austin

“Charybdis” spins and eddies in Birdy 131, November 2024, with art by Chris Austin. A resurrected assassin with a new neuroport finds that nothing is certain when AI superintelligences are involved.

Do you think killing someone’s easy for me? Up close like this?

No, not easy. Pleasurable.

That’s fucked up.

Charybdis said nothing more, this not being a question or anything that needed answering, and a sense Christian had lost the argument seeped into the ensuing silence. Charybdis, god of the deep, who sent whirlpools to swallow ships. Like a great white shark swimming over his shoulder.

A Wolf Called Wormwood

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A Wolf Called Wormwood by Joel Tagert

“A Wolf Called Wormwood” stalks Birdy 130, October 2024, with art by Oksana Drozd. The wolf devours memories, making it nearly impossible to track; but one mnemonist plans to lay a trap.

One illustration in particular gripped them. A star with a tail like a dragon’s fell through the sky, roiling smoke, while the earth beneath it burned, villagers fleeing strangely angular buildings. The verses beneath, Revelation 8:10-11, were in vulgate Latin, but Eoghan translated them effortlessly in a hoarse whisper: 

“And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”

Beneath the verse, in the wide lower margin, a later artist had drawn a vivid addendum: a red-eyed wolf, chained, slavering and furious.

Fiddlywink Sings the Tune

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Fiddlywink Sings The Tune by Joel Tagert | Art by Jason White

“Fiddlywink Sings the Tune” pops up in Birdy 129, September 2024, with art by Jason White. Maya learns that once you have a neuroport, real and unreal aren’t useful concepts anymore–and Fiddlywink heartily agrees.

She turned again, down the alley, blindly, going anywhere, nowhere. She went three steps and Fiddlywink popped up like a jack-in-the-box, right out of the pavement, and seized her upper arms in his enormous gloved hands, squeezing hard, lifting her into the air. He grinned with carious teeth, grinned wider than anyone could grin. “Rub a dub dub,” he said, “tub full of blood.”