Two Totally Unrelated Things that Go Great Together

I'm posting at an exponentially faster rate. Unemployment is good for that. So while I have the time, here are two completely unrelated things that I thought might entertain you, as well as have some sort of significance in the strange and winding career that belongs to Phil Ristaino.

First, we have a video conceived and created by NTUSA members and Flackman Bros associates Ryan Bronze and Matt Kalman (aka Max Flackman). I agreed to participate in the making of this short Christmas video starring Ryan as Spiderman and Matt as Batman, surf buddies, and featuring the cheese-center-filled rock classic "Come Sail Away" by Styx, particularly significant to me because they were my favorite band (other than, say, the Beatles) when I was a youth (pronounced "yout" minus the "h"). I worked the camera for much of the shoot, in between sneezing profoundly, as the fall pollen had descended on Far Rockaway Beach on the outskirts of Queens or Brooklyn or somewhere in between and caused my nasal passages much dismay. Later in the shoot, myself and another actor Greg (last name slipping my mind right now, sorry Greg) posed as 60's style masked baddies, attacking the two heroes on amidst their holiday and being summarily dismissed by the crime fighting professionals.
Cheque eet owt:




It may be significant to note that Matt and Ryan went into cold New York autumn ocean waters fully costumed and both nearly drowned during the shooting of this video. If you look hard, you'll see one or two waves really kicking their asses, which, I admit, was pretty funny to watch in person.

The second part of this post is dedicated to me Ole Da, who hit the big 7-0 this October (happy birthday, DAD!) My older brother Carl opted to get my folks a new dish washer for Dad's b-day, and I was assigned with the task of creating the card for the gift.

Take a look:


Here's the inside:

Editor's note: Brother Carl's and his daughter Izzy's signatures and notes are missing from the card because I put all the other notes together in photoshop and express mailed the card to Carl for him to sign in time for the delivery of the dishwasher.

Just as an explanation, my parents have a house on a lake in Maine, and there is a family of bald eagles on the island, so I figured I'd put dad on the eagle a la Gandalf in the third LOTR film:

Dad's body is more or less a steal from a Jack Kirby silver surfer:


And here's me Dad:

Dad trippin balls

So there you have it. Two great things that have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

New Illustrations for Vision Into Art

Just wanted to commemorate my brand new move to San Francisco, CA with a post of some recent art I completed for the multi-disciplinary arts consortium that is VisionIntoArt. Some time this year (I'm having trouble remembering when) I designed and created two album covers for their two new cds, "Sounds" and "Travelling Songs."

Here's "Travelling Songs":

and here's "Sounds":

Also, I was asked to do a couple new illustrations of two members of the company. Do check them out:
Hopefully they will be added to the roster of over 20 member illustrations I've completed for this group. (You can go here to see the rest of them.) I believe they are updating their website, which will include all the illos I've designed for them. That site can be found here.

Murals of the Past: Me and Andy's at John and Glo's

Brother Andy and myself painted a mural in the baby's room of friends John Reitan and Gloria M. (she has a crazy last name I don't rightly know how to spell) in preparation of the coming of their new girl, Georgia. This mural never got completely finished, but it is a rare documented Ristaino bros collaboration. I did the left side over to the right side tree, Andy did the bright green tree and all the cool little characters on the right side, even following my advice to turn a smudge on the wall into a parachuting hotdog. It appears this mural was painted in late October or early November 2006.

Murals in NYC part 6 -- Root Chakra

notice anything strange on the picture above? click to enlarge.

please click images to enlarge

Yet another NYC mural that came through Chashama was this painting I did on 38th st and 8th ave in, I believe, 2005. It was created as part of a performance and art festival that was happening on or around loading docks and storefronts at least throughout the garment district if not all of Manhattan. I was supposed to create this one over the course of a weekend. What I didn't realize was that I was obligated to repaint their entire loading dock as part of the deal. I don't know how that happened but, oh well, whatayagonnado? I did end up repainting the dock yellow, white, and a lovely lime green.

What's that little floating orb on the bottom of the picture above?

The simple gist behind this image is that its a painting of a root chokra. Ideally, people would see it and have some sort of unconscious response to it, or rather, their root chokra would be activated by seeing the image. Its been difficult for me to learn to be grounded during my adult life, and I imagine other New Yorkers have the same problem, since this place is so frenetic and mental. Ideally, this imaged would inspire pedestrians to be more grounded.

Consequently, a very ungrounded thing appears in the photos of this mural: strange glowing orbs of light, floating about, nearly invisible sometimes, or glowing brightly in other shots. I will explain this phenomenon in my next non-mural related post.
Can you dig it?!

NYC Murals part 5 -- Hiphop Theatre Festival

please click images to enlarge

Here's a series of 'process' photos of the Urban Theater Arts Festival mural I co-painted on the 2nd story of Chashama's main building on 42nd st. I would later go on to paint the "One Myth" mural over this mural. Please check out the two part entry on One Myth: Part 1 and Part 2.
The building, sadly, would later go on to be destroyed. Such is the life of a mural artist in NYC.
I think this mural was done in 2002, maybe 2003, not sure.

One interesting note: the statue of liberty image was painted by Adam Matta, who is a human beat box and does paintings with his bike. Check him out at http://adammatta.com.

NYC Murals part 4 -- Anita's house 2

please click on images to enlarge

The second mural I painted for Anita was downstairs in her living room. The child was now born, a little boy, and she wanted more animals, this time in some kind of ice kingdom. The interesting thing related to this particular mural goes something like this:

In the midst of creating this particular mural, I was involved with an earthshift. A what? Lemme back up.
Since around 2000, I had been studying meditation and energetic healing with the Merlins of Vortex Healing, a divine spiritual lineage re-discovered by Ric Weinman in 1994. Over the years since 2000 I had experienced some profound energies through Vortex, but perhaps the most overwhelming experience occurred in early 2005 in NYC during this earthshift. An earthshift is a healing done on a global scale by a group of wizards who have been studying Vortex Healing, facilitated by the teacher, who happens to be a Merlin. This specific earthshift was about releasing a lot of the war or violence karma in the Middle East. I won't go into the all the details of the shift, but suffice it to say that it was a very powerful energetic experience, and at the height of it, I felt a giant snakelike surge of energy rise up my spine, force my head back, and push its way out of my mouth, as if I had vomited up a giant, invisible boa constrictor.

This is me being literal, this actually happened.

Probably a day or two later (really not sure) I was painting this mural in Anita's house and listening to the Shins second album, Shutes Too Narrow, when this feeling started coming over me. I began to see the profound beauty in the music, in the painting, in my surroundings, like this all pervasive feeling that God was in the room with me and everything had this beautiful grace about it. It was quite moving.

I'm not sure if it was that night or the next morning when I realized I was sick as a dog. Sweating, aching, nose running, completely-dilapidated-type-flu-sick. I think I remained sick for about five days, pretty much staying in bed, totally laid out and wasted. It was brutal.

But perhaps on the sixth or seventh day (again, I'm really unclear on time around this event), I woke up feeling completely amazing. Something had shifted in my consciousness, and, simply put, I knew that I was God. Not that I was a part of God, or that God had come into my life, but that I was, in fact, God itself. It was a truly incredible feeling. There was so much happiness surrounding it, so much peace, so much energy and excitement. Everything looked amazing, everyone looked amazing. It was like I was in love with everything I saw. I think this sensation lasted for less than an hour. I don't remember what happened for the rest of that day, but that brief experience was rather priceless, sort of one of those unbearable lightnesses of being that mystics, holy rollers, and rock stars strive for.

Fascinating what can happen to you around painting a mural....

NYC Murals part 3 -- Anita's house

please click images to enlarge

A few years ago (2004 to early 2005) I painted two murals for Anita Durst, the ceo of Chashama, the non-profits arts organization in NYC who had previously hired me to paint a few huge murals on the second story of their main building on 42nd st between 6th ave and Broadway (which consequently has been destroyed and turned into a humongous bank). Anita was going to have a baby, and she hired me to paint the entire bedroom as a wildlife mural. We went through lots of pictures of animals she wanted to see, as well as landscapes and flowers, and eventually I painted all four walls and the ceiling. I don't think I quite finished this mural to Anita's satisfaction, but the project was so huge I would have needed more time than I had to go back and fix or finish every mistake. That said, I think for the most part, the work I did complete was pretty cool. Please check it out: