Swami ++FIX YOU++

++FoR SwAmI++

"I will Fix You."

This is the prize of my charcoal collection.

There is so much emotion and feeling in this piece it isn't even worth trying to put into words.

The model was a friend I met in collage. He was a great guy, and he taught me a LOT in the 7 months I knew him.

The story goes like this:

Swami was the name of my friend, Nick. Swami played guitar with the strings long because when they broke overseas in Iraq it was hard to get new ones and so if it broke you could restring it with the extra string at the end.

Swami had this black, pluther shirt that he swore he owned, even though he only ever wore jeans a t-shirt and a L33t! baseball cap.

After a particularly bad showing at the Art festival one night, my fellow friend and art student wandered over to Swami's dorm hall and called him up. We told him about the show and how bad it went and we felt sad. He listened to me for a bit and told me he'd be right down.

We waited for a second in the lobby and after a few minutes Swami emerged with his pluther shirt and his guitar.

Swami always swore he'd never play Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water." Said it would never happen.

It was a favorite of mine. . .and so, in his pluther shirt, on his long stringed guitar, he played it right in the lobby of Tanner Hall at WIU.

And so the story went. . .

This was before cell phone cams were a bagillion megapixels, so I worked with what I had.

Again, a part of a five piece problem solving for my Advanced Drawing class.

Collage, matte gel, and charcoal.

Enjoy.
JG