Aubrey Zich

The figure study drawing and painting Jacob Collins made of me entitled “Penelope,” is up for exhibit/auction at Christie’s until December 19th.

Here is the figure study in the catalog:

An artist friend of mine who works at Christie’s send me a few pictures of the completed piece:

(Source: aubreyartmodel.blogspot.com)

This Place is not my Home
-Aubrey Zich

There is always a thin skin
Of creosote
On the snow;
If it doesn’t
Eva(pour)ate straight
Into ash.
It is the only consistency
Where I dreamed for years
In the municipality of animosity;
Taking breaths with a clipboard.
An inventory of this city
In itemized lists:

    Each place where asphalt
    Devours cobbled stone
    While black tar melts
    Into its decrepit existence.

        Where facades slip seamlessly
        From the fronts of buildings
        Like glaciers sliding slowly into sheets of ice.

            Where Tyvek flaps haplessly
            Against gravity.

                And all sentences ends with an accusation.

But its true—
This city would consume itself
Like Ouroboros
If we weren’t always
Making amends
To its soiled surface.

Like an axiomatic
Closet nostalgic,
I seek one in febrile heat
Who holds close the chimera
Of cold winters.
It is what I remember
When my eyelids flutter
Thick with sleep.
But when I wake her(e)
I think of arid deserts
And the smell of sand.
I think of migratory birds
And the negative affirmations
Scrawled
On bedroom walls
And the bar-bathrooms
Of this city.

There still may be
Brassy “Joan Didion” types
Shuffling home from Gristedes
After midnight,
Persevering through unheated flats
For the “good fight.”
But the main domain
Is youthful avarice;
Those who haven’t
Deadlines or early mornings
Claiming this city’s legacy
As their own story.
They snap
Like cold coils,
Fixed points beyond flexibility.
And I imagine
Drifting dazed through snowstorms
With a desperation for summer;
When the pools of my eyes become gelatinous.
But now,
In the chilliest juncture,
Where specks of airborne
Dirt and sand

                   Freeze

To our corneas
And cement our discernment shut,
I know
There are only
So many
Shallow art parties
And beautiful women
I can possibly
Be expected to stand.

Even though,
The tentacles of your thoughts

                                         Woo me

Like the distant sounds that leave me marooned;
Salt soaked and seeking shore.
But I’ve been dreaming of this snowfall
And how it would

                   Echo itself

                                  In spirals;

                   Drifting in

                                            And out

                         Of the shreds

      Of our ambivalence.

I am hoping for a different tomorrow
One that doesn’t have me
Completely convinced
Of its existence;
One where
We share
The name of winter.
And I remember
Waking to see her
Nude back beside me;
Spines pointed like jagged plates intercepting signals,
Sky-bound transmissions in the shadows.
I don’t know how she got there,
I did not let her in.

And she wasn’t what I wanted.

A drawing of me by David Kassan is on General Pencil’s David Kassan Signature Collection charcoal set.  Here is the ad that was featured in a few art magazine publications:

…and here is a pallet of them:

The same picture, entitled “Aubrey Looking Forward,” is on display at the Henoch Gallery:

However, after the Hurricane it is hard to say whether or not it is still intact.

(Source: aubreyartmodel.blogspot.com)

I don’t really take pictures.  However, here is a collection of some pictures from the past six months on the road.

Richmond, VA

I went to a BBQ festival in Greensboro, NC.  They thought I was under age and stamped me with baby feet.

My scroll of tickets from Greensboro, NC to Philadelphia, PA

…and there is more …

Philly is one of the few cities who still uses tokens.  They also give them to you in hermetically-sealed drug baggies.  I like to call them “five bags” or “ten bags” depending on the amount of tokens.  However, I do not ask the clerk for “ten bag” out loud. 

Street poetry on a traffic cone in Philadelphia Chinatown

(Source: aubreyartmodel.blogspot.com)