HoboEye Art:
Brian White, Livingston, Montana

Tangent on drawing during my eight to fiver:

I sit in this mandatory 401(k) meeting at 2:30 p.m. We are in a glass room with this burning face. He recites to hollow eyes the intangible stock market zoo and what put us here. I imagine giant elephant skeletons trampling the sub-prime lemmings. He says, now is the time to invest, we just have to decide a percentage of our earnings that can be set aside (tax-free) into an account. I wish I had more guts. I have an aspiring hobo eyelid, it's been twitching for three weeks now. Perhaps, the box elder bug that crawls around my monitor flew into my socket one day when I was not looking. Time travel benders ... followed by selfish kaleidoscope flashes, sweating out toward the ceiling, and certain fear of imminent winter harm. I used to think I would become an illustrator, but soon discovered I don't like being a paint-by-number machine for someone else. I remember my early gusto. Drawing was the escape, a mystifying pursuit for something tangible. The meandering soon began to show some promise ... scratching with an acute fluidity of intuition. Usually the first indication that the elements are aligned is my arm hair begins to stand on end. My eyes narrow and the peripheral vision blurs into a warm hum that throws itself into infinity. The movements begin to yield some accidental magic as lines run and fill. At its best, it's like stepping out of myself. I disperse further into a vast trance, unlocking some newfound spiritual layer, seeming to be a telekinetic movement of inanimate materials. It has been witnessed, and gotten away with at the same time. An obscene grin leaks out, but my cleansed state is quickly humbled as I step back into the florescent reality of the conference room. The group in the room doesn't look pleased. It seems to me the paradigm is how to escape with this ancient connection intact rather than analyzing this absurd gathering. However, the market could usurp that one percent of my "salary," and that's one week's time blown at the office. I didn't sign the line, but I took the paper.

Brian W.H. White grew up in Smithfield, Virginia.

Education: BFA in Illustration at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore.

Meandering around Livingston, Montana since the summer of 2004.