Jacked Al (Einstein)
Albert Einstein’s Relativity was one of those books that I really wanted to understand. And when it did, it changed everything.
I love the way Einstein writes. It’s not only the ideas that shook me, but the way he presented them is so gorgeous. It is often portrayed as a historical book, but it is just as important and earth-shaking today over 1oo years later. Especially coming from a religious background, where nothing is relative, I found the concepts in the book fundamental to understanding so many other things, within science but also far beyond physics. Everyone should read this, even if they skip over the equations; it’s beautiful. Nobody has ever taken me up on editing/releasing this, so for now, the book remains an unedited art project. But I love how it turned out.
Jacked Al is an antique I took apart, changed his hair and clothes and restrung, then changed the hair again, and then again…still working on the hair. This is what I thought he might look like if he was a superstar today, and had sleeves, a cape, biceps and an ascot.
Jacked Al is super heavy so you’ll get jacked too! He’s mostly plaster and hardwood. This is a marionette, very easy to use but this one won’t work for a kid. You need a strong adult. It’s a lot for me.
My work through the years has been within marketing, digital, and advertising agencies, often tackling technical subjects. At the agencies I worked across technology startups, and I would dive deeply into things from FDA regulations to medical operating devices. You end up soaking up a lot of knowledge by designing the work.
I got the idea of copying books, Taking the same words but making new pictures and giving it my own design with a note that said “Not planning on selling this, just a thank you (copy of your book with the same words but all new pictures I drew myself). Only one guy, head of the physics dept at Union college, Chad Orzel wrote me back, saying “thanks, it made my day.” which was if you only ever get one piece of feedback, pretty great!
It’s a weird thing to do. I now understand, but before that kicked it, I did about 10. A couple of them are in the public domain, so maybe with an editor, I might go further, but the point was just to soak in the knowledge in a way that I get to draw pictures. A bunch of it is comically terrible. That is the joy of not trying to sell stuff. The one that really did turn out, though (in my head anyway) was Relativity.