Mark Lombardi: Global Networks

Drawing Papers #40

by Judith Richards, Robert Hobbs, Mark Lombardi (Artist)

In drawings both small and monumental, Mark Lombardi creates visual narratives of the way money flows in our postimperial, transnational from corporations to political organizations, from individuals to various ad hoc groups, most of them acting outside of and transcending national boundaries. Using graphite and colored pencil, and information culled from newspaper accounts, TV and other sources in the public domain, Lombardi has developed a new type of history painting that maps the economic underpinnings of our global society.

Genres: Art, Politics, Conspiracy Theories, Science

136 pages, Paperback

First published July 2, 2003

About the author

Before becoming a writer, Judith Richards was an actress, an animal trainer, and a carny hauling pig-iron, managing big rides on America's midways. Thelonious Rising, her sixth novel, reflects her lifelong love of music and fascination with the city of New Orleans. A Midwesterner gone South, Judith's marriage to author C. Terry Cline, Jr. first piqued her interest in writing. Since then, two of her six novels won the Alabama Library Association award for fiction, and Too Blue to Fly was nominated for the Lillian Smith Award. Her novel, Summer Lightning, has been in print since 1978, and has been read in 17 languages.

Reviews

[chase Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

After 9/11 the feds contacted the Whitney Museum and Pierogi gallery to try to get reproductions of Mark Lombardi drawings, or permission to come examine them, in the hopes of obtaining information about bin Laden's financial connections. Lombardi creates these sprawling, flowering diagrams of the flow of money involved in history's great scandals. His thorough research made him a bit of a target, and probably increased his paranoia. He did think someone was out to kill him, and ended up "committing suicide" in his apt. (That's in bad taste.....there wasn't really any foul play, but I think Lombardi would prefer that implication). His diagrams manage to act as beautiful drawings. They give the medium a new function and inspire the rest of us to come up with new reasons to create 2-D images.

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just think its beautiful stuff...

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strangely interesting artist, Mark Lombardi created hand drawn networks of global malfeasance. His massive drawings were so enlightening that FBI investigators used them after September 11, 2001 to try to trace the connections between Osama Bin Laden and the international financial networks.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding.