Sandow Birk

Sandow Birk's painting "In Days of War" depicts a young man hunched before a large, blank canvas. The studio is littered with paint splatters and other signs of artistic activity, but instead of a brush, the artist holds a newspaper in his hands. Birk describes the image as "the daily confrontation of sitting down and trying to figure out, with all these things happening, what can you do."

In spite of its title, "Leading Causes of Death in America" is actually a fairly upbeat series of work, according to artist Sandow Birk. Most subjects that Birk gravitates to -- gang violence, the growing prison population, rampant consumerism -- have the potential to dismay if not depress, but he leavens his work with wit and the reassurance of the familiar. Birk is an irreverent mixer of the mythic and the mundane.

It seems like the setup for a joke with a sagging punch line: Two surfers get together in a bar and, having nothing better to do, decide to illustrate and rewrite Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy." Which, in fact, they did--undaunted that they were about to wrestle with a pillar upon which the European literary tradition has been built, as any freshman Western Civ student will tell you.