Data Visualization Gallery

This gallery is a showcase for my most recent work which uses data visualization to show important relationships and attributes of the subjects. I started visualizing differences in total statistics like hits, batting average, or home runs, but then started to go beyond baseball and to look at the comparative careers of notable poets and singers.

Frank Robinson, Cincinnati Reds. 18x24 inches, acrylic on canvas. Inspired by Topps 1957 #35. Robinson is still the only major league player to have won the MVP award in both leagues. The circles represent Robinson's home run totals for each of the teams he played for.

Ernie Banks, Chicago Cubs. 18x24 inches, acrylic on canvas. Inspired by Topps 1957 #55. The concentric circles compare Ernie Banks's home run totals with other players of his day.

Joanne Weaver, Fort Wayne Daisies, 4x6 inches, acrylic on canvas. Inspired by her AAGPBL card. Jo

Weaver was the top hitter in the All American Girls'Professional Baseball League, with a .429 average in 1954.

Josh Gibson may have been the greatest baseball player of all time, though due to the systemic racism that excluded Black players from the major leagues during the first half of the twentieth century, he never played in the majors. This visualization (9 x 12, acrylic on canvas) compares his home run totals to Roger Connor, Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, and Barry Bonds. The "bullseye" visual shows his "official home run total" compared to the number of honem runs that he may have hit in his career-as many as 800, though again due to the systemic racism of the time, Black baseball teams did not have the resources to keep statistics for all the games they played.

Cool Papa Bell (left) and Rickey Henderson (right) are two of the game's greatest base stealers, who played about a half century apart and in different leagues, Bell in the Negro Leagues and Henderson in both the American and National Leagues. (Base stealing is a unique skill, requiring both speed and very quick reactions.) While Henderson's total steals are nearly five times greater than Bell's, when compared to the 200 best base stealers of their respective eras, Bell's total is greater than those of his peers.

This is a pure piece of data visualization (12x12, acrylic on canvas) to show the respective home run totals of the game's greatest sluggers, from Roger Connor's total that Babe Ruth broke, to Saddaharu Oh's total of more than eight hundred in the Japanese major leagues. The timeline at the bottom shows when those home run records were hit, from Roger Connor's record in 1897 to Albert Pujol's 703 home runs in 2022.

More recently, I have taken a break from baseball to think about how to represent prominent people in other fields, like poetry and music, their influences, and the artists whom they influenced. The first attempt was of Anna Akhmatova and the Russian and Soviet poets in her circle including Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Joseph Brodsky, and Andrei Voznesensky. The arcs represent the length of each artist's career, with years converted to degrees and manually drawn using a compass and protractor. (9x12, acrylic and gesso on birch board.)

Here is the incomparable Debbie Harry and Blondie-the first band that I was ever really aware of at five or six years old. Here I show their influences (including the Ronettes and the Velvet Underground) and the bands that credit them as influences, including INXS and Garbage. (9x12, acrylic and gesso on birch board.)

And lastly, Patti Smith, who with Bob Dylan may be the greatest living poet/songwriter/photographer. This painting is inspired by a self-portrait in her latest collection of photos and musings, A Book of Days. I liked it because it's very angelic. The stars are drawn from a lyric in her song "Land," on the Horses album, and I show her career along with Bob Dylan, Sam Shepard, Pete Seeger, Allen Ginsberg, and Robert Mapplethorpe. (9x12, acrylic and gesso on birch board.)