in memoriam (the unknown military contractor)
suit pockets, brass, bronze, blackening chemicals on canvas
4x5' 2007
This is a work i am wrapping up at the moment. Well, letting it sit anyway... one of its gorgeous features is that it continues to change due to the chemical reaction that is going on (so i keep working on it). I am still mulling the title... haven't settled. It keeps changing like the metal.
I had written awhile back about fragments of memories changing and overlapping. (This work changes as one moves around it, and the light catches it in different places... the photo doesn't do this part justice). The work ties in a lot of the memorial work i've been doing, with a look at current war issues, and reflects some nuance of sorrow and apathy (trendy american sentiments).
In the beginning I was contemplating memorials for military contractors and war profiteers. But i am not a big fan of finger pointing art, or one liners (that take more than one line to make). I do believe however in a one liner that can transcend itself (like a chocolate easter bunny jesus), and that is something i am looking for here. I think that is possible when the personal is evident, when someone participating with the work can feel that coming through (if the chocolate jesus was the typical image of jesus, it would not move past the one liner), and when the work keeps its compassion.
(oh yeah, and this work would be really amazing if it were big, on a really long wall... so if any of you wealthy readers out there have an itch...)
That all being said, i should acknowledge my one year anniversary that passed last week. I have learned quite a bit from this whole blogging experience... the closest thing i ever kept to a regular journal, or even sketchbook for that matter, sad to say. I won't go into it all cept to say this weekly revealing myself to strangers has been, if anything, an excellent exercise in saying, "fuck it." --an essential tool for any artist.
NonProphet then and now, one year later...
4.04.2007
In memoriam
2.23.2007
all you need is...
I'm about to write a post that i never thought i would. But it's casual Friday so don't think too hard on it.
Like a lot of people, I was raised on the Beatles. So much so that listening to a Beatles CD now is like eating Kraft macaroni and cheese. A one time love that takes me back, but to where and really, is this nourishing at all?
So if Kraft said they were coming out with mauve colored mac and cheese, i think i would probably be about as enthused as someone saying here's a remixed Beatles CD, using sounds from only their own songs to enhance the sound, give it a listen...
This is what happened. And it's amazing. Yes, you heard me right. The cd, Love, created by Sir George Martin and Giles Martin for the benefit of Cirque du Soleil, has actually pulled it off. As i listen, i can't help but being blown away by the scope of the project and the work that must have gone into it. First, that it was even attempted. Second that it really works.
It is not necessarily the Beatles part that interests me though. So let's take that away for a moment if we can.
What is most interesting is how many of us will know every sound that is played, even if we don't remember exactly which song it came from out of its original context. And while we might have an emotional, even nostalgic connection to each sound, here we are presented with fragments, so that now those connections are overlapping and butting up to other emotional nostalgic connections.
What happens when subtle pieces of dancing in the living room at age six, butts up with a note of being strung out at a rave watching the sun come up in college, overlapped by the glare of watching your mom sob at the news that Lennon has been killed? I exaggerate, however, because those moments don't overlap, but the tones do. And this works with the Beatles so well, because these songs, whether we liked them or not, were drilled into so many of our heads.
I have always been fascinated with memory and time working like a light beaming into an attic through a crack in the wall. Shards of moments past and maybe even future, and entire histories sewn into our identities are highlighted and reflected onto each other, aligning to create their own whole.
I am reminded of how ants find their way back to the entrance of their hill by recording an image of the elements surrounding their home when they face the entrance. This way they move in circles around the hill until all of those surrounding elements fit the image they have stored and they know they are in the right place and can walk straight to the entrance. It is only that one combination that will work.
For me, this is how good painting works, and what an artist is really doing when we do this thing we do. Re-arranging. Finding combinations presented to us br the crack in the wall... a shape, a line, a quality of light, a color. Reconnecting memories (in and out of time), perspectives, and emotion to find a certain combination that will unlock a door or even return us to center.
2.21.2007
bedtime thoughts
When i was little i would fall asleep to the sounds of my mother's sewing machine in the den down the hall. Other times the sound of her typewriter. And when neither of those were present, my earliest memories were the sounds that came from my pillow. I would hear marching in my pillow (which i suppose now was the sound of my own blood pumping), and i would imagine armies of people or animals moving over landscapes. And i would follow them to sleep.
My mom introduced me to typing. "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country." I typed it over and over again.
She introduced me to watercolors, with a big brush on a wet page she created a deep ocean over which she swept the golden gate bridge in three strokes followed by the connecting cable... up-down up-down.
My mom was my history teacher in 7th grade, where we learned about the Punic Wars. I was fascinated with Hannibal and war elephants marching cross the Pyrenees to take on the Romans.
The Department of History, United States Military Academy
Elephants live in packs led by the female, or matriarch. Adult males live in solitude mostly. According to wikipedia, elephants were used in wars up to and through WW2, where they were still used to move heavy machinery and artillery over more difficult landscapes.
