YESTERDAY'S NEWS (What is Black and White and Red all over?)

 I was born in the dawn of HiFi sound. Somewhere in-between there were Quadraphonic speakers and Walkmans. Now I download my music digitally. I remember a portable stereo with wired speakers, carouseling turntable and the stylus resting in a grove playing Simon and Garfunkel’s “So Long Frank Lloyd Wright”. 

Frank Lloyd Wright was a man who’s life mimicked mine. I am not suggesting in any way that I am in the same creative realm, I am merely bringing to mind that we were both born on a similar cusps of history, Flowing though eras, nearly 100 years apart. His time saw a Victorian era give way to prairie style, which in turn was traded up for the Bauhaus.

The pieces and artifacts produced in this series are intrinsically autobiographical. The silent valet and the telephone table have a redundancy about them, as do the Elizabethan ruff, and the bloomers. 

The newspaper in which these pieces are made go more and more out of date the further we get from that point. The Boston Marathon Bombing was on the front page the day I bought the paper, and though the event had changed the lives of those closely involved forever, for the rest of the world it has become a low distant din.   

Even the physical paper itself has becoming extraneous in the digital age. No longer does the joke “What is Black and White and Red all over?” apply because print and paper are themselves becoming passé.  Finally, much of the knowledge that I have obtained though out my years has become insignificant, though it is not without it’s charm.  Who doesn’t love a knicker, an ascot or a milking stool. I would have not made this things 30 years ago, nor been able to. But, just because the parasol was put out of commission, all thanks to sunblock, it doesn’t make it less beautiful. 

REFORMATION

This piece works is under the same principles as the framed photograph of the scarves and the aprons (A PORTRAIT OF A PORTRAIT ) . The one key difference is that the objects that are behind the images are not the ones represented in the photograph. This work also uses the idea of The Treachery of Images (This is Not a Pipe) (La trahison des images [Ceci n'est pas une pipe]) by Rene Magritte. The 3 photographs are the byproduct of the earlier piece. A piece which soured for me. In these new pieces, I have placed objects that are weighted and dear to me. It is in this way that, when I look at the photographs, I am no longer looking at the images of the aprons, but, at the things behind them. The things that bring me a quiet and curtain joy. I am hoping that in time, just like Pavlov's dog, I will once again salivate at the sound of the bell, and the aprons will become beautiful again.  


  

REDTHREADFROMMYBEDTOTHEBUSSTOP

  

This piece records a moment in time. A walk from my bed to the bus stop. It is a portrait of a menial task, something which I do nearly every day. The original idea was created around 1977, in high school. I used to roam the school halls and imagine a red thread attached to my ankle. It followed me through out the building in long, yet invisible red loops that would cross, and tangle with other students red threads during the bell, then back to my single red thread, as I was constantly maneuvering hallways, instead of attending classes. Initially, the idea of the conceptual red thread started from the moment I walked into the building. In time, I would back up to the place of origin to the morning walk from my house. Then, farther back to the house I lived in before that house. Further and further back in time, until ultimately, from my mothers womb.

By beading the thread I am exhaling the task, and that moment in time to it's most poetic level. The thread is a simple poly blend and the beads are made of glass, pearls, sequins and some plastic. It was made in only two places; the bus, and on my bed. Though it appears precious, light, and easy, the work was tedious and grueling. The Tupperware bowl in which the beads were kept were refilled 5 different times, giving the strand a subtle variation throughout, as if I had given the strand it's own time line, a life line of it's own. 

MARDI GRAS BEADS

The third work of the Pearl and Plastic collection are these Mardi Gras beads. The objective of these beads is taken from the phrase. "Cast your pearls before swine". Using my "Mathematical equation" that the Plastic has equal value, (thus, the same equal right) to the pearl. Therefore, the swine has equal value to everything else. These things are made up of pretty much the same atoms, protons and neutrons, the same stardust. So, why shouldn't they be thought of as equal.

It was a beautiful and difficult task to make these beads look cheap,  and feel like Mardi Gras beads… I had to start with the cheapest beads, disguise the pearls and glue the bead in the same separate way that real Mardi Gras beads come from the manufacturer. 

PEARL NECKLACE #2

Through out my life I have made my Cousin necklaces. The last set was made from old jade beads and others, found in our Grandmothers home. Though I had taken a lot of time and care in making seven necklaces for her, they were not worth much. One day, there was a break in at her house and the necklaces were stolen, among other things. This is a new necklace for her. It is made with some left over beads of our grandmothers, some of my own, including my fresh water pearls. It is a necklace that I disguised as a rosary so that the thief will not be able to steal the necklace out of moral fortitude.

PLASTIC AND PEARLS

PLASTIC ROSARY

PEARL NECKLACE

A simple piece of a jewelry. A necklace that is altered and adorned. First, there is a rosary made of plastic beads. Then, real pearls are threaded on. This makes it worth more. The pearls add an air of wealth and luxury. But now the numbers are off and the rosary doesn't work. 

BICYCLE POSTCARD

I bought a beautiful cruiser bicycle and put a wicker basket on it, only to find that each time I rode it, I felt underdressed. The bicycle had issued its own demand of style. I found myself dressing into characters when I would ride it. I was the actor and  the pavement was my stage. The travelers in cars, and on foot were the audience. This is not a long play mind you, not one that would fill a manuscript, but an ephemeral one, one that could be written on back of a postcard. One might read a postcard, flip it over, and then place it on the table next to a pile of newspapers and bills, until eventually, it finds it's way into the bottom of a drawer. So goes my quick play, and my characters pedaling by: The Brigadier, The Rich Golfer, Bill Cunningham w/ Cardboard Camera,War and Peace, The Austrian Extra from The Sound of Music, and Fake Messenger with the Fake Doll Bomb.

OBJECT OF TRUST

After the Boston Marathon bombings, I was filled with the sense of anger and consumed with revenge. I became suspect of all dark backpacks. It was the same feelings I felt after my muggings, where I became overly cautious of people behind me. I went out in search of an abandoned backpack that I could then reupholster in a clear vinyl to be able to expose all things that were covered: A pressure cooker, a  plastic doll, and those feelings of hate, anger and revenge.  

A PORTRAIT OF A PORTRAIT

Earlier in the my post I mentioned that memory is folded like a blanket. Distance can be the seen in the same way.

When I was a child, I was captivated by a story that my Aunt Virginia told about her husband, who as a pilot in his spare time. Walter had one eye, therefore, no depth of field. A little girl standing close to him would look the same as a woman standing 9 feet back. I imagined him asking the little girl what she did for a living.

I bought a Swiss nurses apron and I embroidered a pig on it. Then I made a replica of it , in a child's size. In the photographs, one has no clue of the size of the aprons. The only clue is the frame, and when they are together. 

I repeated the the idea of the scarves, placing the object under the image. The aprons are inside the white frames. Having the knowledge of this gives weight to what would be the most simple of photographs.  

BELL SCARVES

Simple scarves made of cotton and silk. Remnants of old kimonos and other pieces of material. In each scarf is made of two pieces of fabric and has a little bell inside, so that you can always find it if you lose it ..... The scarves are vacuumed packed and hidden in a frame behind it's photograph.

......Your heart wants to hear the car just as it comes around the corner, carrying a lover, someone, or something of importance. It is calling you as it drops it's clutch and spins it's wheels on the pavement. Though you cannot see it is just for you replete with hope, and full of motion. However, without movement it is just stale air. The marvel is not in the scarves themselves, but in You. You hear the bell while it's still; like you hear the car as it comes around the corner, even though it is nowhere to be found, and possibly never was. It is in that power that You have the ability to hear a dead love and stir it. It is that virtue that makes the unmoved bell a sleeping giant, reposed in a sleeping bag behind the shed; and You, the step that wakes it......

ICON

I was 9 in the spring of 1970 when Ray Stevens Hit song "Everything Is Beautiful" topped the charts in the U.S. What a joy, and a relief it was for me to know that I , along with everything else was set apart and deemed beautiful. It would be clear sailing from then on. Until, of course when I came across the Quote attributed to Stalin, "A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic". Not exactly a duality, but these thoughts haunted a good portion of my life, equally,   With a simple act of gold leafing a discarded piece of chewing gum which I found on the street, I exalt the worthless. Doing one piece of gum is equal to millions, so, in fact I have paved the world in slightly flat golden nuggets.

As second part of my Iconography, I wanted to work in a 2 dimensional plane. I started looking for some perfect graffiti to adorn with gold leaf. Setting off on my bicycle, I combed the streets and back alleys of Chicago. My objective was to find images of faces, in which I would adorn the whites of the eyes with gold, so they would appear more  Byzantine like (a tag within a tag as my signature). I spent many days looking for just the right graffiti to embellish. During my search, I came to to find that a great number of street tags seemed to be done out of boredom more than anything else, I found I was becoming drawn to the banal scribbles that were probably derived  from the more primitive parts of the brain, than the  elaborate pieces of work. The images  are usually found on bathroom walls and locker rooms. I made the image of the golden sperm on a locker I found in the employee changing room at my work. 

DOLL ON THE BUS

After I made the Street Dolls piece, two dolls were left over. One was to be used as an artifact, the second I used in this piece. During my lifetime, public awareness has completely changed. I remember being allowed by my mother to "run away from home " at age five with my brother and "move in with Santa" who lived a half mile down the road. We returned at night, suitcase and family dog in hand, completely unharmed. Now I live in an age where people are afraid of small white envelopes sent through the mail. A simple doll was once considered a gift, now it may be considered a bomb. This piece was documented on instagram. To me it is sculptural graffiti and more overt than the Street Dolls piece. Now even sweet gestures can mean something afoul. We have slowly crossed a threshold, inch by inch...almost everything is tinged with the sinister.

DOLLS (SMILE)

The idea for this piece was made in 1987. Originally it was to be a wall of porcelain Vivien Leigh dolls, somewhere in a populated area of the city where would sure to be degradation of the piece over time, which is actually what the piece is (not the dolls). I had received my entrance into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a series of drawings, all with this central theme. Existence is nothing without the lack of it. Life is nothing without the parameters of death, even art needs a frame of some sort or another. Now, I can only really afford plastic baby dolls. The idea is the same. The only difference is that the second idea was realized. In my early work I reveled  in the beginnings and endings of things, to establish boundaries. The new work reverberates with the commonplace, A blurred line between art and the ordinary. 

With one of the two dolls that were left over from the doll totem piece was places in a clear plastic contain. It became an common artifact of a common event. 

I made a similar piece in 1988, with a grant from the NEA. This comprised a clothesline of a hundred T-shirts running through Lincoln Park in Chicago. I filmed the theft of the shirts over time.