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. 

JOCK STRAPS

I found some military-issue jockstraps on eBay. I embroidered images of newly cut wood onto the garments. The images came from a tree that was cut down in my back alley .I used them to represent the idea of a government body taking over an individual body, and generating a body whose sole purpose is war. I held this idea in mind as I embroidered the wood. The wooden hangers were also found on eBay; I sanded them on one side. I took the finished objects to the MCA in Chicago and checked them in at the coatroom there, where they were hung up. I wanted to place them in context as articles of clothing, rather than works of art. "We set our precious things out to be heroes, and just as easily tuck them away, out of view." This goes on in my life as a waiter. I will wait on someone from the military, all dressed in uniform. As I serve that person, I am honored to be doing so, thanking them for risking their life (for whatever reason). As soon as they are gone, I no longer have a thought about them, I can't remember their face or any detail. They just go faceless to the front line.

    

A second set of Jock Straps were made. with Woodpeckers and Fruit tree blossoms were embroideredand sewn on them.

A third set of jock straps were made as gifts. One was a Caveman Cupid. The second was a  Monkey Cupid, that was given to a young rapper friend, Big Dipper bigdippermusic

THE BIRD FOUNTAIN

  I like the idea of exalting nothing, or next-to-nothing. A loaf of bread is one of the simplest staples of food for us. I had a simple thought: Replace a loaf of bread for a concrete fountain, and birds for water. I bought a loaf of Wonder Bread and placed it in a public square. The birds came down and devoured it. This was documented on instagram with the text: "when you see a cheap loaf, see a fountain". The piece existed in reality, and exists in thought, every time you reach for a loaf of bread.

I saw this in the street

I called it Fly Fountain 

THE MARRIAGE

I am sealed together in a casing made of the DNA, made from both of my parents.  I see my Father's neck in the morning mirror, as I am shaving it . I recognize my Mother's posture in the reflection of a parked car as I walk by it. The socks are an analogy, a universal truth that none of us can escape. Looked from a different point of view, the socks can be a metaphor for relationships. Relationships,good or bad, making us who we are, whether your lover is a beauty, a beast , or loneliness itself, you are with it, encased in plastic. ….This was a manufactured piece. Images were made by John Herndon frenchfriedeyeballs. The 3 silhouetted ladies were found online. I ordered 3 pairs of each. I combined the ladies with the beasts and repackaged them, sealing them in together.

THE MONSTERS

A toddler's negligee, and a toddler's business suit  both with monster appliquéd on them, speaks less of pedophilia and more of the world of adult finance and adult sex. I was thinking about the idea of what is expected of us in a gender-enriched society, and also just of expectations in general. "What was expected of me growing up was very little , so the monsters easily came in. Then there was the child living down the street from me, Gordon Lane in fact. So much was expected of him. The monsters were forced upon him"…. 

The Monster images are collected from the work of John Herndon, a musician, and a tattoo artist. frenchfriedeyeballs. The drawings were intended to be tattoos. 

THE HOLES

These shirts have been moth-eaten and repaired. Each hole covered up with appliquéd moths. The moths are made in a workmanlike manner, lacking any self-expression. Merely a task of constructing and repairing. Like the reconstruction of a building after a war. New stones and new plaster are placed next to the old ones. Albeit, in better condition, the newer walls are the ones that actually house the memory of the destruction. The older one stones hold more memories, like the memories of peace and the joy of it's making.

Another Shirt was made. this one with a much more decorative set of moths because it was intended as a present.

CUT OUTS / CUT INS

There was a honeysuckle bush at the end of the lane by our house. My Brother, my Cousins and I would go to it before we would head down to the ravine. We would reach up, pull the heads off the flowers and suck out the nectar. Some memories become small and distant with time, dissipating like the sound of scared birds as they fly away from you. This memory is not that. It is as big in my face as those blossoms I would pick as I crawled deeper into the bush to get at them. These dresses are those flowers and the representation of that event… The dresses are completely enclosed and connected to a pair of it's own scissors, ready for the owner to cut out, and get into. They are hung together on a garment rack; a retelling of the honeysuckle bush.     

Gordon Lane