13 love poems and a song of despair
Materials: chalkboard, chalk, thirteen love poems, eraser.
Idolatry
Materials: rabbit skin glue, cold wax medium, galkyd, oil (raw sienna, yellow ocher, olive green, titanium white).
Dimensions 12" x 12"
Description: half the canvas was painted in oil mixed to match the canvas tone, the other half was left raw underneath the sizing...imperfections in the canvas, brush fibers, lint are visible on the raw side. The cosmetic side is pristine and unreal...essentially, fake.
Water and wool
Materials: latex paint in "nightfall" satin, latex paint in "nightfall" flat, graphite on canvas.
17 hours (want is not a qualification, need has no signifigance)
Materials: erasible ink, graphite on paper.
Red letter
letter written in red ink, salt water, on paper
Dimensions: 38"W x 21 1/2H
Description: letter written in red ink on notebook paper, soak in salt water and "printed" on BFK. The actual letter dissolved, what is left is the stain.
Eulogey for Charlie
Materials: graphite on paper.
Dimensions: 3 panels, each one 24 x 36"
I frequented a used bookstore, and more specifically, this particular used book store’s Beckett collection which was rather well stocked. After picking up a few volumes at different times, I noticed, that most of them had belonged to the same person. The former owner had written his name and address in the front cover and had underlined specific passages as he read, something I am inclined to do myself. On my third trip the owner of the store, noticing my penchant for Beckett told me that a recent widow had sold him a good portion of the stores Beckett collection after her husband, Charley, had died. Because I had so many of his books, so many of his books by the same author – underlined and marked by him, I felt a connection with this stranger, his image became an unfocusable blur of recognizable attributes in my mind. After reading his copy of “Molloy, Malone Dies and the Unnamable” I took my own underlined fragments from the book, some of them coinciding/remarking his own and repeated them over and over again on the three 24 x 36” sheets of paper in soft graphite. The text itself became almost illegible, an almost vocal, visual vibration – something like a test pattern or static, seemingly recognizable information unable to be focused or clearly viewed, an unspoken eulogy for a stranger who felt familiar.
(In affliction like a plant blindly fastening its tendrils,) Niobe also of the beautiful hair..
Materials: “Heart-strings” pink latex in flat, “Nightfall” latex in flat, graphite on canvas.
Blackbird exhibition EXP Gallery Chicago, IL
(Installation view)
