new piece

i found this fence in the alley behind my garage.
freedom for wolves - spraypaint, latex, ink and gesso
on found object. approx. 6' x 9' amen.

blah blah blah and a cha cha

myself and a bunch of jazz dudes at the bowery poetry club in NY.
the reading was at a buffalo poets gathering they do once a month.
MOOSE!

the garage

so i moved recently from a 14,000 sq. ft. open space, to a small garage in my back yard. this move has changed not only the way i work, but the also the way in which i conduct the process. let me explain.
when i had the warehouse, i could move freely about, leaving in my wake a mess of materials. this lent to having multiple projects left unfinished and a veritable ocean of trash in my studio. now i have a garage just large enough to work on one piece at a time, and many times in the process of that piece i find myself cleaning. cleaning is a good thing.

in the fifteen minutes i take to clean and smoke, i can clear my brain of all of the bullshit that clogs it up while i work on a particular piece. are the lines strong? does this make sense? is it sell-able? is that a nipple? you know, garbage. i find that my newer stuff s really quite a bit more clear. less influenced by immediate surroundings (being that there are no surroundings). now if i can conquer the personal demons of my own art history, i might be able to produce something sincere.

on the breath of death

well i guess it is becoming official. i am now an artist alone. i recently started an art collective with a group of other artists in the saint charles missouri area, that seems to have died at birth. so i moved into my garage. not a new story. artists of all types that i have encountered, be they musicians, poets or painters, all have a knack for self destruction. why? are we ingrained with a hatred of individualism that is so deep that it of course lends to self hatred? is it jealousy that develops amongst artists that causes us to separate into knitting circle fashion and destroy all threads of our common fabric? are we just not ready for socialism and all that it offers and costs? whatever it is, it is nothing new, and that is also what it allows. nothing new.