Postin' Up

I remember the first one vividly. It was in downtown Charleston. With my dad driving our maroon red Honda Accord I would look out from the back right, always the back right, as we would pass it on our way to and from the soccer games that he coached us through. Sitting on the right side of the car I always had a much better view on the way back home. It was on the other side of a chain link fence that kept the boarded over row homes separated from the crosstown traffic that flowed back and forth between downtown and the suburbs. An orange milk crate with no bottom that was nailed to a damp and molding telephone pole rising with a gangsta' lean from the glass covered asphalt.

Memory Jog Romance

So this is some work from this fall that I made at the couple of residencies I was at.

I was working with all this b&w work from the past year. A year that was made up of many highs and lows but all I could seem to remember were, of course, all the highs.

I am not alone in this selective memory, over embellishment, romanticization thing. As far as I know, we all do it.

So I started to paint in the saturated atmosphere that I remembered each place to have. I would begin transferring the key lines from an image to this crazy plastic paper called Yupo. Next, I would summon the color gods to jog my memory of each scene. Then, I would print that image over top of the painting, and close my eyes and wait.

And see where my memory took me.

These are some. There are others, and more to come. Just a little game of memory jog romance.

Wandering with Weights

Lamar, CO

As I sit in my new local coffee house in my new town I remember this guy. He was walking his groceries home through the tall grass field at twilight. As I navigate the web for jobs in Chattanooga, Tennessee I remember his story. He used to work at the Alco, a smaller more regional version of Walmart. As I get redirected from one application forum to another I remember his wandering. He now walks the streets of Lamar with his food that comes from the Walmart that has now replaced the smaller Alco. As I wade helplessly in this anonymous sea of 1s and 0s I think of this guy.

Chapter Next

A painter friend was describing his process the other day. He starts out by putting down a landscape, arbitrarily, in oil. He will then wait a couple of days for it to firm up and proceed to paint over it, also arbitrarily. Finally, he scrapes around the new paint, and gouges the old paint that has had a chance to form only a hard outer skin. The scraping turns the top paint muddy while the gouging brings fresh color from below to the surface and adds a new life to the mud above.

In numerous ways I have been reminded that the retelling of my visions from America in 2009 do not need to be so exacting, so chronologically predictable. Now ends this linear trajectory.

Let the melting pot begin.

Their World as They Know It

It appears as if life in rural Utah has been this way forever.

That the cars did indeed sprout up from the ditch.

That the tree grew pale white with no intention of forming branches and the plastic kennel erupted from the rubble one stormy afternoon, a long time ago.

The rocks here were born painted, the signs born into distress.

And the boy has always been friends with the burro.

Patriot Poems

Flagpoles rise

Devotion to that which flies freely

Trampolines settle

Silence only springs know

Tourists proceed

Caravans feed their velcroed soles

Indians gaze

Silently devoted to their caravans of yesterday

The Fastest Growing Religion

Twelve children once crawled through this house and under the table, shooting marbles and getting splinters.

They ran around the yard, shooting bb guns and playing with their dolls.

Some were too young to play, they laid in their cribs drooling a little.

Others had stick wars, sometimes they bled.

On Saturdays some played soccer. On Sundays they all went to Church.

Probably not much different from what the kids were doing in my neighborhood, but then again, I am not sure.

Life in the small towns of Utah wanted to be elusive. I came in with my own stereotypes about Mormon culture. Multiple wives with multiple children. Strange things happening behind flaking wooden doors. Truth is that I did get creeped out a little bit, but I was not able to tell wether it was from my preconceived notions, the desolate and expansive landscape, or if the locals out here were actually giving us the third degree. One Truth is for certain however. And that is that when Rush's wheel went 4 spokes out of true who came riding down the road but a Mormon couple and their Saturday cycling crew. With matter-of-factness the man told us to follow along, that they were headed back to his house, just ten miles from here, and that he could help us out. Well, 3 showers later we were sitting at their dining room table with leftover spaghetti, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and fresh popcorn. Already Rush's bike had undergone a complete overhaul and we had been invited to see live music at a pizza joint down the road.

This is not to say that I agree with or even care about the beliefs that Joseph Smith cultivated, but I guess I sit here and realize that it does not matter. We were in need, they provided an answer, and we left, on smooth rides with full bellies, and appreciation for those who had been the butt of our (or rather my own) jokes for most of the state.