POST-STORAGE [Part 2]

In February 2019 we closed the storage units we had occupied in Upland, California, since 2006 or -7, filled a 26’ box truck with the contents, drove that vehicle through the mountain passes of Cali and Oregon in the midst of winter, and unloaded everything into our Astoria home. The POST-STORAGE essay in three parts samples the art that had been sequestered in those four containers in the Inland Empire. They (the artworks) span more than three decades of my projects and production, including samples and artifacts from Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown, the Sneaky Pete thesis series, DddD, O1, CONTENT thesis series, A Prayer for Clean Water I - V + Overflow Show, and much more. The texts cover Dimensionist theoretical territory, current affairs and the artist’s shifting perspective that arrives post-50 (almost 55). Not least in the mix is the re-contextualization of art, text and life happening in the novel (to us) Northwest Coast environment. The Astorias of Queens and Oregon are separated by the American continent. What does that distance mean, post-Internet?

"Black 01 Vinyl"
Adhesive Vinyl on Vinyl Record
9.75" in diameter
2001
$450

One of the Vinyl on Vinyl series produced for Heartless01, "Black 01 Vinyl" picked up a crack somewhere along the way. These discs referenced the amazing music recorded for our collective 01 projects in Nashville. In installations, the 01 vinyls operated visually in tandem with the environmental vinyl 01 sticker grids and other applications on objects (e.g., monitors, canvas, books, etc.) to dissolve encompassing architecture and produce new ontology for the elements in our 4D arrays, both virtual and analog, in new and traditional media.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but the art industry is only one among many industries. Artists really ought not take it personally, when our portion of the industrial topology is twisted to the whims of the super-wealthy. Our thing is being decimated and distorted, just as so many venerable disciplines, crafts and stable economies are. I am comforted by the understanding that American society is fundamentally revolutionary, and the means by which the ugly, mediocre, inhumane, tyrannical, inequitable status quo can be upended is built into our system. Historically, the strongest rebels among us fit into demographics that today are under relentless, all-directional assault. A half-century ago, the inbred, cross-eyed, soft-hand, filthy, antisocial international super-rich correctly analyzed their enemies and developed short- and long-range strategies and tactics to re-instate their domination of humanity, which was disrupted temporarily in the 20th Century.

"Jumper"
Ink and Acrylic (Quin. Red/Gold) on Museum Board
29" x 20"
2006
$1800

"Jumper" was originally presented at AFHGC, using magnets to affix the painting to the wall. The image is derived either from Century of War or Dr. McLean's Green Beret yearbook (can't remember which).

The artificial, by-design, horrific malevolent effects the 1%er beasts have unleashed upon their fellows include waves of elegantly packaged addiction, distraction, dislocation, aggression, swelling into a perfect storm of psychophrenia. The opportunism of the elites is a product of training, alliances, dehumanization and compound resources. The wealthiest can afford to test 1000 losing propositions to find the one that best serves their (the 1%) prurient, selfish and usually stupid purposes. The galling extent to which an unregulated aristocrat can induce chaos on well-organized, high-functioning community is anecdotally apparent to any analyst willing to witness the phenomenon. The Presidency of Donald Trump is a case study, but only one of hundreds. The Mayoral run of Michael Bloomberg present another instance, of a different flavor, which is true across the globe. For every Macron there is a Carlos Slim. The technocrats and plutocrats meet in Davos and Bilderberg summits, or informally wherever they like, to map the future they prefer and to shape that future with all the devices unimaginable wealth and power affords its masters. What the rest of us must recognize is that they exist by our collective permission, absent our individual capacity in most cases to counteract their synthetic will.

"RED ROVER"
Unique Digital Print Mounted on Foam Core
24" x 16"
2000
$300

This is Destination Gallery at First Union Tower interior signage for Todd Greene's "Red Rover" exhibit. I was the gallery director and liaison with TIAA-CREF and CB Richard Ellis. I also designed all marketing materials for the gallery program, which included posters, banners and invitations. Plus more. We had a great run.

What are the 4D tools that activate effective creative movement? First is convolution. The woven form in martial applications is simultaneously offensive and defensive, conducive to the sequential application of smothering combinations by a strong practitioner on her opponent. The second is complexity. Technical variation adds to the confusion of the opponent, seeking to settle into a binary mode of engagement, governed by rules that improve the players odds. The feint is a type of disrupting syncopation in percussive flurries that can be utilized, for instance, to set up decisive blows. The third is sense of duration, which expresses as endurance, or tenacity. The nature of Event determines that those who excel at conforming to the contemporary are best situated to create useful derivation. The responsiveness of the player to variations in intensity of action will be important to the outcome of any match. There are others, but the key factor to remember is the fragility of hybrid virtual and analog combinations in any 4D scenario.

"New Signal Flag"
Adhesive Vinyl on Vinyl
8" x 10"
2001
$480

The "New Signal Flag" series was originally exhibited in SEAM01 at Jerry Dale McFadden's The Attic Gallery (TAG) in Nashville. The electron microscopy elements were contributed by gallerist and collector Susan Tinney. The vinyl substrate was cut from a rejected banner swooped from one of the printers I worked with regularly.

Scalable vision is critical in 4D configurations, and the concept is formally mechanical. The visible is directional only to the viewer whose optical system is dictated by the vicissitudes of reception quality. Blur is an effect, and a symptom. When we look at the universe, do we see the universe or ourselves? The more refined one’s vision becomes, the more likely that the interpretive engine for one’s senses has created a universe of its own. The parallel consciousness of existence proposes a simultaneous continuum for the generation of stimuli and the logic of the witness. To see is to think about the seen thing, and then to feel one way or another about it. The order of unfolding interpretation places awareness in the time medium. Immediately, the alignment of content to context to consciousness commences. Absent a fourth element for synthesis, the triangulation of phenomenon with sensual focus is fictional. The synthetic features of mind and spirit as in the concept (Geistes) establishes inference as a rationalizing dynamic for harmonization in multi-valent phenomena.

"Diane"
Unique Digital Print from Photoshop Enhanced 35mm B/W Photo (Scanned Contact Sheet)
19" x 13"
2008

$1200 "Diane" was photographed in my Chestnut Square studio in Nashville in 2000 or -01. The print was output in 2008 for CONTENT, my solo exhibit at Yarger|Strauss Contemporary in Beverly Hills.

The flesh is the mediator between impression and impulse. Our physicality creates the urgency of thought, relative to the finite and infinite, our bodily nemesis, our intellectual liberator. Mortality for art is the platform for spectral expression. The organic features of time provision all manner of release. Orgasm is as real as any experience, but the motivation to experience orgasm is visual for the artist. The prejudice of the non-artist toward to art and artist arises from envy of the artistic eye in those for whom aesthetic vision remains mysterious, alien, dangerous, weird, crazy, etc. Mostly, it is a fear that is less-than 4D in its particulars, and it is bound to competition for survival, to reproduce. In short, it is the same pulsing fear that drives the !% to crush the freedom of art and artist. They (the plutocracy) as a class demonstrate a powerful collective compulsion to command and control art and culture, about which they understand practically nothing. The relations between art and the plutocrat are typical of all relations by which the super-powerful seek to define themselves, generation to generation. The 1% remain the most unfortunate subject of any artistic enterprise. Worse, their insecurity and frequent lack of character and internal or spiritual distinction condemns their portraits to history’s dumpster. Art’s canonical focus on the tyrants of the past thousand+ years (in portraiture, especially) can be described as accidental humor, as slapstick. Banksy certainly has proved this point.

"Wovenform"
Ink on Handmade Paper
9" x 11"
2008
$975

"Wovenform" was a quick sketch created in pre-production for "CONTENT" at Yarger|Strauss, initially as visual data for digital animation and still image processing. It was not exhibited in that show.

The flattening of remembrance into a disc (like a CD or DVD) is a profound recursion. Siphoning off mass vitality and locating it in a Cloud is a profound dispersion. The decoupling of virtual production from objects and privacy (as in possession) is as traumatic as the invention and subsequent convention of intellectual property. These are civic problems disguised as tech-based solutions. These are camouflaged economic redistribution policies. These are extensions of Master-Slave or -Servant programs. Weaving the facts and fictions of things into not-things is the 4D movement in a nutshell. Viewed through a Dimensionist lens, the baffling succession of frustrating failures in all but a few segments of Civilization over the past four decades are no longer baffling. Not that surety is itself the point ~ it most definitely is not. The point is accuracy, and its second point is precision, and its third point is exactitude. Beyond the three points, the rest is estimation. The elimination of ambiguity in nature is the semblance permanence.

"Pattern Print"
Digital Print on Canvas
Portfolio of 30 Unique Patterns
13" x 19"
2008
$1200

We visited Cape Disappointment today, after lunching at Captain Bob’s in Long Beach, Washington. I am bemused that at the culmination of Manifest Destiny is the Dismal Niche and Cape Disappointment. Poor Lewis and Clark, discovering so much only to find a grim end of the trail. “Ocian in view! O! the joy!” ~ Okay, maybe not all bad, but to inspect the strange history of adventure and what became of the adventurers is once more to unravel the fictions we imagine when we hear names and numbers (dates). It is the exercise (exorcism) of memoranda. Since Trump was elected President - and maybe forever - we see efforts to apply reforms to historical narratives. I think Kantian distaste is behind the urge. The art world is a flashpoint for revisionism. MoMA is embarked on quest to abolish provenance, within curatorial practice, except as it bears on the valuation of individual pieces with substantial donors attached. The market has defeated its public enemy at the pinnacle of ivory tower culture. We can look for patterns now where they are meaningless, frivolous and (con-)temporary. The anchor of non-fiction is no longer connected to the floor of the watery depths of culture. Identity is the mirror of flux, and that basic configuration will serve as the boring novelty of our visual lives. The dismantling of difference is accelerating.

"Thunder Dreamer"
Mixed Media on Canvas
12" x 12"
2006
$1800

The shock of the new is hardly shocking at all. The old is shocking. The ancient is on balance a source of fictional terror, and a resource for extraction and exploitation, especially for marketing purposes. Once this phase exhausts its momentum and all derivatives dissolve under the weight of loss of commonwealth, the orgy of present-fucking will re-commence. Art will find NOW and the happening will resume. The priceless moment will convert fashion to fusion and the simple stick and rock-based computing will relieve the pressure in Civilization. The super-rich are sensitive to the hatred of everyone else, which they misconstrue as envy. The ultra-wealthy want to be free to loathe and fear everything, anything, everyone, anyone. They hate to be rejected, despised, to be hunted and collectivized on any terms other than their own. Of course I am generalizing. This is the trick of class warfare. Because the international oligarchy consists of listed names and numbers, the member of that non-club cabal feel justified in determining cartoonish individualistic definitions of themselves. It is hopeless to ask these brats to stop making fetishes to and of themselves and the fictions they embrace to rationalize their existence, which is absolutely irrational.

"Water" + "Torture Scene"
Acrylic (Quin. Red/Gold), Copper, Die Cut Foil Print Artifact, Adhesive Print
12" x 9" (Each)
$1375 (Each)

The Secret Market series originally appeared in "A Prayer for Clean Water" at St. Edward's University in Austin. I created many small adhesive prints for the exhibit cycle. Some were affixed to and integrated into artworks, as in the Abu Ghraib "Torture Scene." Others were distributed through the presentation space, as in "Overflow Show" at Pump Project.

[VIEWS 1 & 2]

Does anyone remember the term attention span? The monopoly media have finally abandoned the bitchy refrain of condemnation toward citizens who were failing to maintain focus on important developments over time. The hypocrisy of the press is its specialty. The disappearance of freedom of the press behind paywalls under the pretense of industrial trending coincides with yellow headlines about a wall on our southern border. Respectable journalistic standards fall like bowling pins as the for-profit model serves the super-rich, corporate syndicates and the management of their affairs. Papers and news broadcasts have emerged as propaganda vehicles, even as their big stories bray incessantly about corruption of the political discourse by foreign players. What happened to Puerto Rico? Did anyone actually figure out what the reason was for the mass shooting in Las Vegas, or any of the many others? Is there a plan for resolving America’s conflicts (erm, wars, campaigns, etc.) in the Middle East? Is anyone going to condemn Israel for its outrageous border slaughters? Or Saudi Arabia’s assassination of a well-known journalist? Will anyone go to prison for Flint? Or the BP oil spill? Or the “London Whale” fiasco? Why aren’t the CEOs of the huge Wall Street banks and the Chairmen of the Fed and the Treasury appointees who crashed the economy in 2007-8 in prison? Why did Obama all the sudden decide America had to look forward, not backward. Why has justice been thrown under the bus?

"Invocations (Linda)"
Photograph (Framed)
44" x 31"
2001
$3300

"Invocations was shot in 2000 at my Belcourt (Nashville) studio, and originally exhibited at Cumberland Gallery in a summer group show. The image data from the "Linda" series was used in the feature-length animation "FALL," which was pre-produced in West Virginia in and completed during the Eureka! residency (2002-4). The inscription indicates the print is 1/25, but this print is actually unique. I really like the effect autoportrait reflection combining with the picture in my crap iPhone documentation.

It’s not that we stopped paying attention, it’s that the out-of-control corruption of America by corporate syndicates and their owners has not been punished. The shittiest of our fellows continue to get away with it. They are trotted out into the NY Times or CNN or WSJ and permitted the opportunity to congratulate themselves, once again. The situation has reached critical mass, at least in France, at least for a minute. One can only hope and pray that the mad killers among us will begin to target those who really deserve gory endings. The Coast Guard lieutenant accused of plotting mayhem is the latest in a string of incidents that suggest the lid could blow off the pot anytime. Obviously, the projection of information into media stream by the super-rich and their hacks will not include images and stories of the wealthy being murdered, maimed, convicted, poisoned, disenfranchised, thrown in the street, kicked out of all the prestigious institutions and academies to which they and their children belong, tortured, assassinated, frog-walked by cops, beaten with nightsticks on their lawns, ass-fucked in prisons by guards and inmates, stripped of all awards, and so on. These measures are off-limits, unspeakable, even as fictions that might inspire uprising and reversal of the coup, the most massive redistribution of wealth in history. Which is why we must reserve the right to imagine what we want, and share it with our fellow citizens, for the purpose of democratic, constitutionally legitimate mobilization.

"She Blew My Mind Guy"
Acrylic and Ink on Paper
30" x 22"
1998
$3400

"She Blew My Mind Guy" originally was exhibited in "The Embrace" at Third Coast Clay in Nashville. During the month-long residency at TCC I produced almost 100 ceramic paintings and the series of works on paper.

The eruption of passion is creative, if not necessarily artistic. The political embodies a specific urgency that is the mesh of the human condition and its will to commune. I’m thinking of you, Badiou! The nullification of the political leaves the desire for collective expression in a fallow state. The desertion of the demos by its representation commits the imagination to servitude of and for the ungoverned, which is not (whatever Ayn Rand might have thought) the same as the free. Fortunately we have precedence, through which we can dismiss the stupid and cynical proclamations of trolls and punks of the super-class. To assign the scale of causation with applicable value is the prime function of democracy, for all. Artists and a few other top-level free expressionists get extra protection in the democratic scheme, because we get taken out first, whenever the shitheads bust a move. You know things are gnarly when suicide is epidemic, but the times call for revolution when suicide for target demographics are encouraged, assisted and romanticized. Taking myself out is not a funny way to describe going to dinner and movie alone, in the revolutionary moment.

"Abstraction Forms Thought #4" [Written Word/Rarefied Air]
Acrylic and Ink on Wood (Framed)
14" x 11"
1995
$1600

This painting of Dim Tim, here a Cyclops in a business suit posing with his absent son, was created in 1995. The ink finish was added in 1999, when the piece was included in "Sirens + Conflagrations" at the Frist contemporary art installation spaces (stables) at Cheekwood Museum in Nashville.

I believe it is impossible to understand what is happening today in America without acknowledging the impact of the Divorce Industry on the social fabric of the nation. The USA has invisibly become a fatherless territory. The resurrection of ideologies that deserve to be dormant is one feature of the social disintegration wrought my social engineering through Family Court. The insidious influence of enforced, extraconstitutional policy adjudicated in the shadow landscape of conference rooms, mediator offices, artless courtrooms and other hideous locations is another of the unspeakable facts of American common life. The despair precipitated by the Divorce Industry is expressed in countless episodes of carnage. Family Law remedies are the worst sort, the kind that destroy the sufferer to cure her. The toxic sludge of gross institutional negligence oozing from Family Court policies and jurisdictions is consuming the conscience of our people. It weakens the population to the extent that parasitic tyrants can feast upon the still-living carcass of the Republic. The financial sector could never execute its awful encroachment into our civil society, absent the intervention of divorce practice on the soul of America.

Lanark / A Life in 4 Books, by Alisdair Gray

The smart phone is a murdered of literature and many projects of post-Church and -King free society. The novel became a liberated form through the American revolution, and despots fear it. The fatwa against Rushdie was my generation’s heads-up that the New World (GAG) Order was present and accounted for, even if it now sported checkered headware in certain regions. The top-down assault on the Arts and Humanities is always a precursor of the coup. I recently heard a recounting on radio of the Roosevelt-enabled regime change in mid-Century Iran. It is worth thinking about his views on CIA intervention in Guatamala and what is happening in Venezuela now. The public has as much chance of discovering truth in the media as it has scoring the correct ticket in the MEGA millions lottery. The armies of operatives whose primary task daily it is to shape the image of everything we consume from the information industry must be fed, and their supper is our liberty. I’m looking at you, Jeff Zucker! The evil fostered in the corporate boardrooms of media conglomerates is outperformed only in those of the corporate C-Class offices of banking and energy conglomerates. Their collective destructive power on democracy should make them Public Enemy #1, if we the people actually took seriously the legalism that these corporations are actually people. If they are people, and we accept this legal fiction, we must define them on the basis of their performance. They act criminally. Their intent is anti-democratic. Their agents are no more or less gangsters than the mobsters they fictionalize in the content with which they continuously poison our imaginations.

"Contemplation Lake"
by Tim Murphy
Oil on Canvas
10" x 8"
1995
NFS

Tim had a solo show at Destination Gallery at First Union Tower. Respect.

Another sacrifice made at the altar of consumption is contemplation. The desecration of nature is part and parcel of the scheme of the rich and powerful to destroy anything that threatens it. The planet itself is always frightening to the elite. The proliferation of unnatural practices in the field of science-enabled reproduction is a symptom of disharmony between man and his environment. The urge to bring forth new life, of course, is completely natural. In fact, there is nothing more natural. Yet the peddler of fictions Freud has had his way, post mortem, with the configuration of family. What Drucker and Hitler accomplished in the realms of private and public empire, Freud managed in the secret universe of the reproductive impulse. The nightmare of mechanical reproduction is extended from the boardroom to the battlefield to the bedroom, and if we consider Zucker and his ilk, into the imagination, the dream complex that renders our scripted, linear future from the present and past. One scene does not a parable make, except in the bitter, empty darkness of Godot. The broken promise of secular, king-less existence is that our free movement, thought, interrelations and love cannot be tolerated by the ogres, zombies and vampires of our disgusting Civilizations of origin. The international elites are leaving clawmarks in the skin of the world, as we proceed into a better life, a 4D universe, a time that is not counted in the eyes of those appointed by false gods.

"Big A Art (Wovenform)"
Ink, Graphite on Handmade Paper, Magnets, Lead-wrapped Wood
18" 12"
2006
$1800

"Big A Art (Wovenform)" was exhibited at Philip Slein Gallery in St. Louis, in a small 2007 exhibit featuring NY Artists (even though I was living and working in LA at the time). You can see by the graphite outlines where the magnets are *supposed* to be placed.

Magnetism is the special force by which the powerful encroach on the fragile armature of human decency. It is the myth of the serpent and the divine virgin, and the cuckold. From the debasement of unity by the whispers of the seducer, who paints a picture of MORE, the heart of the addict is turned. The impeachment of innocence is the aim of every pimp. The business of pimping is not only the whore, but the john and the leverage produced by the seduction of the husband. The weakest link is not the genitalia. It is the optical, as its potency meets skin. The combination is tectonic, volcanic and close to complete. Completion must achieve unity, but that is not the question here. The Inquisition is the form for our subject. Can any art progress, survive without a true conjecture for reproduction? Benjamin was as much a fraud as Sigmund Freud and his family. Fin-de-siècle Vienna and, on the whole, Austria was an incubator of malignancy, the real ground zero for the 4th Reich. The longevity of that peculiar festering dream of conquest and decadence is astonishing. The elites thrive in its putrid juice.

"Stone"
Acrylic on Canvas
12" x 9"
2004
$950

"Stone" was painted at Morris Graves' studio in Loleta, CA, during my residency. I worked from still life arrangements routinely then. "Stone" was exhibited in "Homage," at the Eureka City Hall art space.

The ritual we crave is actually a quest. The Blue Highways-style Road Trip for this generation has been cock-blocked by the super-class, who wish to reserve the power of international unregulated, free movement for themselves. Their strategies of promoting open border policies around the democratic world only has to do with generating chaos, so that their (the oligarchy) can move at will across the globe. Their money and power and reproductive potential is their passport. The emergence of the art fair, auction, exhibition and periodic festival circuit over the past half century and its codification since 911, 2001 reflect the push and pull of globalism. The tendency of the privileged elite is to overindulge the spectacular, but to do so within the banal vestiges of gutted kingdoms and churches. The 21st Century 1% mob of course must hire specialists to invent the spectacle and prevent inclusivity to the extent possible under all circumstance. Pomp and Pop are no longer distinguishable. The overall effect is camouflage. Our next Road Trip is being carved out of Tibetan mountainsides by the Chinese Revolutionary Government, whose weapons are pointed at Jackson Hole, whose agents are employed by Boeing and whose art business on paper exceeds the West.

"Two Towers"
Digital Print on Poly Material, Grommets
48" x 48"
2001
$2800

The photo data for "Two Towers" is a circa 1984 pic of the Cathedral of Learning in Pittsburgh. This image is post-9/11 and the reference is direct, even if the actual chronology is blurry. "Two Towers" was originally exhibited at Polifilo (Nashville), in Culture01. *The wrinkles in the print are easily remedied.

If Baudrillard was right about 9/11 (and I believe he pretty much nailed it), then how exactly are we to remember the event, given that it never happened, really. I put it to you that we don’t need to remember it, and we never did, because we have art, and that is exactly what art is best at doing - remembering for us. The parsing or deconstruction of aggression against the monumental architecture of the World Trade Center, as it existed in 2001, has proved to be a fools’ errand. The cascade of idiotic reactions to that catastrophic act of violence continues. The momentum of stupidity should never be underestimated, especially when it can be exploited by clever creatures who thrive in dark worlds. Post-9/11 America still reels in the undertow of partial truth. The comparison to post-Hiroshima and -Nagasaki Japan is compelling. I would include in that comparison the knocking down of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan. If there ever was a reason to endlessly torment fanaticism in its ever-present, shifting form, the Bamiyan Buddhas’ fate defends it. The casualty of these massively violent conflagrations is learning itself. The student and the teacher are murdered by the instantaneous destruction of heroic construction. Only the extreme and radical nihilist, hater of generational transmission, rejoices at the sight of the mushroom cloud, the falling of the twin towers and the stone representation of enlightened being, of purified sentience. Whatever these structures contained, otherwise, does not sufficiently provide cause for the harm directed at our imagination.

"Mr. Gilliam"
Mixed Media on Canvas
48" x 36"
1985-6
$4200

"Mr. Gilliam" is one of the Sneaky Pete series of paintings, my undergrad art thesis. The figure is a suicide I knew in my youth. The Sneaky Petes were exhibited in the ISIS gallery and the landing outside the space in the Notre Dame art building during graduation week 1986.

The visible gives rise to conceptions for genres of violence. Language codifies violence, which one would think lessens the impact of violence, but does not. The visceral shock of violence is a sensation that activates a complex of responses, mental, physical, emotional and spiritual, not necessarily in the order. The degree to which violence affects a person over time changes with the person, and with factors to which the person is exposed. Violence can be normalized to some extent, rationalized and justified, to some extent. The strangeness of violence eclipses mindful order, or can. Discipline may be contrived to reduce the power of violence on the senses, but discipline can break, under pressure, by exhaustion, by states of mind, such as despair. Violence is not governable, even though much of civil society is devoted to the governance of violence, its definition, its redistribution, its stylization. Violence can be improved, on its own terms. It can be made directional, mastered as it were. Violence in art and dreams is an involved topic. Violence in sex and lovemaking is as common as it is perverse - it (violence) brings out the worst in a lover, over time.

* Yeah, I know the image is impaired by my reflection and the church facade. These STORAGE Series pics are starting to have a peculiar moda (style), yes? If you would prefer to see the original, DM me. In the meantime, check out this photoset of C+C documentation shot by Trey Mitchell outside Dreamworks SKG (Music Row), where we did a follow-up installation in I think 1998 or -9. We also exhibited a selection of C+C pieces at awesome, artist-friendly, post-production facility Ground Zero.

"2Gun Bullet" was first exhibited at Four Crows Gallery in Nashville in 1997. Charlotte Avant and I collaborated on the show, which was titled "COWBOYZ + COWGIRLZ." The production featured digital paintings (made in Painter and Photoshop), printed on canvas using early large format printers (Encad). Additional material was hand-painted on the printed matter. As far as I know, this was the first major artist project showcasing new digital print technology combined with traditional techniques. The 4D method is a core application, which I call "figure on abstraction." In this instance the abstract or immaterial content is all the stuff done or "created" on the computer. COWBOYZ presented layered content in themes: mythic American violence; Western heroes; the killer feminine; branding; neo-decorative elements; good versus bad guy binaries; cinematic reality versus realism; and so on. The framing and presentation was done by Ambiance in Nashville.

"2Gun Bullet"
[with Charlotte Avant]
Acrylic on Encad Inkjet on Canvas (Framed)
19" x 20"
1997

The Western as a formal construct for interpreting violence has graphic potential (see Hostiles). Of course, so few Americans work in the film business today, the orientation of almost every feature film is foreign. Is it time to push the anagram AINO? In 4D the name and number approach void, and lose meaning in the strain of distention. The dissolution of the American political class echoes the fate of the Western, even though the potential is not graphic, but metaphysical (see Vice). The surrealism of the financial sector combines the graphic and metaphysical, but as inversion, then spin (see The Big Short). The presence of English-American Bale in these films is notable, and why not mention Batman and American Psycho and American Hustle. The usage of actors in corporate movie-making is a subject I follow, as a Union Man. I admire the acting of Daniel Day Lewis, Tom Hardy, Bale, DiCaprio, but I often twitch at the Hollywood and New York City imaginary binary, and the art-hating that emanates along that binary’s meridians. Decidedly so, now that so many actors (and other entertainment world celebrities and personalities, e.g., musicians and comedians) pursue second careers as artists. I have a hard time not thinking of these rich people as dilettantes and scabs. I’m looking at you, Jim Carrey! Art will never conform to the constraints of film. The architecture of the public theater prevents this from happening, and the “home theater” is even less conducive to art. Cinematic collaboration is not comparable to artistic collaboration. Both, however, are co-operable in 4D+ media systems.

"Steers and Stripes" Tour Print
Digital Print on Poly Paper
Edition with Artist Proofs
40" x 3O"
2001
$2400

The management of Brooks & Dunn commissioned me to create digital art prints to gift the musicians, tour admins and personnel. The principals received framed large format prints and the support folks got small and medium format prints, framed and unframed. It was a big job. This print is a color proof for pre-production purposes.

The superhero hides in all the network configurations I frequent. I owe my aesthetics to comics, in the absence of daily accessibility to the world’s best art collections. Let’s freeze frame, and pay homage to the democratization of art via the World Wide Web! God bless the internet, artists! We can’t even begin to imagine the importance to future generations of the ease with which any kid with a connected device can browse the contents of museums and galleries around the world. Art will change in ways no one alive can predict. One of the only genuine contributions one make to the historical moment is percussion, the drumbeat, iterating/reiterating plus echoing/projecting the contention (objective & subjective) that art be what it is. A painting is art. A sculpture is art. The rest of what we are naming and framing as art is not art. It may be 4D, it may be really cool, it may be appreciated by the crowds the art world craves, but those art not worthy aesthetic criteria. Those are production concerns, trend markers, arts management issues, but they have nothing to do with art, which is nicely balanced between the Word and technique, which is to say, in a constant flow state supported by static form. Art is not architecture. Music is not art, it is one of the arts, and without question, a necessity for humanity. But so are racing, reproduction, eating and a bunch of other meaningful, valuable, rewarding pursuits and activities. We don’t have to call everything art, to assuage our egos, which are fictions anyway. Fake fictions, and very dumb.

"Made in USA"
Archery Target and Frame
36" x 39" x 16"
2019
$3500

I cannot recall where and when I picked up the enormous gauche frames, but they have been used in AFH exhibits since at least 2005. The used archery targets are a new find.

They Shall Not Grow Old deserves a word. The formality of heroism began its downward spiral in the trenches. I am grateful John Matthias at Notre Dame assigned the WWI soldier poets, David Jones and Wilfred Owens to one of the classes in my undergraduate course. Jones more than Owen affected me then. The war poetry of Sorley MacLean did hit me with a similar intensity. Growing up in West Virginia, in a Celtic family, veterans and their children were commonplace in our circles. I look at my Facebook friends, which mostly consist of hometown friends and acquaintances, and so many of them served in some military capacity, some with distinction. The anti-heroic narratives, tactics and strategies of the 20th and 21st centuries strike me very differently than most of my peers in the arts and humanities. The ascent of men like Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other neo-conservatives and -liberals operative in the upper regions of governments and bureaucracies, in think tanks and media, in institutions and academies, has proved disastrous for America. These chickenhawks, and their hack assets (I’m looking at you, Sean Hannity), are war criminals. They have in a few decades caused more harm to US national security than our most fervent enemies have.

"AFHGC Window Prints"
Adhesive Film, Lead-wrapped Wood
Variable Dimensions
2007
$2400

One of the final tasks we undertook at Art for Humans Gallery Chinatown during the closing process was the removal of the iconic pattern window print treatments we had installed when the project commenced. I insisted we not toss the film at the time. Now, a dozen years later, the patterns, all squished together like John Chamberlain auto metal, are presented in our Backyard Sculpture Garden in Astoria, OR.

Pulling artwork out of boxes I found some small pieces from “A Prayer for Clean Water.” The one of the adhesive prints on gold fields with an O1/Barcode flip cover depicts flag-draped caskets returning from Iraq or Afghanistan. The whole sordid affair rewrites Vietnam and its media wars, ignores the saturation of European consciousness with the stench of rotting corpses. Propaganda and marketing are too intertwined technically. Bernays saw to that. I watch the bills pile up while the push mills spew bile and spittle on the microphones of our national conversation. Perhaps Bernie will throw the engines into reverse and drag our front end out of the swamp, while our asses still occupy dry land. The alternative reality and future we verge upon are to be wrought by evil deeds and men. The path of resistance is fraught with perils of every description. One wonders if there is even a place for art in the dark and smoky whirlwind of tomorrow. When I see no point to the gift of art to my fellows, who strike me as undeserving and worse, I try to bring to mind Badiou in the kitchen at Saas-Fee at the break. I asked whether Philosophy needs art now, after stating that I believe must have Philosophy today. He passionately assured me in the positive, that now more than ever, philosophy needs art.

"Skyscraper"
Gesso on Wood Construction, Lead-wrapped Wood
30" vertical x variable dimensions
1995
$3000

"Skyscraper was assembled and sprayed at Goldleaf Framemakers of Santa Fe. The construct is fabricated from frame scraps, joined with white and wire brads.

I do not recall Badiou’s exact words. I have them written down in one of notebooks. I shall end this section with translation of Badiou (from Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil):

An immortal: this is what the worst situations that can be inflicted upon Man show him to be, in so far as he distinguishes himself within the varied and rapacious flux of life. In order to think any aspect of Man, we must begin from this principle. So if ‘rights of man’ exist, they are surely not rights of life against death, or rights of survival against misery. They are the rights of the Immortal, affirmed in their own right, or the rights of the Infinite, exercised over the contingency of suffering and death. The fact that in the end we all die, that only dust remains, in no way alters Man’s identity as immortal at the instant in which he affirms himself as someone who runs counter to the temptation of wanting-to-be-an-animal to which circumstances my expose him. And we know that every human being is capable of being this immortal - unpredictably, be it in circumstances great or small, for truths important or secondary. In each case, subjectivation is immortal, and makes Man. Beyond this there is only a biological species, a ‘biped without feathers’, whose charms are not obvious.

[END PART TWO]