Universal Transformer Clown

Exits of the Heart

No stones left for the elders
I exit stages from the heart
a new beginning sets me free
from old chains of past woes
Once again children rain down to eternal shores
Linear places of solar bliss
no judgment comes from the One
only time and space
to contain you
like we have seen
again and again
our destiny is
time forgotten in
the shake of a tremoring
world

Montauk Project

Me in my studio at SVA 1997

Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt

Tommy in his apartment in Hell's Kitchen.  Tommy was my teacher at SVA.  I think he is a true artist.  Not a pedant per se, but someone who "walks the walk".  There were so many @$$wholes at SVA, but Tommy had the voice that said, "do it your own way!".  Not that any artist needs anyone to tell them that, but institutions are full of them and more and more the method is about total conformity.  The other extreme are people who quit and rebel and think it makes them somehow more "real".  SVA for me was a way to get into NYC.  Otherwise, I would have had to live on the street.  I was still trying to carve it out as a graffiti artist then, but I discovered early on, as much as I was influenced by graffiti, I did not want to just be another graffiti artist. 

Tommy was a protege of Jack Smith.

Meta Aranoidicus-Paul Laffoley

I talk about Paul pretty much all of the time in one way or another.  I have never met another artist like him.  For me, Paul is perhaps the greatest artistic genius I have ever met.  I think of him as a friend as well.  I have had at least the  pleasure of being in his studio and talking with him from time to time.  I have the highest respect for him and his influence is without question.

This is a design that for me takes Gaudi's spiritual leanings and brings to a scientifically visionary form of completion.  Paul is possibly our Leonardo da Vinci.

Virtual Baroque and World Wide Web

I am realizing more and more that this baroque nature in the arts is a "Virtual Baroque", because it is a reference to the pluralism in styles evident in the visual field and is deeply connected to technological orgy which supports it virtually.  The World Wide Web is a "virtual galaxy gallery" and assemblage of ideas and visual creations.

Very simply it is a feedback loop as well, as in the concept put forth by Cybernetics, which simultaneously creates a virtual realm that flowers and grows rhythmically.  However, it is loops within loops, all dispersed, interconnected like wires in some Brazilian favela.  It works somehow, but there is no way to decipher the "how".  I see a multitude of art/visual cultural galaxies, each one independent, yet connect to a larger picture.  There is always an interplay of dualities, however they forge chaos and order in such a way that the play-doh quality allows all potential formations.

Just go the mall today (in any suburban town for that matter) and look around you at the globalism that jumps out into your face.

There are so many styles, ideas and realities coming together, brands being melded, identities being forged, cultures "clashing".

It is a tessellated, fractalized field of sociocultural experience.

There is no beginning or end, only change.

It is evident that there would naturally be some psychosis developing as a result of this schizoid experience, but yet, it is being held together by technological bliss, the tap of texting or the next Twitter feed.

I sit back and watch and keep on drawing.