The Octagon

As parts of my current projects unfold and manifest themselves in new ways I am scurrying to keep up with contemporary events in relation to what I am trying to accomplish.  I have been accepted to present my project through a resourceful and respected website and am refining what exactly it is I am working on, and don't wish to let to much go before things are set up.  I will be presenting my newest project through Kickstarter and hope that all of you will participate with me in making it happen.  I am trying to get back over to Japan for a new series of direct observation landscape paintings and prints, specifically dealing with Otsu, where my wife and in-laws are from.  Once I have spent my initial time in Otsu,(and funds lasting) I plan to travel eastward toward Tokyo stopping in at various towns along the way and sharing with all of you via a daily blog.  But I am getting ahead of myself.  I'm on my way to get a haircut tomorrow and to shoot a video for you all!  I also have to finish writing my presentation and study some more Japanese so I'll keep you guys up to date on the progress for the project.  In the upcoming week(s) I hope you keep me in mind and help me share my project with others.  More on all this later!

PostColonials Post Opening

The 18th of March followed a few days after the Ides and now we are into Spring.  Do yourself justice and put a spring in your step to view Postcolonials at Linda Matney Gallery.  You have until May to view stellar works by 9 different artists.  Aesthetics and works on par with its NYC Chelsea counter parts make this a "Don't Miss" exhibition (and don't all American Galleries strive to impart that feeling?).  The artists all have brought their "A" game and while they have come in peace, their art won't leave you without something to chew on or staring at your shoes.   The works are diverse in approach and subject matter but connect on a higher ground as suggested by the exhibitions title.

Brian Hitselberger's gouache and pigmented ink piece is dazzlingly frenetic with its obsessive mark making that fades as one steps back to soft pinks and purples washing away and relaxing you from the claustrophobic experience of close inspection, as one might recess from hunting for historical facts to appreciate history's stories.

Anthony Wislar's works are pasted and painted oils on paper which at first glance seem sloppy and effortless except for what must have been countless attempts to make the marks just so in a first attempt, the effort re-appearing in pastiche, collage, and palimpsest images to culminate in a manner like reliving moments until you perfect them in your mind; until you have just the right come-back or successful explanation of facts to make your point.

Judith McWillie's monumental piece "Winter Sky North" is a rapturous work of glow in the dark pigment upon a Navy Blue field at least twelve feet wide and tall.  As I think about the movements/migrations we've made on this earth, the different peoples looking at the same stars, and our foray into outer-space you can't help but be filled with wonder as a child might starring up at the stars glued to the ceiling casting off into sleep.  "Winter Sky North" both transports you into the cosmos and grounds you with its referential points of direction and cosmic compass wrapping you in its monumental stature.

Photo courtesy of Lee Matney

Jeremy Hughes who co-curated the exhibition with Paul Thomas, is showing paintings that are brightly colored and full of sloppy bombastic paint which is confident enough that one can forgive a laziness of detail.  Jeremy is a colorist at heart and it shows through in these works that exhibit a rainbow he has pulled out of his subconscious.

Zuzka Vaclavik's watercolors are mouthwatering and sensuous, begging to be looked upon and will colonize any ambitions you may have of collecting solid art work.  Passages of the pieces perform like a lover's selective eye, or a mirror in which youth recognizes its own passions introspectively.

Hope Hilton's pieces are calm studies of plant life that may be found around the Williamsburg area from which her ancestors hail.  Each print has been given loving attention to detail with quirky heartfelt line work.  You would not find depictions like these in a field manual but perhaps in a personal manual of someone close to the land with an understanding of the plants personalities.  They exude a patience that you would expect someone to cultivate over years of practice.  If you make it out to the show you will want to purchase these works for your reading area or study.

Zachary Herrmann's glass pieces remind me of ice sculptures but with out the coldness and leaving you only with the mystery and sparkle of a winter night.  Illuminated from the bottom the pieces seem like single malt scotch in a crystal glass through which you might stare at a fire and think.  I never have done that, but it seems like something George Clooney would do and I imagine he enjoys it as I do those pieces.  Herrmann has provided us with severed fish and human heads, that pulled my brain in the direction of Greek mythology, the works of a Medusa turning flesh to clear glass and stopping it up with wax as a bottler of fine spirits might seal his best brew.

Teddy Johnson's works depict urban landscapes with figures balancing or finding balance on top of high and low rooftops.  The quality of the paint is reminiscent of a Hopper city-scape but the figures are playful as they seek balance; the city full of possibilities and habitable unlike the psychology of Edward Hopper.  The buildings and streets in Teddy's paintings are alive with color and paint strokes that emphasize a playground for its inhabitants.  His paintings are filled with a lust for life and we just hope no-one gets hurt on the monkey-bars.

Tyrus Lytton's work. . . wait, isn't that me? Ahem. . .  Tyrus Lytton's work is brooding and mysterious.  His images are appropriated from thrillers and mysteries of television and film that seem searching as they play with late night broadcasts and shared experiences to express difficult emotions extrapolated from B-movies and base entertainment that one might take for their own interpretation.

Having the opening weekend done and finished, I was/am more than thrilled to exhibit with these artists in such a nice space.  We had a good turn out for opening night and expect more people through out the next month and a half.  Paul and Jeremy did a fine job with the exhibition and the Linda Matney Gallery has much to promise in the future as a leading contemporary gallery in its area.
Cheers.

That Vagabond Narcissus the Hunter and Horseman of the Apocalypse

 

After viewing Mike Calway-Fagen's art work at Vox Populi I decided to delve a little bit into his self myth and went through his website and read his artist statement there.  I came across a word that I hadn't seen before: anthropocentric.  Loosely it is the idea that humanity is the center of the universe and that everything is here to benefit man, be it at the expense of other lifeforms.  To distill it further, that as a race we are egocentric.   Mike states that this is the cause of our past, current, and future apocalypse.  In a quick effort to bring us to a similar vein of thought and into my first assumption. . . I don't believe Mike means apocalypse in, what most of us associate the word with, the biblical sense.  I assume he is using the term as "a major misconception of ourselves", a "veil to be lifted" from our metaphysical egos.

Setting those semantics aside for now I want to address the idea of anthropocentrism.  To start off many people consider this a negative trait.  That viewing the universe through an exclusively human experience is bad.  I believe that one should remain open to multiple view points but retain an opinion.  There have been many times I thought for sure that 2 + 2 = 5 to discover that the idea wasn't as solid as I thought.  However, its the thinking part that is important.  Instinct is to be respected, but thought furthers things a bit, huh?  I don't think that anthropocentrism is a negative trait.  I believe that it can lead to negative traits, but one can take cleanliness to a negative place as well.  We are in competition with other species for resources.  They more so than us, (ego?) but a natural competition anyway.  Jump.  Lets examine competition in a more facilitative way, say an Olympic foot race. . . and use this as an analogy for anthropocentism (and use an anthropocentric game to do so) In an Olympic race its fair to say that the athletes are in similar, if not the same, physical condition.  What separates the medalists from the non-medalists are their view points of themselves.  Winners tell themselves they are the best, the race losers tend to have nagging suspicions, lose focus.  In effect Ego wins the prize.  If you are running this race and a fellow sportsman falls, breaks an ankle, do you stop in the middle of the race to help or finish and come back to make sure he is tended to, or assume he will be attended to?

The crux.  In an effort to achieve is it not right to assume we are the best, to tell your self, "I can?"  be the little engine that could?  Exclusive and excess outlooks of anthropocentrism could very well lead to a biblical apocalypse in addition to the other definition earlier talked about.
In Mike's work I see the Hunter.  His pieces exude an outdoors man's, a huntsman's aesthetic including taxidermy, boats, animal motif's, weapons, and totems.   Is this what it boils down to?  An idealistic hunter who believes that he needs to manage his game population to continue both species well being?  Or to keep his resource from depleting? Does he wonder if the animals have a mind/soul?  Does he pick out their personalities and translate them into human terms?  I can't translate my thoughts into a sparrow's or a deer's.  Isn't that ego?  To bend the terms of their understanding into yours?  Colonialism at its worst?  Are we trying to colonize the psyche of the animal kingdom with our own agenda?  Of course we are.  Does PETA have their own agenda?

Have they consulted with the whales and seals, or do they rely on human data?  Maybe.  I don't know.  Its just a spur question.  Is it really the thinking and trying that matter?  Or is it only the actions?  Or is the original message/action irrelevant? Was Aleister Crowley correct? "Do what thou wilt?"  Is the only thing important the receiver's interpretation of the message?  Francis Bacon's "Anything can mean anything" relies upon an agreed code.  Can we alter the coding in our own nature or just how it is received?  Anything can mean nothing.  Are the veils of reality that we wear needed to be lifted?  Are we afraid of what we might see?  Would we sacrifice ourselves for beings separated/different from ourselves in order for our own apocalypse to happen? Mike Calway-Fagen's work is up for your own message receiving.  At least its asking questions.  I think.  For more discussions and work visiting questions in an aesthetic manner visit the PostColonials Show at Linda Matney Gallery in Williamsburg, Virginia.  Openings will take place on March 18th at 7 p.m.

Be there or be ^2.

By the Old Sea Shore, Not as Conceptually Oblique as You Might Think

THERE were two sisters, they went playing,

      Refrain: With a hie downe downe a downe-a

To see their father’s ships come sayling in.

      Refrain: With a hy downe downe a downe-a

And when they came unto the sea-brym,

The elder did push the younger in.

‘O sister, O sister, take me by the gowne,

And drawe me up upon the dry ground.’

‘O sister, O sister, that may not bee,

Till salt and oatmeale grow both of a tree.’

Somtymes she sanke, somtymes she swam,

Until she came unto the mill-dam.

The miller runne hastily downe the cliffe,

And up he betook her withouten her life.

What did he doe with her brest-bone?

He made him a violl to play thereupon.

What did he doe with her fingers so small?

He made him peggs to his violl withall.

What did he doe with her nose-ridge?

Unto his violl he made him a bridge.

What did he doe with her veynes so blew?

He made him strings to his violl thereto.

What did he doe with her eyes so bright?

Upon his violl he played at first sight.

What did he doe with her tongue so rough?

Unto the violl it spake enough.

What did he doe with her two shinnes?

Unto the violl they danc’d Moll Syms.

Then bespake the treble string,

‘O yonder is my father the king.’

Then bespake the second string,

‘O yonder sitts my mother the queen.’

And then bespake the strings all three,

‘O yonder is my sister that drowned mee.’

‘Now pay the miller for his payne,

And let him bee gone in the divel’s name.’

     I've heard people claim America's culture is bland, without a long history, and commercial in nature.  While there are reasons and points to the previous claim, to make a general statement with out investigation is in no ones interest on this subject.  Modern migrations have brought old histories and culture to obscure the American "native" one and time has gone on to obscure our shared histories and amalgamated them to where we can't always decipher what came from where.  Modern Philosophies and "Avant Garde" art don't spring spontaneously from the ether and its easiest to be shocked by the things we choose to self censor.  Many of the contemporary art movements seek to distance themselves away from 1960's art history and the idea of the object and viewer in a private space. I believe this distancing is un-necessary as more community based projects and performance art began to grow then along with Folk Music making a revival into the popular scene (an unfinished thought).  At UnionDocs on February 10th and 11th you will have the opportunity to experience, with others, documentery films about the sharing of songs and stories, experience the songs performed live and artistic interpretations of the Child Ballads through paintings on exhibition.  

     Hey! Stay on track already. . .  So. . . Child Ballad no.10, known as "The Cruel Sister", and "Twa Sisters" is an old tune dating to the 1600's;  a song over 400 years old and still sung today; the Twa Sister's has been covered by Paul Clayton and even as late as Tom Waits in a 2006 recording.  If my memory serves me right, Art Rosenbaum, who worked with his son Neil on one of the documentaries being screened at UnionDocs, recorded Mary Lomax singing this song or part of it.  Whats important about Mary singing this song is that the song was passed to her by her father in a long line of oral tradition at which roots go back to the 1600's.  Even though the Child Ballads are not totally inclusive of every single ballad, they represent a hefty cross section of what we may consider an American cultural equivalent to Beowolf or even Homer's poems.   I'm sure if we dug deep enough both of those  form an influence upon the ballads somewhere.  The themes in the ballads are not necessarily restricted to Western, or European ideas and archetypes but can be found around the world in all cultures.  The "Twa Sisters" design I developed is based on a variation where the sister that has been wronged has been made into a violin.  When she is played before her parents, her sisters crime is found out.  We always hope justice finds those who wrong.  Unless sometimes its ourselves who are the cruel sister, perhaps then we wouldn't want "to face the music".  Paying people there dues, many thanks to Teddy Johnson and Heather Fares who have done a tremendous amount of work preparing for the Child Ballad shows in both Baltimore and New York.  They will be continuing to work together and are setting up a new exhibition for The Rotating History Project in Baltimore. . . --->http://rotatinghistory.blogspot.com/ .

Freed From the Gallows, Or How I Stopped Fearing Led Zepplin and Love the Ballad

The new design I've been working on is Ballad No. 95, entitled "The Maid Freed From the Gallows", and is about a maid waiting for someone to buy her freedom from the executioner.  Variants have been recorded by Ledbelly, Bob Dylan (recorded as Seven Curses), and Led Zepplin, among many many other artists.   This design can be found HERE, as well as in New York, February 10th and 11th. . . at The Child Ballad Show at UnionDocs.  For More information please visit http://childballads.blogspot.com/

 

O Hangman, stay thy hand,
And stay it for a while,
For I fancy I see my father
A coming across the yonder stile.

O, father, have you my gold?
And can you set me free?
Or are you come to see me hung?
All on the gallows tree?

No, I've not brought thee gold,
And I can't set thee free;
But I have come to see thee hung
All on the gallows tree.

Oh the briery bush,
That prickes my heart so sore
If I once get out of the briery bush,
I'll never get in any more.

O Hangman, stay thy hand,
And stay it for a while,
For I fancy I see my father
A coming across the yonder stile.

Repeat the verses above with
other relatives -
Mother, Brother, Sister, etc.
The song concludes with
The arrival of her "True Love" as below:

O Hangman, stay thy hand,
And stay it for a while
For I fancy I see my true love
A coming across the yonder stile.

O true-love, have you my gold?
And can you set me free?
Or are you come to see me hung
All on the gallows tree?

O yes, I've brought thee gold,
And I can set thee free;
And I've not come to see thee hung
All on the gallows tree.

O the briery bush,
That pricks my heart so sore;
Now I've got out of the briery bush,
I'll never get in any more. 

The Crow Bites Everyone Eventually, Or Dawna Summers Eat Your Heart Out

As I investigate the Child Ballads further I've created some designs for T-shirts (and soon to be  printed) posters.  If you are just starting to read my blog posts the past few have been on the subjects of history, Child Ballads, and interactions between cultures and etymology.  Francis J. Child collected and traced the history of 305 Scottish and English ballads in their American variants that were prominent in the late 19th century, many of which can still be heard today through airwaves and just about anywhere you hear music. These ballads infiltrate rock n' roll, soul, spiritual, country. . . well almost anytime a story is told in song. The ballads cover superstitions, love, tragedy, non-tragic love, Robin Hood, Outlaws, Historic, Humorous and Semi-Burlesque themes.   Brought to the forefront of my interest by the influence of friends and the inclusion in Art Exhibitions (including the first New York City show I'll be part of is Feb 10th and 11th - EXCITMENT) I've started to approach things through a print along with the painting side.

One of the latest print designs  I've been working on is for Child Ballad #111, entitled "Crow and Pie." It is one of the older ballads having been traced back to the early 1500's by Mr. Child.  This may be considered a tragic love theme.  I don't think it would be fair to pigeon hole it as such as it becomes complicated in a contemporary interpretation.  The ballad starts out as a "Gentleman" rides through the forest and spots a maiden singing, he approaches her and tries to seduce her by offering his love, and is denied with the phrase, "The crow shall bite you" (updated spellings there).  The crow associated with death and suffering must mean in modern terms, "wander off and die please."  He further offers her a golden ring,  then a velvet purse and each time is refused and she tells him, "The crow shall bite you".  After the third refusal he rapes her.  She asks for marriage  or some sort of personal token (as would prove he was of social standing versus some common person and would provide for the child if there was one) and with each she is met with a refusal and the sexuallized phrase, "For now the pie has pecked you," (again updated spelling).  Pie is an older term for the English magpie, a Corvid cousin to the crow.  Perhaps similar to "la petit morte" for him?  Not quite the death associated with the crow but the pie is still a bringer of sorrow.  The ballad serves as a cautionary tale to 16th century young women, to be wary and avoid rape.  What I like about this ballad is the ending lines, the woman denied reparations for the man's act decides she will go on with her life, that she will not despair but recover.  Some versions include the line "Neither dead no slow. . . " meaning she is alive and still has some wits about her, what a great line.  What a song!  I think this is where the ballads excel.  Many of the ballads are filled with death and tragedy, but to have one that says, "No matter what has happened, I will survive."  I think that this is a message that everyone can related to and should aspire to not give up.  Geez, all this into a T-shirt.  Yep.  The things that go into design and paintings.  So the next time you pick out that shirt to wear, whats on it?

http://www.etsy.com/listing/66353482/child-ballad-111-t-shirt

The Ship of So Long Farewell

Transforming from being a place of (once upon a time) the largest maritime ship building complex in the world to an access ramp to I-95, the cramps building reveals itself brick by brick.

From being the leader in ship building, to the invention of The Slinky, the cramps building is taken apart to become part of another transportation system.

I suppose that history itself can not save a thing but can only aid in giving a thing added value.  History can comfort us in that we are connected to something larger than our time and lives, and it can fade away.  Who knows when structures will show their imprint on us in the future.  In the distant future some satellite taking pictures of vegetative growth through infrared sensors may reveal clues to who we are to who we will be.  We march through time because our 5th dimension self  manifests itself in 3 dimensions as what we experience in our comprehension.  Or something.

Neither Dead Nor Slow

As things go. . .  the Cramps building down the street where the Slinky was born is meeting its demise, the walls are being knocked down in its removal for an interstate access ramp.  Tomorrow I'll go down there with a tripod and camera for some photos.  If its a little warmer I'll take some paint with me.  Its always fun trying to paint with frozen materials.

I suppose this is one way how the world will end, demolished to make way for something new, a la Douglas Adams.  There is the thought that our Universe expands at the rate we gain knowledge; that our world gets larger as we find out more about it.  Buckminster Fuller called it the Ever-Expanding Halo.  I like the sound of it and while I can only aspire to match Fuller in his accomplishments I must insist that it is not ever-expanding, but has the potential for collapse and at best ebbs and expands.  Eventually all things fade out of memory and even if physicists tell us information can't be lost doesn't it mean it can be accessed.  In his book "Dragon's of Eden" Carl Sagan talks about our ability to accumulate extra-genetic and extra-somatic information, and that our bargain with nature for larger brains and prolonged learning has in turn lengthened childhood.  This past week my wife met a couple who are in their early and late 50's who are having surrogate twins.  As explained to me, they are both in respected vocations and their careers consumed their years.  Some people think that moving to agriculture was a mistake, that as hunter gatherers we were more athletic lived longer and had more leisure time and once we farmed we weren't as healthy - our diet wasn't varied, we suffered from more diseases and shorter lives.  Its took us a while to get past the down side of farming but I'm sure it was due to our accumulation of extra-somatic information.  A couple thousand years isn't much time to the time that preceded that time.  Bad Humor.  With the new ways we've found to transmit and store information hopefully it will add new ways to help us.  There is never enough tools to keep entropy and the loss of information at bay and none should be neglected.  Feb 10th and 11th we will be celebrating Child Ballads and other traditional folk songs at UnionDocs.  Art and Neil Rosenbaum will be exhibiting their new film, John Cohen will be showing one of his, music will be abound, and even a painting by me! So remember, we may not save your life but we will do our best to save your soul from the access ramp to the interstate of entropy.  Stay Posted for more info!

Salad Days: Yokohama and A Different Floating World

After many valiant harumpfings about visiting the Yokohama print exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I finally made the 5 minute trek to enjoy some great prints.  After the ports of Japan were pried open to the west in 1859, cultural entanglements including misunderstandings and  misinformation along with the flow of goods and money poured and flowed like the sailors' libations that had just arrived in town.   Originally intended to be viewed by Japanese people to learn and vicariously experience foreigners some of the specifics of the cultures depicted were lost in translation due to the hurry meet the demand for the prints.   Russian sailors next to Italian flags in front of French buildings is just one example.   Seeing how the artists were coping with depicting the new textiles and animals coming into the island was very consoling as I struggle with painting and other works from time to time.  These guys who were making these prints were masters of their trade and its always reassuring that no matter how long one works at their trade new things and changes will bring challenges.  Unfortunately the museum decided not to print a book of the work so I've tried to cull some images that are close to what they have.*  

Americans in front of a steamship 

Beyond the strange images of Europeans watching Pygmies dance on tables I was attracted to the depictions of the hustle and bustle of the "new" daily life in the port.   How crowded it seemed from the pictures, how exotic "we" seemed.  Some of the patterns resulting from depictions of the "new" styles of dress undulates like fungal architecture.  Only a handful of nations were allowed to legally trade with the Japanese empire but there were still depictions of people there that were not represented by the treaty of trade.  There was a loophole of sponsorship.  It didn't seem to matter what type of vocation the sponsor had as long as they were part of the party with papers from their government.  Yokohama must truly be the first international city, even if the foreigners were quarantined off behind fences in their own part of the city.  I'm sure at times westerners were depicted with some sense of humor and with varying degrees of subtlety.  With out second guessing myself too much about the intentions of the artists of these specific portraits in the group I'd wager they were carried out with a little mirth mixed with boot shining.  In the works there are depicted the varied subjects, for example,  a "An American Merchant Greatly Please with the Miniature Cherry Tree He Ordered" and behind him/to the side of him is a bust portrait of his wife with a head four times the size of his.  I can imagine her going to have the work commissioned, running into the problem of the receiver unable to read Japanese and the artist unable to write in English.  Then solving this by the inclusion of their purchasers portrait and it must be big and important, because they must be reminded of who has given them this thing.  Stupid fat heads.  But that's all conjecture and Hollywood prejudice.  Maybe.  Here is a print of John James Audubon discovering that the drawings and watercolors he has made have been eaten by rats.  Seriously.   

It was nice to see and be introduced to these prints as so many that I've come across are of "The Floating World": Japan's aristocracy and pleasure gardens.   If you are interested in the floating worlds and are in Philadelphia this weekend you should stop by the banks of the Schuylkyll River to view and interact with "Light Drift".  Parker Lee of Parker Lee fame, has been in town working to install these works for Meejin Yoon of Boston so stop by and support their efforts to put some magic in your fall evenings.  I bet you it will be better than an Applebee's Magician Night.  Believe me no strings are attached, its free.  More info can be found HERE.  Time to get back to sailboats. . .

*After writing this and not wanting to take the effort to rearrange things once again HERE is a link to all 90 images in the exhibition on the Philadelphia Museum of Arts website.   I guess I'll have to print my own book now, huh?  Only $150 if you want a color print from the museum and a 4 week wait.

Confirmation Bias: Koans

Another Etsy print utilizing "children's" art tools consists of MechaGodzilla getting a girlfriend as the readers of "The Inquirer" keep an eye on the relationship.   It’s amazing to see how quickly ideas, archetypes, songs; well culture has morphed in the past century.  I suppose we (the royal human we) have always acclimated quickly.  I don't have as large a grasp on language as I wish I did, but am still enthralled with shared cultural words.  Most times being used in mixed language sentences they lose a . . . je ne sais quoi.  And yes, we do have to thank the French for the feminine blonde, while the rest of the English language is neutered. Like spoken English I've been interested in appropriating for a few reasons.  It creates a dialogue with the past along with paying tribute it.  Building upon ideas of the past is how we've advanced to the technological/digital age.   I enjoy seeing things morph, figuring out (or at least creating my own theories) how they connect to the next gestation and adding to it.  It is an instant personal gratification becoming part of something larger than myself.   If it wasn't for a personal enjoyment I may even associate it with the loss of self.  What is that anyway?  "Is it alive, does it writhe? Can it survive under the sun?" The closest thing I equate to a gnostic experience is losing myself to the act of painting and becoming lucid to the fact that I'm awake and dreaming.

   A question was asked of a Zen master,  "What is the meaning of the ancestral teacher's (i.e., Bodhidharma's) coming from the west?" The master answered, "The cypress tree in front of the hall."  But this is about transformations of ideas, traditions, and art.  Knowing what has been is a good clue of what is and will be and like any good lie should be studied.  The variations, the small differences are what have become interesting.  How many times are you going to watch the same movie?  I bet it was based on a play that was performed over two thousand years ago.  There is some funny stuff in transitions for those of us caught in the middle.  In a way, it’s like being aware of puberty, being in it, past it, and aware of it from the other gender's view all at the same time - and the whole time daises that grow from our ancestor's corpses towards the sun, bending in the wind laugh along.  Oh, wait . . . we embalm and encase our dead like they are pharaohs.  No wonder we have movies like "Night of the Living Dead".   No, that doesn't make sense enough . . . let’s go with Brandon Frasier’s "The Mummy" as reference instead, using a shot of  Brock from "The Venture Bros."  fighting a mummy, even though "Night . . ." is much cooooler.

 My third wish is there to be no more 1970-1990 horror movie remakes.  We're supposed to change things, make them better damn it.  I mean look what happened with Gojira.  Someone transformed two Japanese words (and the Japanese do love to abbreviate/transform their words) for gorilla and whale and made up Gojira.  Then it’s misinterpreted to Godzilla for the U.S. release.  That is a radical name, and besides who would have wanted to go see a movie about a gorilla whale? It was something new [(ish) I'm not forgetting "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" or earlier stories dating back to St. George].  And then there was the 1998 U.S. Godzilla release promoted by Taco Bell.  Hell, Taco Bell started out as a hot dog stand.   What was my point with this? Ah yes . . . The Child Ballad Show.  Having expressed the need to recognize the importance of "tradition" I think it’s fair to impose one's own will upon its impending change.  The streets don't change but maybe their name . . .  The only fear/sin against tradition is the same for history: forgetting it.  Maybe forgetting should be replaced with "not learning".   To do either would be missing a hold on it.   "Is it numb?  Does it glow, will it shine? Does it leave a trail of slime?"  The most important thing to do with tradition is to play with it.  Game the sh*t out of it.  Most of the time all its doing is pointing out that you’re alive.
 Speaking of transformations. . . I'm happy to be sharing wall space with Bart Lynch (image above) in September.  In the past I've had the chance to visit him in the studio and its mind boggling how he works.  To see these seemingly spontaneous calligraphic marks converge into an overall composition consisting of stories within stories within stories is something to behold.  I highly recommend viewing his work when you get the chance.  That's at least one thing that I'm doing at the Child Ballad Show in Baltimore.  I just finished the painting for the show, and believe me I played the sh*t out of it.   To answer  some of you all's first questions reading this, "No, when making the print I was not consciously thinking about "Bambi meets Godzilla".  Someone pointed that out to me the other day and I almost threw up in my mouth because I had forgotten about it.  I'm more optimistic and think the relationship in my print will turn out better."   Have I learned anything?

Don't forget the 5th law: A Discordian is prohibited from believing what he reads.
If you are having trouble with that, consult your pineal gland.

Time to get back in the studio.




Jiun, a Shingon master, was a well-known Sanskrit scholar of the Tokugawa era. When he was young he used to deliver lectures to his brother students.
His mother heard about this and wrote him a letter:"Son, I do not think you became a devotee of the Buddha because you desired to turn into a walking dictionary for others. There is no end to information and commentation, glory and honor. I wish you would stop this lecture business. Shut yourself up in a little temple in a remote part of the mountain. Devote your time to meditation and in this way attain true realization."