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Margin

The months leading up to the Nov. election, the media was a mashup of polarized broadcasting. "Fake" media was focused on voter turnout, and access issues while "Fox" concentrated the probability of "massive" election fraud perpetrated mostly by Trump and his media and team of "spin-doctors". To the liberal public, it seemed too close to call. The Trump leadership was spreading a narrative that the only way the Democrats could win back the Whitehouse would be through massive fraud which appeared to be their campaign platform. By contrast, the Democratic message focused on  the COVID crisis, social inequity, getting financial aid to those in need, and funding needed nationwide infrastructure projects. 

A great deal of the nation's wealth was being poured into both campaigns. While this was happening, there were local issues across individual states that were getting media attention. Liberal state legislators were struggling with how the COVID virus was going to affect elections, and they were trying to come up with solutions that would ensure registered citizens would have the opportunity to cast a vote on Nov. 6. On the other hand conservative legislators seemed to employ tactics that would limit voter turnout. Much of the disagreement over voter rights was mail-in ballots. For months President Trump was going to campaign rallies repeating the assertion that the only way he could loose the election was because of mail-in voting fraud and democratic manipulation of vote counting processes across the 50 states. After the election and all of the votes were finally accounted for, it was determined that the Biden campaign had won both the popular vote with a margin over 7 million votes, and the electoral college by a margin of 74 votes. The Republican party had been dealt a devastating loss. President Trump's campaign refused to accept the outcome claiming that the 2020 election had been stolen from Donald Trump who was tweet storming across conservative media,  in a nonstop post election campaign to claim that he had won the election and not the Democratic party that had manipulated every aspect of the voting process to alter the outcome. His lawyers had made over 86 court challenges in the crucial swing states with accusations of voter fraud trying to overturn the election. They were struck down in all but one law suit in Pennsylvania. It was over the number of vote counting observers allowed and their access to the counting process. As the days moved forward toward electoral college certification of the election results, a majority of the Republican leadership in the house and senate began to support the claim that the election was rigged. Throughout the time between the Nov. 6 election and the Jan. 6 electoral certification in congress, President Trump's claim was repeated at every opportunity. If he were addressing the public on  COVID issues, he would devote a big portion of the airtime to accuse Democrats of "Stealing" the election from him.

On Jan. 6 Trump held a rally in Washington D.C. for his followers. At the rally he expressed his anger at having the election stolen from him and advised his followers, massed on the grounds of the ellipse, to march up Pennsylvania avenue and protest the congressional certification process happening  within the nation's capitol and to "fight like hell". What the followers heard from President Trump was his call for them to storm the capitol building, stop the certification process, and kill anyone inside that was responsible for "The Big Steal". Numerous accounts by arrested protesting citizens claimed they stormed the capitol because Donald Trump asked them to. They claimed that they were Trump's "cavalry."

After the inauguration, I wanted to do something to address a notion that many conservative voters believed to be true. They apparently believed that the Democratic party was so  powerful that it could orchestrate a massive fraud operation to make Joe Biden the winning candidate by a historic margin because it had the ability to manipulate votes on election night as Donald Trump alleged the morning after. I settled on a canvas upon which was marked a series of 464 x1/8" rows of pencil tick marks on a 58"x 38" canvas. Each row containing approximately 920 pencil tick marks. I wanted to see what 7 million votes/tick marks  physically looked like . After covering the whole canvas with tick marks, I calculated their sum as 426,880 ticks/votes. After further calculations, I realized that in order to get to the 7,059,741 vote margin Joe Biden won by, I would need to recreate 18 more 58"x 38" identical canvasses. That was a staggering physical representation of the Biden margin. I also realized that to exhibit that kind of art work would require a wall space over 57' long. In all of my studies, the smallest individual "tick mark" I could make was an 1/8". Therefore I couldn't get any smaller.  Imagine how outrageous it would be for the traditionally disorganized and undercapitalized democratic party to have the power to manipulate that many votes. The would have had to corrupt 3,006 counties, 50 state election boards, and millions of dollars of security measures to create a vote margin of 7,059,741 votes in secrecy! 

 

                                         Margin: 76"x 57', pencil on canvas.                                 

 

 

 

As a result I chose to use the single canvas and make each tick mark on it represent 18 votes and stated the 1: 18 scale in the top right of the canvas. To contextualize the overall canvas I placed a 3" stencil spelling the word "Elected" and taped it to the canvas. Using a magnifying glass each tick, within the stenciled letters, was retraced over using an 8B soft graphite pencil making the ticks spell "Elected". 

After completing the "Elected" retracing ticks, I thought the work was done and I spent a few days living with it.  There was something bothering me which quickly became obvious. Joe Biden had also won the popular. I remember a conversation with friends just after the election was won by Joe Biden. The comment I recalled was, "on top of that, he took the electoral college". I used that saying to solve the final piece of the work. I took a piece of canvas that would evenly accommodate  306 marks to be placed over the popular vote ticks and didn't like the idea that it obscured some of the popular ticks. Therefore, I calculated cutting out 306 rectangles from the canvas so that at least some of the popular ticks could be seen and it was consistent with the "on top of that" theme. While cutting out the rectangles, I began to look at the boarders around the work and it bothered me that some sort of a framing device was missing and I began to think about what could be done to improve that part of the work. Finally the idea of the 2020 election came to mind and I chose to cut 20 x1/2" x 5" strips of canvas, paint them black, and apply them evenly around the boarder to add relevance as well as a visual energy. After completion of the cut-outs on the electoral canvas, and painting it black, I chose to sew it onto the canvas to maintain the "on top of that" theme resting on top of the popular vote surface but not be a of it. 

Again I put up the work thinking it was done but after living with it for a few more days, I realized that the 306 electoral cut-outs didn't reflect the title of the piece, "Margin". The missing piece was the difference between the 306 Biden votes and Trump's 232 votes. The solution was to X out 232 Trump electoral votes leaving a margin of 74 electoral votes in favor of Joe Biden. 

Margin: Sate I

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Margin: graphite on canvas, 58"x 38" 2021

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      Margin (detail)                                 Margin (detail E of elected)

Margin: State II

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Margin II: graphite on canvas, 58"x 38" 2021

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Margin (detail)

I lived with "Margin II" for about three months while working on "Archiology of The Top 10%". While taking a break from applying the finishing touches to it, I was looking at "Margin II" and began looking at my sketch book notes to check back on the details of the calculations. I discovered that I had totally miscalculated the numbers on the electoral rectangle and they needed to be fixed. After completing a completely new set of calculations, I altered the rectangle to accurately reflect the electoral votes and Biden's margin of win. With the alteration completed, I noticed that the symmetry created in "Margin I and II" had been interrupted by the odd top on the black electoral canvas. I had been concerned with the 1:18 number in the top right of the canvas and used it to balance out the electoral element on the left. But now it left a hole in the lower right corner of the canvas. This was resolved by applying two relevant numbers for more contextualization as well as establishing an overall balance. 
Using the same stenciling and retracing of ticks used for the word "Elected". The number "74" appears on top of the black electoral overlay referring to Biden's margin of win in the electoral college. The number 7,059,741 appears in the lower right corner referring to the popular vote margin he won by.

 

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Margin III: graphite on canvas, 58"x 38" 2021






 This series began as a philosophical thought process in the late 70's and as time passed the curiosity over its meaning kept evolving and developing. It wasn't until the 80's after earning a MFA at City University in NYC that I had time to read more and explore some of the important thinking that was going on around the English speaking community of thinkers. While keeping a working studio on the Bowery, My reading collided into an argument between two intellectual camps known and the French School and the Yale School. They were involved in a deep argument over what each felt was the rudimentary sign of intelligent humanity. The French School claimed that it had to be LOGOS/the word since without it humanity couldn't communicate and cooperated effectively to survive. The Yale school claimed that the essential sign of intelligent humanity was PHONOS/the sound because sound and listening precluded language. 
The supporting argument of the French School made these claims. 1. LOGOS had its initial beginning as a scratch. The scratch referred to  a mark made on a surface. Their argument stated that the "scratch", in its nascent form was created by creatures on the surface of their environments as a way of getting from one beneficial place to the next. As time went on, and more scratches/trails were created around the various lands, it became clear that one had to learn the scratch/trails as a form of survival. Knowing which scratch led to drinking water and which led to the saber tooth den was a process that had to be learned. As such, the beginnings of human coordination was used as a tool for community. On the other hand, the Yale School countered with an equally valid proposition. They claimed that PHONOS was the beginning of human community because survival on any type of terrain in the beginning depended on human's ability to listen to the sounds of the environment and be able to distinguish what each sound ment and how to respond. Thus, each kind of sound carried a message that needed to be correctly responded to. According to the Yale School, It was through the process learning the sounds of the land, humanity developed an vocabulary that evolved into speaking. Therefore PHONOS was the beginning of us all.
This argument had a huge impact on how I looked at existence and I put a great deal of thought into it as well as struggled with the notion over quite a few cold beers. The question I had was, how does that effect me and my creative process or does it have any relevance? As a romantic, I felt the need to connect with a cause or "raison d'être". I chose LOGOS. As crazy as it sounds, I connected with the word scratch. As an artist or any artist that has claimed to be so, can easily identify "the scratch" as an essential and almost primal act of making art. To lay charcoal to paper and feel it interacting with the tooth of the paper with the intent of visually saying something to others feels like early humanity creating scratches in the earth that say, "This way to the swim hole and that way to the berry bushes. Just like my scratches on canvas intend to tell a story, those trails also told stories to those who took the time to read them. 
In this series I am interested in the idea that LOGOS transcends the written word because it is also a visual phenomena. Because a word, when printed, has both meaning and can be seen it has a dual purpose. This investigation is curious about adding a third possibility as a visual. I am asking my creative process to see if I can take simple words and create a visual plane that can be read as a word with specific meaning, use the word repetitively in such a way that its interactions cause intense design dynamics that render it for its visual appearance, and finally the words chosen, being void of sentence structure, actually tell a story for the viewer. 



  

MAGAZINE TITLE

Gnome Sequence:  series 2022

Portrait

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Acrylic on canvas 20" x 36"

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This was a work that was tied to the Democracy Project and was a transition away from a focus on the social chaos of American social disorder. While working out ideas for the base of the installation "Archeology of the Top 10%" I became fascinated with the visual power the word grid and its visual chaos. As the work on "Portrait" progressed, the word chaos worked its way into the composition and eventually overtook all other considerations that I had been thinking about. The work "MAGA Ghost Flag" began the "Democracy Project" series and it turned out that a flag ended the series. In the new sereies, the core creative element was how to focus on words, It became essential that the choice of words was crucial. The first three words chosen were: USA, Pledge (as in "I pledge allegiance"), and People (as in "We The People"). When the January 6th assault on the White House occurred and the investigation/testimony of Capitol Hill officers was broadcast, the words of officer Michael Fanone "Get his gun, and Kill him with his own gun" were blended into the composition. It expressed the intense contrast between a timeless ideal and the in the moment reality of American society. 

TRUTH #1

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Black impasto acrylic paint on upstretched cotton canvas, 56"x 26", 2023

Having transitioned away from the "Democracy Project", one word stuck with me and I decided to make an image using the word "Truth" in three different font sizes to create a visual texture with the interplay of the fonts competing for visual space. Once all of the lettering had been penciled onto the canvas, I began to understand where all of the visual chaos was coming from. There were two factors at play. First was the negative space behind all of the lettering and second factor were in the class of letters fighting for visual space. Because each font size was applied to the canvas in grid form there was uniformity to the font size. But when other fonts were applied in similar grid form a form of visual chaos appeared on the picture plane. The chaos appeared all over the canvas creating a kind of temporal confusion of the brain when looking at the work. That part of the brain that deals with visual interpretation was working overtime trying to make sense of the chaos. As cognitive beings, we aren't necessarily aware of that process as it is connected to the "fight or flight". Since there is no threat, the brain doesn't activate the limbic system. It might even be a pleasant experience for the brain to be in that state. I began to call these places in the image  where the letters fight for visual space "micro conflicts" and there were thousands of these places where the letters of one font partially obscured the letters of a different font  as the brain tries to order and "read" the words. 

   Evaldi

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Acrylic on canvas32" x 44" 2021-22

While completing "Truth", I was intrigued by the texture that was coming from all of the chaos and decided to make that more physical than visual. Relying upon works that were completed while working in my studio in Manhattan, I decided to use some of the texture techniques used then. As I was preparing the canvass, an incident happened in a small community in Texas called Evalde where a confused and angry young man senselessly entered an elementary school with a gun and killed 21 innocent children and adults. As the news played out over the next few days, it became clear that those individuals responsible for keeping the school grounds safe had massive failures in procedures which brought the citizens of Evalde Texas to go into the streets and protest. Their cry for justice to the politicians rushing to the scene to deliver their condolances, the news media fludding the community, the law enforcement officials, and the school administration was "Sorry Is Not Enough". Having to experience this kind of tragedy over and over in communities throughout the nation, I decided to tell this story using those words. I also decided to use only white paint as in White Wash of the pain.  

 Fence

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 Fence 30" x 37" 2022-23

While completing "Evalde", I began to think of other ways of looking at texture and text. The previous two works were in monochrome and I wanted to combine white and black paint to see how they would work. I also wanted to choose words that were broad and universal in their reading for meaning and settled on (you - me) (us - them) words as being open ended for meaning as well as relating to how difficult it is in today's world culture in managing pluralism in the masses. Additionally, I was curious about challenging a conventional technique of starting with the background and working forward. My question was, "what would happen if I started the with foreground and worked backward and approached this work with that process in mind. As I had worked all the way back to the field behind the words, I had reached the moment where a decision had to be made about what to do with it. The first thought was to paint it black and began to paint behind the letters starting at the top working my way through them to the bottom of the canvas. It was a slow and painstaking process that took a great deal of time. After about 3 days of filling in the background, I had completed just about the top half of the work with a slight diagonal running down to the right. I stopped painting and looked at the black diagonal for 3 or more days. Something was telling me to look at the canvas. Finally, I began to see two interesting possibilities in the work. One was that the black background began to look like the Silhouette of a mountain scape. The second was that the words began to appear as though it was a chain link fence. I went with that thought and began to make the changes that would bring out those possibilities. I accentuated the words and their diagonals to subtly suggest a fence and I made the mountain scape much more craggy. I was seeing  this work was an allegory for the possibility of a changing world order based upon multiethnic diversity being held back by their inability to understand and tolerate diversity from redefining the landscape 

More

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 More 47" x 59" 2023-24

As the background was being worked out on "Fence", a new canvas was being prepared. I was curious to see how would words and micro conflicts work at a larger scale? Would larger lettering actually have the same chaotic visual energy or would it have a different energy? Second was the continued interest in the idea that the purpose of words is having meaning and by extension, printed words as have visual authority to the reader and I wanted to expand on that. While going through the canvas prep process there was a horrific human crisis going on in the world. First was the invasion of Russia into the Ukraine and the second was the Israeli leadership laying siege on Palestine. It seemed that as each week pressed on, the atrocities in both confrontations became more and more tragic. After giving a great deal of thought to these events, it was decided to focus this canvas on these human crises.
To address the Russian situation I chose two words,  "Убийство", meaning to kill and the word, "Отбраковывать", meaning to cull. In my mind Putin's war goals were two fold. One was to take over Ukraine and make it Russian by using lethal force and the second was to empty his prisons, gather up Russian rabble, send them into the front lines and cull his population of deadbeats.
In choosing two works to represent what many around the world could identify as being an accurate appraisal of Israeli goals I chose the Yiddish words, "ויסמעקן", meaning to eradicate and the second word, "פאַרניכטן", meaning to exterminate. I also included the word "Kill". All of the words were individually arranged into grids with diagonal offsets and font sizes across the canvas. Then the offsets were treated with additional rhythm structures achieving additional visual chaos push pull in the picture plane. I was looking for a different visual chaos as the previous works done so far and to explore if different language structured words worked as micro conflicts and their ability to be read for meaning.

3 Degrees 

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Acrylic paint and charcoal on upstretched cotton canvas, 74"x 60", 2024

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While applying the fine tuning to "More", there was a flurry of emotionally cruel discussions happening in the media that seemed to be focused on the fact that America was being "invaded" by immigrant murders and rapists. Surrounding this issue was a handful of other issues like government spending, inappropriate  public education, and individual lifestyles. I decided to use this aggressive dialogue as subject matter for the next investigation. I also wanted to explore the lettering font even larger to see how it worked. Another goal was to present the layering of words in a different way by adding another repetitive element. While sizing and mounting the canvas, and getting ready to apply the rabbit skin glue and gesso I was curious about the standard process one goes through in order to prepare to apply an image which is to stretch the canvas, apply the glue, and then gesso the surface enough to get the kind of smoothness wanted the imaging process. I took a different route/process just to see if it would effect the final image. Therefore I began with the raw canvas and applied the pencil drawing of all the lettering first. Then the clear synthetic barrier was applied over the drawing. Then each individual area (background, lettering) gesso was applied which turned out to be a very laborious and slow process. 

    In applying the drawing, there were two technical goals. First was to take the  font grids and apply them in a 3 degree angle. The first grid to the left, and the second  grid 3 degrees to the right with the third grid being horizontal. The words chosen to be incorporated into the work were (Hate, Angry, Tolerance, Knowledge). In working out the design aspects, the story being told became the influence on how everything would be arranged. From years of teaching high school students with learning behavioral challenges, I had developed a philosophy that the humanity of any culture has to acknowledge that everyone has within them the capacity to be angry and be hateful. Through  generations, cultures pass on civility as being the social standard. The strength of a culture depends on how well everyone keeps hate and anger compartmentalized and controlled through having the ability to show tolerance over the those external forces that are not understood. The way  tolerance is sustained is through the passing on of core knowledge that prepares individuals to function with stern compassion for the good of the culture.
    As I arranged the words to be used supporting the notion suggesting something has gone terribly wrong with keeping hate and anger in check and it was making its way to the surface to alter the stability of the culture, I began to work out the positive/negative space dynamics. It was decided to put the word grid "hate" and "angry" into a 3:1 height/width rectangle to separate it from the other two words. Before working the canvas, I was thinking, "convention says that I start with a finished gessoed canvas, apply the drawing, and apply paint starting at the background and paint my way forward as an established process. Curiously I asked what would happen if I began  the front image and worked my way to the back image which I decided to do. First was to gesso the lettering on "Knowledge" in flat black gesso. Before that I took charcoal stick and traced over the words hate and angry inside the rectangles thinking they would be painted later. When I got to the  Tolerance grid there was a pause. While standing back to asses the how it was going visually, I began to like the idea that the raw canvas added an additional visual element to the work. I left the Tolerance grid bare and painted the background in black gesso. After completing that stage of the work, I began to see things in the canvass that stood out and needed to be resolved. First issue was that I have areas of blank canvass that hadn't been gessoed. There was the rectangle grid with the hate/angry grid inside it. I decided to paint the backgrounds of the rectangles in white gesso but thought it would be interesting to leave the charcoal lettering of the hate/angry grid alone.  By this time the idea of raw canvas being an integral element in the composition was a good decision. I felt it enhanced the overall visual and it would give viewers something to consider when looking up close at the work as part of the visual experience.
    With that stage completed, it was time to attend to how I could go beyond the micro conflicts and create texture to the work. It was decided to use the three states of paint (flat, satin, gloss) to see if manipulated, would create an kind of subtle texture that would be visually interesting. I also used layers of clear gloss acrylic in places to amplify the contrast. This took a great deal of effort and a number of layers were needed to reach a point that looked right. As this process was painstakingly being layered on, the presidential campaign was going full blast in the media and the dialogue coming from many sides was reaching extreme levels of vitriol and hate and accusation. I began to think that my original idea of compartmentalized antisocial behavior was beginning to break through civil rational idea exchange to the point that it was controlling the tone of social narrative pitting neighbor against neighbor. As a result I decided to take three of rectangles and pull them out of the background and physically extend them in space in front of the canvas as being symbolic of what was happening to the American story in real-time. The title for this artwork comes from a concept that was acquired as an education administrator. A presenter, at a training I attended, was introducing the idea how little changes can create massive change using the analogy that it only takes 1 degree Fahrenheit to convert hot water to the boiling point steam and how it relates to maintaining a positive learning environment. In this work, as each grid is tilted 3 degrees to the left and right, their actions tend to visually cancel each other and each grid looks horizontal. They balance each other out; but if something upsets that balance, like three small elements that are intended to challenge the balance, what will happen? That is the story of "3 Degrees".

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