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Reliquery

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Closed

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Left quarter panel open

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Both quarter panels open

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Right quarter panel open

Reliquary: Acrylic on sheet metal, 32"x96"  2019 

Being highly connected to the environment and outdoors, I purchased 33 acres of land in 1975 bordering a federal wilderness forest. The property was part of a 1,400 acre tract being sold in parcels. A friend and I combined our meager discretionary money to buy a parcel on an installment program. The area had been logged in early 1900's. After that, farmers moved in building homesteads growing dryland wheat. By the 50's the Grand Coulee Dam project brought irrigation to the Columbia Basin and the homesteads were abandon. 

After purchasing the land, my land partner and I would spend weekends walking the property trying to get an idea of the property lines while exploring nearby abandon homesteads. While poking around, I stumbled across a piece of sheet mettle sticking out of the ground on the northwest corner of the property. After some effort, I realized that this was the folding hood of a very old model A car or truck. It was later identified as an old truck hood because of its size and shape. It was the first "thing" I put into my inventory.

While working on "No Collusion", in the shop cutting the tree bark into rectangles with a band saw, I glimpsed the truck hood laying under the work table covered with sawdust. I retrieved it and laid it on top of the workbench recalling how it was found years ago. It was in bad condition. The hinges were rusted and the panels were folded and wouldn't open. There was something about the age and shape of the hood that spoke out. The decision was made to clean it up. It was a slow and often frustrating restoration to get it back to its designed function. Since "No Collusion" was taking up most of the studio time, the hood restoration was very slow and spotty. Getting the panels to open and close was the first step. The next step was rust removal and straightening essential bent parts in the sheet mettle. I began by using a wire brush on and grinder to deal with the rust and to my surprise, under the rust was the original black paint. Overcome with a strange kind of reverence for the hood, I was energized to bring it to life as a work.

 

 

 

After getting the inside of the hood cleaned and the panel hinges working, it was stood up with the side panels open. It began to have the look of an early religious artifact that I remember seeing when I was a teen living in Greece. 

 

Our Athens suburb home was at the base of Mt. Panteli in a very small village called Ekali. I could literally walk out of my home, cross a highway, and be climbing the western slopes of the mountain which I periodically did for fun. If one climbed high enough, there were meadows and gentle slopes were sheep herders would tend their flocks as they roamed freely grazing off the land. I occasionally would come across a man made hallowed out pile rocks and boulders held together with cement. Inside the hallowed area would be found a hinged old wood three paneled box. Opening it would reveal sacred spiritual artifacts of personal nature. I later discovered that the box was created by shepherds on the mountain who shared the slopes with other herds. Each flock herder would place personal icons in the box for safe keeping. They would access the reliquary and worship while attending to the sheep. The box was used to protect the personal items from the harsh elements of the environment.

 

The truck hood served a similar function. The sheet metal hood protected the engine. It being the essential function of a truck.  just like a reliquary box protects spirituality. I began to think of the Truck hood as a reliquary. At the time "No Collusion" was the creative focus so there was no plan to transform the truck hood even though it was in the stream of conscious while working in the studio.

 

After completing "No Collusion", work had begun on "Top 10 %". Occasionally I would be in the shop working on the truck hood trying to figure out what to do with it but, at the time, nothing was coming through. When "Top 10%" was completed, the media had been busy evaluating the relationship between Donald Trump's continuous stream of disinformation and the Christian right. There was one week were radical elements of the Christian right were trying to proclaim Donald Trump as the "chosen one" of the second coming. I was absolutely floored by the assertion that a billionaire fraud (in my opinion) was being given spiritual adulation by the keepers of the Christian faith. This was the moment were the function of the truck hood's mission took form. I now had both a form and a function for making a creative statement using the truck hood.

As work progressed on the truck hood, there was a need to learn something about automotive restoration. I had contacted my old land partner who was in the process of restoring a 1938 panel truck. He invited me to come over and help in the process. I spent two weekends as an apprentice on how to straighten, sand, patch, prime and paint automotive sheet metal. 

Restoration of the truck hood began with a much higher level of skill, understanding and focus. I decided to keep the interior surfaces of the hood raw and unchanged other than removing the rust. I liked how it showed its age with its scratches, marks, and old black paint as a mark of how truth is timeless despite its aging. Based upon the apprenticeship, it was necessary to removed the hinge pins holding the four panels together and work each panel separately. After a series of 3 wet sanding and 3 separate coats of filler primer were applied getting rust pits and scratches removed, the application of cosmetic putty was applied with more wet sanding followed by two more coats of primer and more wet sanding. Eventually the outer surfaces of the four hood pieces had been restored and were ready for painting. I purchased an automotive spray gun and practiced using it.  With that and my apprenticeship, I felt skilled enough to spray the 4 panels of the hood. The exterior was sprayed with a black acrylic gloss enamel with a clear gloss overcoat for the interior surfaces. Three spray coats were needed followed by an light wet sand between each spray coat in order to achieve right look. Using clear acrylic on the interior made it possible to brighten the surface yet allowing its age to visually remain.

Once that hood was fitted with new hinge pins and assembled back into its folding panels, it was ready for refinements.  The visual function was exterior becoming a protective shield to its interior. It was covered with "Lies" written across it as if "lies" was a virus trying to penetrate the shield to destroy the interior. The inside  was to symbolize the human eternal of truth. In spite of its aged, is the foundation to a universal dialogue between beings, places, and things. On an existential level, truth is the only form and function of time that has no past nor future. It simply "is".  In keeping it simple, I wrote in big blue letters', "Thou Shalt Not Lie", across all four interior panels. As a total visual experience, the panels can be opened and closed independently to reveal four different aspects of a truth/lie dialogue symbolizing choices to communication as a civil concept.

1. With all panels open, "Thou Shalt Not Lie" appears.  

     Is an existential absolute 

2. With the right panel closed, "Thou Shalt"/ "Lies" appears.

     An interpretation that rationalizes one will lie.

3. With the left panel closed, "Lies"/"Shalt Not" appears.

     A lie upends the purity of the existential principle

4. With left and right panels closed, "Lies" appears.

    "Lies", can overwhelm and obscure the existential absolute.  

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 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"

AGAZINE TITLE

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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