well i added two new chicken head tress to the front yard, its fun working out there, in the middle of rush hour trafic, all the old ladys looking at you , while i am taking healthy swigs of a Natty Lite, putting up another stupid chicken tree. its sorta like here it is white trash extremist America with some tacky extremeist structure,. One thing i noticed here in san Marcos , at least here amongst my friends, is the old need to "keep san marcos wierd" or drunk. thats one of the things this place was like, layed back easy living cheep and high. At least thats the way it used to be in San Marcos. One of the bars i goto is Triple Crown, best live music joint in town, and sometimes Showdown, but things arn't like they used to, but i take pride, in that are and will aways will be bit trashy wacky, like the fence. Its my socail role of an artist to sit out there on my front porch and drink beer and wave to everybody.
March 2004 Archives
one of the things i encountered when i was selling these chicken display cases , wel li only made about six of them, and got two of them in this local store "Paper Bear" here in San marc. They were interested in what i did and the store bought one and put the other one on consignment, the ladys in the store (ouweed and awued )over them, i guess they thought i was a porfessional wood worked,. the displaycases were real shooty in construction and sloppy i coverted alot of it up with paint compound and poly, but you could still tell, i rember teliing them
"yea this is like folk art, or this mexi imports but this is one of a kinda these fuck ups here arn't made to look like fuck ups they are real fuck up"
i think that it took them a back , and said "but your a profesional,"
that i am,
" i am only bringing you the real deal here no more fake fuck up, you have hight quality fuck up in your store,"
and it shows in its orginality. i think the store was starttled at any admision that i didn't know what i was doing , but since they were already into it (the deal )they couldnt have let them go, for selling fake fuckups or fake flux look which was a real flux,.fake fuck ups ??
it had my mind wondering about the irony of the situwations in selling , it somehow reminded me of that Waltons episode, where the old man made a nice table made out of expencive wood and then beet it with a chang to give it a weather worn look, to sell the thing,.
what is it when one engineers an object to look old, of fake old?
its not real
i am still not able to post photos, i am basicly trying to complete two sets of work, here before the spring is over.
One idea thats been rumbling around my head is this stupid idea of a folk art adventure. Where me, Jeff B, and crazy matt set out for Atlanta folk fest and and on the way over there make work and try to get into gallerys etc, from Austin to Atlanta, it would be neet to get a old 70's style van with no windows, and be all drunk and dramatic,
The combo would work perfetly mat would laugh at every thing, jeff would toss fits and i would be the coach, of course alot of the attepts to get into gallerys it would fail cause we weren't folk enough, and i would yell at jeff making him crazy, it would be like slacker folk art, in which we weren't even good enough to be considered an outsider orfolk artist...
where do you go from there?
I rember one of my friends entered a show over at the visionary museum art fair, his work could fall into that catigory but he was rejected, i thought, rejected from the outsiders???
what the fuck? ! you must really be a reject then
one of the appeals to the van trip is about how discusting me, jeff, and matt could get , fat, pale, hairy smelly white guys out on theis desperate trip to make something out lof our lives, kinda like that movie "loser" about that kareoke singer, and Garret Morris was in it.
there is something artfull about desperation,. allowing one to be desperate or just simply sad and pathic
Making work at rest areas trying to pass it around to get gallerys
& shops, of course when it fails, we would like all freak out ,
"we're fucking pathic! come on! what the fuck you don't like this chicken painting my god its only 20 dallars"
well i have failed miserable in trying to complete the work for the show(joe on the Go) i think i am going to go down there and hang out and see if i get motivated to put something together, i think i have something like four real shows lined up for the fall, and i want to go out to Marathon again, and goto Lobo fest, check out Lobo.com its interesting,. Last night i paced around trying to figure out what excatly i am in store for this year,. One intersting note was i talk to long time buddie Jeff Baily and we pondered the idea of traveling out and hitting all these folk art store joints hussling work off the back of our truck, he lives in greater New Canney, its a perfctly creepy world to conjure up something weird, in that place.
this is the last tales , i have gone off on this to long,
but i wanted to mention this antidote, well once when me kyle and derk were throwing football back and forth all over the complex in front of the gays, , we would joke around with them, and i rember i was like way away from the main building and drek would throw me the football , well, there is this real flammer called Ben there , older guy, 40 something, and we were teasing him and her got all roulded up and sarted charging me, when derk threw me the football, i saw him comming like he was gonna give ma a gay tackle, i cought the ball but fell over cause he jumped me, ,.
now here is what was frightening, and they didn't get it, i was terrified,!
not cause there was some queeen on me but because i landed in dog shit!, and i was roling around in it while this gay guy is on top of me, !
i started yelling saying get off get off, , of course this only excited ben and it went on like he thought , he was gonna force me to come out tof the closet or somenthing right there in this field in the middle of the afternoon,
get off , dooog shittt!
of course drek and kylye split there guts laughing about this.
hey drek "the vioce of God " Durham, this date you recolected, let me tell ya what hapen about that..
well, you see i asked a this girl out, when i was in college , from one of my classes, she was real cute (fun to be around) and we ate at this resturant called Meltose , when it was there up N LBJ, well some how i made a mistake and forgot my bilfold , and had no money,.
what was curious was i told her i was gonna treat, she acepted and well, i fucked up and had to humbel myself by asking to pay cause i forgot to bring money (everybody fucks once and a while) she understoood and payed, no problem,,. but here is what happen,..afterwards
you see this woman stared telling my friends i was a cheep scape and simply ratted her out of a dinner, . it seemed funny cause we were so friendly and casual,. and then all of a sudden i was a rat or something,
the date was on friday and by saturday i heard the news from some of my friends
well what the fuck
turn sides on me,.,
after i heard this and i told her i was gonna pay her back for the meal,
but then i thought
how matny times have i bought a meal for a woman and they simply walked away with and almost underswerving thank you, and i pondered, well
fuck her, for so shortly ,
selling me short, its about time the dudes scored one
and i didn't pay her back
thus
aferming i was and cheep scape
but
at least i knew she was a miezer greater than i, to make this such an issue
of this and act prejudgly, though gossip and slander
alast viasta
one thing i forgot to mention was when i was up on N LBJ place, i got to be good friends with kyle and Drek, it was a fun time for me. My two buddies looked like skinheads, we wern't, but we had the look, i don't know why, some butch thing, i buzz my hair cause i have dandruff, and i like to rub my head..
well up NLBJ there was this apt complex it was like three duplexs that rented to college kids and it had six units total. Well this complex which was right up the road from me, had alot of them Gays in it, alot of up and comming college flamming gays in it.
Some how kyle and derk were in there and the gays were scared to death of them alot. so when they had these like block partys, we were invited cause they thought were we homophobes, which we weren't, but man those gays could throw a fucking party they went all out, expencive beer, food and a shitload of entertainment, as we found out.
I don't know ,
but to me and drek and klye, the gay guys were like famming, they acted like little girls fighting over who was desireable and who was and wasn't gay ,and boy they could talk some trash about each other, we just sat back and acted as medeators and such cause they would try to pull us into there drama and such, it got trying at times.
One thing that they tought was were we a repressed gay, and we wanted to come out to them, so we had alot of fun with it, i mainly played jokes on drek telling the gay folk i think he (drek)needed alittle incuragement cause this date he went on with a woman didn't work out so good, maybee, you all could help.. maybe he is confused or something
they would taught asnd tease him etc
you know, it was alot of fun...
Our partys were boring, just abunch of guys standing around drinking cheep beer and loud music,
stupid!
but these wacky gay partys it was like some insain fe'asco every fucking time.
boy i miss the good ol days!
All the sorted stories from that year sorta were all contained when i stayed at the apt on N LBJ , then i found this unbelievable deal for a loft apt on the squre of San Marcos, something like 300 for a two beadroom, so i was outta there, and a buddie of mine cam back to live in town Drek"the vioce of God "Durham, it was a begining of a new phaze where i switched majors from psyche to Art.
I was also reading this book "madness and modernism" L Sass its a very good book it sorta made the private world of meaningless ramblings appear like something important and profound, there is somenthing about games, rules and ideas, i used to plug that into painting alot. maybee cause i started smoking alot of weed with Drek, that i started lossing it,
getting all worked up and edgy, i think squitziaphria and gettting stonned have alot in commen , at least for me, it was like my mind just wouldn't stop it was this other world, and i was mentally outta control , but not really. I carryed alot of it over to painting, and started asking myself,
" what the fuck am i doing?" what the fuck is this, , it entail endless hours of mental describling and reevluwating what i think i am doing and what i was doing,.
In painting a picture you play a game between the idea and what you actually made, ,, the idea, mainly in regards to an impression of something you want to make. painting is differt that conceptual art in regards to the fact that it has rules , you can make a good picture or a bad one, it al depents on what you see, and its the power of sight with a brush in hand that one refines ones talent. ideas sorta cloud the vision into creating more intelectually sharp "art objects" that might not be a good painting, .
i spent alot of time , wondering deviding,
what it is i think i am doing and what is there before me.
with a simple picture,
I guess working on River road, was kinda like an adventure, during the sumer like all of Texas's cultural trash seem to love to get fucked up and go down that river. My boss was someone who loved the tubbing party culture i rember he was 40 something, short, tan ,stocky, and everybody called him super dave, , a kinda party ,kinda guy, i would get there in the morning and he would have whacked down something like a post of coffee and by noon he would have me go get a 12 pack of MGD and by late evening he was doing shots, and bog hits by the night,. We would get hamburges from this guy called Big Ben he ran a hamburger shack in this garden shed out in the midlle of this field, he was big probaly in his late sixtys and was a vet WWII and was a fire victom looking at the scars, he looked like a big hairless bear, and made the hamburgers real slowly like two poundburgers, ,. it was fun wathcing him cook in this small shed in the sumer casue it was real hot and he like sweet al over everything , you just had to take it,
" well maybe that didn't get on my food, ahhh its just salt",
well thats the river road ,. driving up and down that thing it was all so mysterious the lives these workers or career toober handles had, seeing some fellows, skinny smoking a cigaettes dangling from their baseball mitted hands, thined mullet stonner hair, what kinda life is it like, to go to be drunk and wake up and got to work just a couple of feet from where you passed out,
they were like cool hip zombies too tough for there own good, a cowboy
this is my front yard here in San Marcos
this is a painting i did recently, and abstract chicken thing, humm
one of my favorite stories from 93 when i was at that apt complex, and this has to do with dark humor, is well, i also had a part time job shuddling tubers up the river over on river raod that summer over in Gruene. well one saturday i had to pick up this big group of tubbers at the ending point in Gruene, so i had to hang out there for six hours as they one by one showd up and i carryed them back. At the poit were i parked i went down to the river were the last pretty tough rapid was there and the trip was over for them, every so often a tubber or raft would coming zooming down the thing smash into another tuber and an accident would happen , it looked pretty bad, and all the family on the side of the bank would go running out into the river in a panic frenzy , it even cought my attenion, "are they ok?!" were they were alright, alittle shooken up, well they would clear and it would happen again to anther person or group ! oh my god , are they ok, ? then it would settle, and antoher accident , again , and again and again, probly one every ten to fifteen minutes, . after a while i quiet being shocked and started to studie the expressions of terror, or fill blown panic every body had, mainly the women!. after three hours of this it was just fucking hallious,. i couldn't stopp laughing, i got closer to the actual rapid to watch the exact place each and every toober would turn over or be run over by a cannoer or something, it went on and on,. it was amazing.,.,.,
i don't know
but if thats dark, so is life!
some one just posted a message, why so dark? , read it its under this posting in comments "tales of 93" humm
well the idea that humanity is either dark or bright as a time line from postive times to negative, and i as a vessal projecting postive paintings or negative paintings into the world is basicly silly.
Dark creepy horroristic paintings , are a gerna and if anything tell tales of psycholical realism, intertwinded with myths and the supernatural
except where i drew the line i felt was i was falling into kitch, horror kitch.
i like the sensation of the occult, porn, squiziods or haunted places
i am basicaly a poet, not a moralist.
an entertianer at best
I guess when i lived up on NLBJ, here in san marcos. at this apartment complex i started working as a grounds keeper. i must have walk that silly place to death there were like four apt complexs i had control on, and my boss she would call me if she saw some thrash any where, like an old ding dong wrapper, that happen to blow into the complex i would get a call, I was going to school here at SWT, and it was good job everybody knew me and i would walk all around with this garbage bag, and not look like a prowler or creep or something i was like invivable, people threw all sorts of things away, i loved to rumage through the trash and such. the kinda paintings i was into was these vixion porno babes stuck in purgatory , dark, i think it was about that time i made this one painting two headless lesbians wrestling, that i had enough, really i was into abstracts but the sexyness of it all or dark nature kept me feeling like i was doing something greater than myself,. Afterwards i went counrty , i felt if i wanted to express something grin try doing it with bluebonnets, now thats a challlege!, but none the less it was all dark.
here are some of the things i am working on for the show, its like all these varations of a pimple maze inyard as a landscape.
another day, here in the studio,
one of the things that i have been trying to figure out, is where drama starts in a painting and where it ends.
laying in my bed at night i imagine a world where the forces of the super nature conspire and compel me to make
well, last night , was wet and wierd, only had three beers and basicly listen to music and cut cardboard and layed out the entire set so to speek. i think its gonna be 36 collages and 12 paintings on cardboard, and when its done in its entirety next week, what doesn't sell, and (i am sellling this stuff cheep) i am going to throw into some odd antique store around here, where it belongs,. alot of haunted mazes etc,
one thing thats happen yesterday was i heard one of my old bosses Connie from this apt complex i used to work for is friends with the owner of Eyes of Tex geallery, i had all these old flash backs i think its the orgin of my moron humor working for her, i was real scared of Connie she was a wicked bitch but very nice to me but her karisma, whooa,
one of my favorite stories about working for her was my research on vomit stains. Being a grounds keeper and picking up trash all day, you notice things on the ground alot, one of my jobs was shoveling up vomit from last night after a party, i got a real kick out of walking around the complex with this shovel and asking all the soriity girls "hey ya'll see any vomit?!" the look of discused on there pretty little faces was priceless.
Well one thing i noticed was all these old splats like tar splats , look around on any asphalt, any black old splat is a stomach acid stain, cause after i would clean it up the stain was always there very dark, they were every where!
, so i tryed to date the stains like tree rings, and i figured there must have been year old stains to i bet almost a decade old vomit stains on the complexs pavement.
Which brought me back to Connie i was so nervious talking to her about the cleanlyness of the complex that i would be like a fantical about my job, i submited a report on the history of vomit stains on the complexs. i looked after, she made me real nervious, i wanted her to know i took my job very seriously.
i did like her as a boss,
but she was a good hater.
i just went over to "joe in the go" here in san marcos, its a coffe place and i didn't realise how big this one wall is so i went to hobby lobby and bought a whole bunch of hot glue, for my gun, i have three weeks to blow out some 55 works for the show, i want to make a tight likke cologe, made with cardboad pieces, kinda like halloween art vidogames and seeens from children of the corn, so we shall see , i downed a cabana bowl some coffee and i have six tall nattie lites,. an a couple of new techo cds
its time to rock and roll!
well, its a bad morning weather wise, cold over cast, wet, i don't like it, i guess being out in the shed i track mud in and every thing seems dirty the house takes on a particlur smell and is dark and musty, plus crazy matt is goin squitziod, we figured, case i can hear him laughting to himself all night,. i stated to work down these three paintings trying to straighted my mind on what it is i am doing, i have to keep it straight its all about contrast as soon as it lost all falls into mud,
i can only paint fot about 2-4 hours a day, another 3 if i get fucked up at night listening to music,
don't ever underestimate the power of beer when painting, on thing i learned again and again.
out in Brenham, over this last week i have thes large paintings i am rotating in this set of "animal landscapes" well some are about there, or have really buillt themselves up to possibly being complete.
i get stubborn about what i think it should be and whta is really going on in the picture, some how being all buzzed i am able to release the "idea" of the picture and more or les go with whats going n insde it, and be done,
some how i am able to say fuck it!
if the wine is bad throw it out!
well i got up this morning and started cleaning up my studio , put things back in order, and basiclly decied to just work on thse final 12 paintings, , but man i really am getting enthused about the "plastic farm animals" , i have a ton of old frames and i have decied that every P.F.A. i make in this certian look i am going blow it in to a old picture frame. i am working on this one with these two goats and there are these monkeys on there back , the model had it, so i copyed it in to the painting, there is something neet about it,
and i have also been watching "children of the Corn" on this dvd and making these card board drawings on them, i like cultic fanship worlds, sorta primative backwoodsy biblical, that movie is sorta interesting,
its very folk art like, superfical meaning in the way the hollywood culture sees this rural biblical world, its sorta an attack apon it. after you watch a movie at least a dozen times you start to notices things about it, details that one would pass over on the first time. One ot the things is i like to renact things or lines from the movie in the paintings or sketchs, fanship art,
my computer is having some problems on the images, so its gonna be text for a while, i am now waiting to see what i am going to do this sumer,. i have all this work to get done with and a cd-rom out , which i am trying to complete, i also have this big time art show at "joe on the go" coffe house here in san marcos this could be it , so i am preparing things, i have till the end of this month to turn out something, humm what should i do?,.
i am trying to complete these two sets of works for this fall show but i am burned out, this is one of them complete, , i sorta like it alot, it sorta leads to other ideas of paintings , its very green and heavy, with an orange under tone to it like "things placed in the yard", so to speek, i also got a dvd oF the movie "children of the Corn" i am now making a bunch of sketchs of the movie , , you know with the dvd you can freeze the movie and make sketch from it.,., movies were my first art form, i copyed movie stills from mags like Fangoria, there was something about excaping into the mood of a movie and completely worshipping it , like bringing these obsure moments life, by a via a painting, fanart.
watching the movie studieing it, finding good moments to ad-lib to , are what art is about, its exciteing!
this painting is inspired by this woman i met in a junior college, she did watercolors of these bunnys and volcanos exploding and astriods slamming into the earth i thought it was funny,. Her mother made her goto junior college, she worked as a checker in the local supermarket, and i think painting was the only class she took, i ended up getting this watercolor of the bunny, and i made a painting based off it,
i thought it was an interesting contrast, the bunnys in this apcolipitic landscape (even titled it "by Sara M")
part of the Marathon set
done out in Marthon Texas (3-3) large shingle paintings.
This painting done on wood was made out in Marathon, while i was out there i painted in this old barn next to Evans Gallery. This is one of three of the largest painting done out there,. When i was out there i made a chicken head pyrmid and this is a painting sorta a copy of what it looked like in the barn i set this pyrmid up in the old barn it stood about ten feet tall, and had a span of about fifteen by fifteen( the thing on the card) .
I suppose apon rembering why i made it was sorta like i was reacting some parts of my favorite movies, like some unconscience theame, the painting turned out good, i went around braggin in West Texas that i was a Texas pha'row this idea of a temple builder, or burried treasures etc, and hell if folks wanted call me a egotisal well wern't the pha'rows e the biggest egomanicalist of all time, i just like preservation, in art.
Here in San Marcos i build this chicken head fence made out of plywood, same art form and i had all sorts of art advisers tell me how full of myself i was, i had this whole routine about it,
"man, i cann't evan be allowed to be know to be a simple chicken artist with out someone doing an expos'e about how egotistic i am, man, its a small life as a chiken artist , and they wil take that from you too!"
i got neurotic over it alot of time, its the slacker art that's ambition is to "suck" and woe and behold some one will say
"hey you want to suck, and create an expose on why you don't suck", but really suck hard, . chickens fall some where around those lines
can you will yourself to be bad, , cause the anverse to be good, has a fall, can you fall from the bottem..
its some stupid paradox i was mired into for like 5 years. wondering what is real, when one looks at "bad" art thay know what it is, but what's fake bad art, or does it turn out to be "humm alright" and know decrotive.
