Pics and video from Art and Artifacts show @ Hot Box Gallery in Phoenix

The opening was more than I could have hoped for. Steven Yazzie has now outdone himself and made an amazing short promo video for the show. The man is a machine, just being in his proximity has enriched my personhood. The show will be open again this First Friday at the Hot Box Gallery and then travels to Detroit for the “People’s Biennial.”

Please note this is the first time I’ve even included recognizable images of myself on here. Also below is an artist’s statement for the “People’s Biennial” show at MOCAD in Detroit.

Confessions of an unconscious doodler

I am an unconscious doodler. Often while on hold or in a meeting I come back to earth having drawn some winding figure sprung free from my subconscious. I’ve done this most of my life, but never attained any real skill; no draftsmanship, no steady hand, simply oodles of doodles I don’t know what to do with but can’t throw away. So I just squirrel them away like the creative hoarder that I am. Every scrap of paper with writing or a drawing on it is stuffed into folders, drawers, and boxes, for future reference or use.

It is the same with the objects I collect: books with strange titles, vanity press books, books of unreadable poetry, song-poem records, terrible art. My place is a kind of temple to curious creative output. Sometimes these acquisitions get incorporated into the artistic swirl of my various outputs. Interesting/humorous dust jackets get arranged as if they were venturing together to a nightclub, dust cover photos get turned into deities, become illuminated fools. Text from a poem ends up swirling around like the tail of a kite.

Often my writing finds its way into my visual art. On a walk I get inspired to write a poem about how I don’t know any of the names of the trees I encountered on the walk. Later I take that poem, add my self-made handwriting font to the words, print it on green paper, cut up the lines and put them in a jar to see how it would look to have a nest of words in a jar. A nesting poem on green paper about what it would be like to know the names of trees.

Over time this idea is the fount for a whole series of poems and little spiraling sculptures in jars.

I sliced up a photo of the sky, making something as familiar as a sunset into something the eye has to catch up with to see. I took that sunset image, printed it on transparency and cut it into a sculpture that mysteriously glows and floats in a jar.

Inspired while reading “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chodron, I wrote a poem about impermanence on what I had on hand: the Amazon receipt for the book still tucked away on the last page. I took the original handwritten document, receipt and all, inverted it and re-wrote the text in a blocky white font over the top. That visual poem was published in Corvus Magazine.

It is like this with my stuff. My novel in progress is about a book within a book and some of my poems dive in and out of realities. My creative output often cross-pollinates, I get my chocolate in my peanut butter, often for a tastier result.

jb
3-31-14

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~ by 15wattLasVegas on July 27, 2014.