BLOOD WITCH _ THE PLAY

BLOOD WITCH is a sort of vampire with a talk show. She sustains herself through an unholy practice of skinning celebrity faces off and installing them seamlessly over the congealed dark matter that is her true form.

{(Blood Witch currently looks like Ellen DeGeneres, but with glittering black eyes.)}

These are transcripts from an episode of the BLOOD WITCH (BW) talk show with special guest FORREST GUMP (FG)

{(They both sit politely, facing each other in softly lit cream colored leather recliners between potted peace lilies decorated with plastic flamingo inserts.)}

TAPED IN FRONT OF A LIVE STUDIO AUDIENCE

BW

So Forrest, I hear you have some famous things to say about life.

FG {(Hands folded politely in lap)}

That's true Blood Witch. As I always say, Life is like a box of-

BW

Yeah Yeah, we know. A bag of meow meow.

FG

No, a box of-

BW

Hey, whatever. TELL US! What's your deal? You smell so alive.

FG

Well gosh, I was trying to say that life presents you with precious moments full of spontaneity and joy.

{(Blood Which makes the jerk off hand motion while the crowd goes AWWWWW)}

Or all sortsa pain, and unforeseeable confusion. The only thing you can do is savor it all by accepting each experience for what it is.

BW

MMMM, such a sweet pair of eyes. Great. Some people still think you're a hero for that way you ran a really long time? They're very old and forgetful now. Tell them about that again.

FG

I just felt like running.

{(AUDIENCE CLAPS FOR ABOUT 5 MINUTES. CONFETTI BLASTS FROM THE CEILING. A PARADE OF CHILDREN IN MONSTER ENERGY DRINK SWAG RIDE SMALL DONKEYS FROM BACK STAGE, TRUMPETING THROUGH THE APPLAUDING AUDIENCE, HANDING EVERYONE GREEN ICE CREAM CONES WITH THE MONSTER ‘M’ STAMPED INTO EACH CONE.)}

BW {(Looking slyly off stage to where she knows a “greenroom" is located.)}

So what you're saying is that you're super into Phish, you’re taking meow meow all the time with your beardo Marxist friends, and you have no love for the New Beyonce. You probably think she's not even a feminist -

FG {(Clearly Upset)}

Now wait a minute. I did not SAY that! She is WONDERFUL gyrating on that black and white beach.

And - - -

And you're eyes are really creeping me out. I can't tell where you're looking, please, stop.

BW {(Smiling and setting up the camera on her phone)}

OOOO, Don't sweat, it'll ruin your stage makeup. Talk about your love life now -- Wait! Let me take a picture of you mad, then another of you happy, and post them side by side.

{(Gets up very close to Forrest for an up-nostril shot)}

Ha! So versatile, wow. Cuuuuuuute!

FG

You done?

BW

Two sec-onds…. Yup

FG. {(Pushing camera and Witch away, and settling once more)}

Well ok, my love life... I think I ran to put the past behind me. It wasn't working out between us... There was so much love. Gosh I've never felt so much for another person. But she didn’t want me to love her. Maybe fear got in the way? I don’t know but I still imagine what married life would be like for us.

BW {(Looking at photos just taken)}

YaYaYa, heard That. Do you like to party? I've got some meow meow in the green room.

FG

Meow meow… What's this, some Hollywood game? I feel like you aren't taking my art seriously.

BW

It's fun you'll really like it.

FG

Now you WAIT A MINUTE, I have an innocent character!

BW

{(Deep sigh, and a soulful understanding face.)}

Dear. I've lived for ALL OF TIME, and you're character has aged about 20 years now while learning jack shit - it just gets tiring, listening to you. Taking it seriously? I interviewed Massoud about Bin Laden’s porn stash, Werner Herzog about Kinski’s secret philanthropy, David Herzog about how no one knows who he is... I've interviewed Britney Spears... Rihanna. Louis CK… all about their strange addictions to eating hair. Every Spice Girl in the back of a Greyhound Bus while speeding through a burning field, Maurice Ravel on a garden swing, Hunter S. Thompson in a ballgown. Everyone and anyone noteworthy. Are you bored now too? There's more! More simple tricks. More special feelings. And how dooo they use the power... All the same realizations. Over and over.

{(CROWD HISSES LIKE A PACK OF ANGRY CATS. THEY THROW THEIR LEFT OVER ICE CREAM AT THE STAGE. FORREST STARTS TO CRY QUIETLY. THEY'RE BOTH OCCASIONALLY HIT WITH SPRINKLES.)}

You're just another Quick Time. So let's party. It'll help us both forget how old we are. Come on, it'll be nice to let loose, just you and me.

{(BLOOD WITCH CARESSES FORREST'S THIGH, THEN SLOWLY RAISES HER HAND TO WIPE HIS TEARS AWAY.)}

FG

I guess I'll try anything once - forgetting is nice sometimes.

BW

That's great! Let me run and get my knife set, and I'll meet you in the back.

FG{(Gets up and walks off stage looking defeated. Loud metal clanging is heard coming from his new location out of view.)}

Hey, this is a real funny green room. looks like a... bird cage. Can someone come get me outta here? It's cold away from those lights. I don't like it... Hello?

BW{(Still on stage, standing with arms held out to the audience)}

Ladies and gentlemen, that was Forrest Gump! Big round of applause. Stay tuned for next week, where I'll be hosting the show as Forrest Gump.

{(CHEERING, WHISTLING, STAMPING AUDIENCE)}

FG{(Feeling around the floor and walls of what he realizes is a dark cage with a love seat pushed against the bars he unwittingly walked into)}

There's plastic on everything…

{(ONE WOMAN FROM THE AUDIENCE GETS UP, AND HUGGING THE WALL, SNEAKS AWAY TO THE GREEN ROOM AREA WHILE EVERYONE IS CHEERING)}

Woman{(Appearing at the bars of Forrest’s cage)}

Forrest, I'm going to get you out of here, please don’t panic. I'm so sorry, this is horrible.

FG

You're a real kind lady... But it's too late. I'm toast.

Woman

No, not now! Not like this!! - Here, take these glasses. They'll give you the power to wrestle like a champion. When Blood Witch comes back, she'll step in the cage and try to eat your face, but you’ll be ready to fight her with these.

{(WOMAN HANDS FORREST THE GLASSES FROM THEY LIVE THROUGH THE BARS OF THE CAGE, AND SMILES WARMLY AS HE CLUTCHES THEM TO HIS HEART)}

FG

Now that is TOO much!

Woman

It's true, that's why she looks like Ellen Degeneres now.

FG

How do you know all this?

Woman

{(Pulls back blonde hair to reveal a scar running around the circumference of her face)}

FG

Ellen?

Woman

Yes Forrest. It's too late for me, but you can save the rest of the celebrities by defeating that monster tonight. Do it for all the celebrities who still believe in America! And for yourself! I mean, she’ll kill you if you’re not careful.

{(Woman slips away vanishing into the surrounding shadows)}

FG

Ok Ellen, I won't let you down.

{(BLOOD WITCH ENTERS, COVERED IN A SUIT OF JANGLING KNIVES, HUMMING GIDDILY)}

BW

Ha. You're mine. I will wear your face. Haha. Watch me do a little dance. As I enter the ring I will blind you with magic. Put your faceless head in a bag of hungry rats. Ha. Damn. I’m bored all the time.

FG

Not so fast Blood Witch!

{(FORREST PUTS THE GLASSES ON)}

BW

Ha. Ha again. I'm covered in knives.

FG

You may be right, but I fought in 'Nam, so take this!

{(THE TWO SQUARE OFF IN THE CAGE. TIME STANDS STILL. BLOOD WITCH MAKES THE FIRST MOVE, THROWS A PUNCH, FORREST DEFLECTS, BENDS HER ARM BACK. SHE KICKS FREE. THEY LOCK, SCRAP FURRIOUSLY. FINALLY, BLOOD EVERYWHERE, THE TWO LAY WAISTED. BOTH ARE EXHAUSTED IN A STALEMATE.)}

BW

You know, that was kinda hot Forrest. Who makes those glasses?

FG

They were a gift.

BW

I’m going to let you go but... It'd be great to see you again sometime?

FG

Oh. Um. Certainly, Blood. Can I call you -

BW

Sure honey.

{(BLOOD WITCH turns her back on FORREST to open the cage. In that moment he rushes for a knife loosened from the suit, and slices into her exposed neck)}

BW

Bitch!

{(She disappears in a puff of bats, and Ellen's face falls on the ground with a soft thud)}

FG

Well that was nutty.

{(FORREST WALKS BACK ON STAGE SO AS TO EXIT THROUGH THE EMPY SOUND STAGE BACK TO THE AUDIENCE ENTRANCE. HE PASSES BY A DOZING SECURITY GUARD, AND EXITS TO THE STREET. ON THE STREET HE WALKS TO THE END OF THE BLOCK WHERE HE ASKES A KITCHEN WORKER ON BREAK FOR A LOOSE CIGARETTE. HE SMOKES IT AND WALKS BENEATH A SERIES OF STREET LIGHTS. A MOTHER SHIELDS HER CHILDREN FROM HIM AS HE NOW LOOKS HORRIFIC. EVENTUALLY HE FINDS A PARK BENCH TO SIT DOWN ON. HE STARES INTO THE MIDDLE DISTANCE.)}

Doomerangs

Lucia Love is the creator and director of the hit series Doomerangs. She was working as a platter in a cocktail store when we met her. Fast forward thirty-five years and she is still trying to figure out how low she can go.

MELODRAMATIC LAYOVER

Crouched in a Friday's outlet on a communal leather couch in the Moscow airport. My feet are pounding from lack of use, and the thin spots of blistered skin at my heels and toe knuckles feel like they'll give out from pressure of extra blood idling within. There's a remix of Justin Timberlake's Rock Your Body oozing into this dining coral, and my waiter is snap clapping in his suspenders along to its smooth and distant disco beats. He is excited to use his English. Wilted iceberg lettuce arrives like a photoshopped Tinder date, background vocals sharp and sour as the salad dressing that's sloped across my red and white checked plate. There's sodden clumps of parsley emerging from diced tomato islands afloat in an oil lake within its borders that I avoid in favor of occasional pockets of larval canned mandarin orange slices. A morbid fascination with drowning a baby's pressurized cabin cries in Michael Bublé playlists courtesy of Aeroflot comes back to me as I space out to a slowly rotating diner display of a single slice of cheese cake, three Pelegrino waters, two lemons, and some fake nachos. In an airport every comfort is unnecessary, though travel culture has crossbred with luxury malls in order to distract from the disorientation that happens from watching the sun ping pong above the horizon for hours as you defy logic in a flickering remix of entertainment. Even without the lure of duty free shops, and Hermes scarf outlets, you'd still have to enter an agreement with this system of half life centers to visit everything that oceans and mountains keep us from. And so this interpretation of customer service becomes a blend of affordable chairs, toilets, and a mix bag of clear white objects. Interpretive variations on the classics - a landscape for anxious travelers. 

Violence

It is during times of strife and political unrest that we must band together and become the revolutionary force we wish to see in our world. Only by honing our skills for change may we take power back from those who would happily send thriving citizens under the yoke of tyranny. The brutal double standard of our police state may refuse us our second amendment rights, but it is then that we meet their ban with creativity on the front lines. A rock tied to a stick, a sharpened toothbrush handle, a bunch of nails set into the head of a baseball bat - these are all traditional handmade weapons for close range combat. Then we have gasoline, which we may put into cars and drive over the enemy. Fire that we may contain in bottles and spread all over their clothing, and large men infected with AIDs that can spit at target faces. We have many options available to wage the next righteous freedom war of civility, and the only mistake is inaction. Why there has been so much silent acceptance of innocent lives lost in the past is only a question of our own fear and confusion. It is time that we riot and murder ourselves. 

Fragonard Shard

Fragonard was all about blindfolded ladies, the up-skirt shot, trans boys with leather bound books, and nudes obscuring their pussies with Noble Dogs. Scandalous for the time? Maybe. Protested? Nah. Unfortunately though, he died "poor and forgotten" after his usual customers got their heads chopped off.  He tried living with his family for a while before dying, but after he painted the interior of their house with more bush scenes, they couldn't further justify his room and board. He became outwardly lame. We now revel in these scenes of pastoral romance while strolling through the Woody Allen part of Manhattan that hasn't yet been decimated by large empty glass boxes.

Algorithmic Imaginations Remix the 80s 90s and Today

Chapter 1: Slowly unfurling leaf on the rainforest ground floor cross fades to child fight in the mud. Fluorescent tube lights spell out Bambi Fantasia flickering next to a row of vending machines that sell severed fingers and rice snacks. Every one is in the same room riding plastic ponies for a quarter. An elderly couple hug tenderly at sunset, because of course there's a palm tree silhouette.

Chapter 2: Focus on a storefront window where four dreamy mermaids are performing yoga. Cut to a spandex crotch working around a bike seat. A man constructs a glass home alone in the midst of deep dimly lit alpine fresh pines. Toggle between hundreds of construction workers in subway tunnels around the world telling the closest other how they wish they were in high school again.

Chapter 3: Spindly alien forms dressed in Helmut Lang attend the Baloney Party show. They're all missing eyebrows.
Outside the rain is eating away at pedestrians. It is decidedly too late for them to receive their trial version of Revolutionary Hair seeing as they are past the appropriate age to be groomed for posh dwellings.

Chapter 4: Beautiful doe eyed boys show off their reflective shirts lost in swirls of hand painted turquoise patterning. Cut to the rush of a standing ovation in a packed convention center where speaker proclaims, "it draws the drawing for you!" Close up of tweezers pulling apart chicken nugget matter under a microscope. A female scientist smiles tenderly at her male counterpart in matching lab coat. 

Chapter 5:
A man with Alzheimer's walking deep into the forest with a Dalmatian waves hello to his neighbors. It's a fall day. The leaves are like a folk song on acoustic guitar. Tiny tambourines play faintly. Analogue whisper magic. There's a severed finger dipped in purple latex in his pocket with sunny day clouds painted on the nail. He can't find his mommy. She's a blonde with a billowing white dress and a deep cleft in her chest. She has nine fingers. She's black and white. She always bends over and blows kisses. When it gets darker, the man realizes that he's not even the dinosaur he used to be. He's become strands of pete moss and can't keep out of other people's flower arrangements. He can't hold on to his dog. So the dog begins to eat plates full of chicken nuggets shaped like his master, and it cries bitterly. The man tries to comfort it, but the dog tears at his leg. Finally he's alone. And with a few moments left he sees the sky soften like the inside of his mother's mouth. He swallows the finger so no one can find it, and settles in for a cup of coffee with friends.

Art Belongs To The Consumer

In art school I made a series of paintings about cartoon naked dudes with scarred faces fighting for burgers and dollars. I didn't know that it wasn't art. Art belongs more to the consumer, than it does the artist. And the consumer is discerning (?) But what populates my head are flocks of baloney slices with angel wings attached on either side, carrying them through crystal blue skies silhouetted by puffy white clouds!!! - It's a portrait of you saving me. 

I can make you a set of prayer beads. Baloney Angel Prayer Beads! Limited edition.  
God.
You know you could shift your focus to enter a grand discourse about consumerism and what it means to have a computer. Or at least try making a sexy monochrome. Why be such a solipsist? Use the latest Pantone colors. Make those squiggly photoshop brushstrokes on stuff. Drop Shadow.Come on

The essayist becomes the artist, and all objects become illustrations of their thesis. Clear thesis. More valued when created outside of an institution. 
Their parents must not have helped them with their homework! 
An artist must learn to make sense of the world. To gather data, and collate it. Collect everything that looks smart when sticking halfway out of a cement block. If it's considered radical, it's because someone thought radically around it. Art is like a Disney princess with cartoon bluebirds getting her dressed for the history books. Art is just stuff you think of and do... Humility is a huge turn off though, because no one can see themselves reflected in burlap.

There's a top 20 list of irrelevant things that've lost their meaning which contains non-selfie portraits and non-celebrity artists. Identity has made it to the scrap heap as well. Because no one wants to know that you still have options. Still! More.Always. It's overwhelming enough just trying to loose your own halfway created, ever shifting identity to a network of roiling articles, let alone someone's fully fledged one that they make work about. There are different ways to live - there's time to make mistakes, change your mind. Record it all. Humility is a huge turn off though, because no one can see themselves in burlap. Tell them succinctly - What are we going to do tomorrow? - Look for your grand master. It's still a he, and he will give you cryptocurrency. What are we going to eat? - Not the Fukushima fish. Who will make the room cold enough for the stockbrokers to continue trading representations of our collective feelings about Kellogg's cereal? - Artists. - These things are important. Know your stories. My boss is excellent at this. Any time he's asked a question, he replies with a story. Parable. Politicians parry. About art school, or being a child, or watching a gang bang. Stories still mean something, and Glengarry Glen Ross replays when the only women around have cut off all of their hair. The winners go on, gruff like a coke fueled 80s maverick. There isn't time for anything cute. It's all got to cut. Because.Hunger Games

Art Fairs Exist

Art fairs exist because scared people want to believe in shopping, and who are they to blame? They've lost their noses and the natural shape of their cheek bones, they've lost their individual sense of purpose through mergers and acquisitions and they'd like to carry enough faith to hold stock in the future. So they come to invest in a market of ideas, fantasy to fuel another day. The promise of an infinite dream? Or have we passed that stage - it's so Late Modernism. 

These people should be scorned. For their influence? Or for the fact that they have some sort of publicity team that keeps them in your view. And you keep watching. Even in your critique. You feed them always. One must never forget about their tectonic marital status as a collective plate that you may shift yourself into fusing with. Feed them always. Vacuum friends from afar.

We have our own way of advertising. And so it shall be used in equal parts thusly - to shame the celebrity class the wealthy. And to boost ones self with parody, hatred, confusion, lust, anxiety, and occasional hope centered always around the nod you are not.

As a Quaker I was taught not to speak until the voice of god could be felt running through you. Only with that feeling could you say something that struck the community you worship with. I have no idea who worships with me in earnest today. Probably whomever has read this far. But I find myself declining offers to speak about the ills I feel and see around me because of a view confused by multiplicity of being. 

People easily package this as a postmodern ennui, but for whatever reason it still seems a fit stew for a thinker to mull in before blasting off another Status Update about their hot new photoshop collage. Sea Punk is very clever, and I like it very much. I understand how surreal the world is. For fucks sake, my left Arm is dead asleep every morning that I wake up. Yup. No contact with that section of a body I claim to be a part of. Shit got weird and I haven't even checked my phone yet.

So there are these worlds that people create for each ether to enact elaborate metaphors. If you get the joke, you're laughing with us. 

Ok.

And if you get it, you still may not be allowed in. Say, if you have a fetish for nice paper. You will not be allowed in the party that likes nice keyboard strokes. In the end we all like to touch everything. And want to... Be cheesy. No? Kill the other. I know. Not give in. Define, distract, protect, individuate.

There is a struggle to survive. Brutal cost of simple goods. Water riots. Jokes. Fools who can't take the time to laugh while they know that those they love are in places you don't want to see them in.

Dude. Bro. My step sister is shopping at forever 21! Wtf?! I am too!!!

And bright thinkers. They're thinking about television snow. The end. A loss of transmission. Sorry. No show. The theory is- no show is on tonight. No winter either. It's getting too hot too much too fast. And the only product is the screen. A way to manipulate the way you see things, and know some spectacle. So. Where to go from here? Sit and read? Throw your youth around until it's spent and hope you meet enough characters to help you to the end? 

Bleak options everywhere. Micro changes all.

Heartfelt hell, uncertain mindset.

I'd like to live in a room that was made entirely out of regenerative skin. Youthful supple flesh surroundings. And this would be called Living Room. Of course.

I'd feel continuous human surface. Life. And what then? Step outside to a feudal kingdom of spite. Small pockets of allegiance. Glimmers of a push towards the utopia where we could exist as gossamer strands of painless dreams. For. Ever. But 

What about Our Forever Steak! The flesh made centerpiece that exists in perfect standing not needing the mind to project it's next ETA. Forever Steak in a Living Room locked away in a vault for posterity. Call it a novelty for the disembodied, a new wing in the museum of natural history.

Why worry though?

Why not think about what other people like? They enjoy increments of knowledge. Information pockets. Digest and act accordingly. Ok
I will too.
I like to draw a lot.
Pictures of you when I'm alone. To think of what's right.
And hope that god comes.
That he? They will speak truth. And that I will feel it. 
And act accordingly,

It may never happen. I may have to shoot for success instead. And stack numbers, sorrows, deals, regrets, and descendants. Who will hope and fear in the same way. If there's any air left for them to breath

Artist Statement 2013

I want to create places of worship that reflect the changes in importance and value that we hold for the hierarchy of objects and experiences. Images placed in these spaces should have a strange vibration to them like they are poised - imbued with potential energy. Each image becomes a power source when correctly composed. Nothing in these spaces should be bound to aesthetic uniformity, rather they should all be bound by frequency. One way that frequency may be revealed is through psychedelic detail, remnants of a tradition where emanating waves, obsessive patterning, saturation of color, and deep contour translate the experiences of hallucination which speak to reality. 

Cartoons, and comedy are tools used to uncover anxieties or desires in a way that holds them separate from generally perceived reality to become meditative points. They are subjective until they hit the correct frequency, at which point an understanding of the thing displayed becomes known, like the way a caricature captures the essence of a person. It's a popular form of understanding. One where you could display something grotesque or terrifying that is difficult to see in photographic format as something humorous or light, or at least able to be seen. Through these formats subject matter may be placed like stations to be meditated on, and all objects or experiences may pass through these filters. 

Spectacle and entertainment is a crucial aspect of all dealings with this world where crowd dynamics are a lynch pin to understanding successful communication. There is a pop spectacle that unites us, and a series of practitioners who help us to decipher feeling and action on every scale. Everyone is familiar with how to watch the spectacle and many wish to become involved, but due to budgeting dilemmas, the higher ups couldn't possibly allow the layman to enter this arena. Therefor, every meeting for worship will offer the ability to join in and participate, adding their energy into the event when they see fit. There are no judgements in the event space. Explicit sexuality and violence is welcome when necessary - though never preferred over any other form of bodily communication - and under no circumstances will this be judged outside of the event space in any other way than a display of honest human behavior. 

Through creating a space for worship we will be able to feel and therefor understand the way our physical realities have been effected by realms of the digital and cognitive that have occupied our collective consciousness and become the primary mode of existence. 

Only by removing yourself from the network may you see all of it's connections objectively

ARTISTIC AGENDA

The stratifications of art correlate directly with how much popular media the artist is absorbing. At the heart of pop culture, there are artists micro shifting information instantaneously. Their position is dangerous for the subtlety required to make these shifts may falter, making the artist into an advertising agent. Further from a heated center, more individualized voices practice regional dialects and follow traditions of theory. Their goal is to become the conduit for a critical voice in contention with pop. The agenda is always to manipulate or check the general modes of communication according to their decided agenda

Young Poetry

Here's a thing that exists
And you can't even begin to guess how to use it
A squadron of Iridescent Ben Day Dots 
Hovering 
Constant shifts to avoid your fingers'
Pudgy clutches



I'm hiding
So far UP inside a 
concrete pour of majestic crystal clamorings  
On the shoulders of ever compacted minor points
To meet an exit 
Marked by the polar star.



The True Goal
To insert my fingers into every moistened life -
Well packaged characters
Shoveled into the cake hole
Beneath my sternum 



An island is an accident
By all means 
Shame it's slut pride
Protrusion
And steer clear from it's demented
Wildlife

ART DREAM BRAIN YOU NEED TO FIGHT

The artist spent many sleepless nights self flagellating over how to create lasting meaning from the chaos of her surroundings. What is universal? What is beauty? What is that rustling sound, is there a mouse in this room? 
Each day presented itself like the pedestrians of Grand Theft Auto, easily knocked down in droves. And all the while, no police sirens? There was only a perceived draining of importance, a false calm about the world left after subtle siphoning from day to day until everything seemed pale and unworthy of conversation. 

Don't you know you need to fight?!
Fight who? I used to fight. It was interesting - you have to keep doing it?
Yes always! Fight for your territory, you can't let some other artist become the person who makes these wacky things. Fight for your wacky things! And REMEBER - clear identity gets you the big bucks. 
Fight to be that generator, to be responsible, respectable, abstractedly offered sex on a regular basis by hip kids with Pop Rocks in their overalls.
Don't bore the people.

She picked up a paint brush and dabbed it absently around an image of Crazy Taxi.

Fujiko Mine... Has there ever been an essay written about her character? She was a lone thief and expert in espionage. She had huge tits. She was always getting into pissing contests with Lupin the 3rd who greatly respected her steez. A Byronic hero, little is known about what she did when off screen, though she seemed a figure of perfect pirate nobility swinging in with a machine gun. Courting the megalomaniacal rich man to be robbed blind by the next scene. Hanging off the edge of a cliff, falling into the ocean, dodging bullets from her lover's gun. She had a Browning M1910 in her garter at all times. The gun which was used to assassinate archduke Franz Ferdinand whose name will forever conjure a faint recapitulation of his more recent song "Take Me Out". 
Sitting across the room in a Cassina Cab Chair staring at a newly completed Crazy Taxi, the artist imagined this image hanging next to a Brice Marden. It could work next to one with yellow squiggles in a nice flat on the Upper West Side with a bay window and minimal furniture. Then she imagined it next to a Caravaggio. This pairing would work in a 1970s Texas Ranch. 
Not at all.
Meet the people half way. If your art takes too much time to digest, then it will pass through half chewed and be remembered as a painful shit. But don't make it too easy, your audience will become anemic. 
How to make it. 
A shade of difference from the next guy combined with appropriation of common signs. Have the market act out your wet dreams with household objects immortalized in bronze, and they'll happily adorn you with shiny beads for telling them about themselves. Because we all share a mind. Our dreams are the same. Singular. To spread through each other. 
Unless you'd rather have your space.

WHAT AM I DOING???

This work resides at the intersection of character and form. Discernible figures enact scenarios that leave room for interpretation. Bold sweeping gestures, winding limbs, floating bodies, crying angels all cross paths imbuing each image with narrative potential that exceeds the decorative. These works are heavily content driven while leaving out the didacticism of a straightforward portrait style. Codes and symbols run through each canvas, enriching a strengthening system of language which borrows from underground comix, abstract figuration, formalists, and surrealists. As this language develops, more rich and complex stories are able to unfold.

ON BEING A DOG (The Journey to Find Longer Pants)

You will appear to be complicated by a need for longer pants. Stress of looping and devolving thoughts may leave you bedridden, marinating in nervous sweat as you repeatedly consider your bare ankles over the course of many days. Did you throw your drink at a crow the other night? Relax. Sweating like this at the pants store is not a good look. Prepare. You'll form an imagined sequence of soldering irons searing furrows through pink and grey folds nestled in a faberge egg, careful to avoid the lumps which coordinate debit card accounts and store locations. Once this cleansing is completed, you'll feel like new. Like brand spankin NEW new. Real car smell. New. 

Close the egg. 

Next, an emptied confidence will propel you outside above the surface of frozen grey lakes, past grizzled bag trolls, and humming dinosaurs, wheeled, plated, and half made of sunglasses. 
Eventually you'll make it to the pants store, but inside will be nothing but tables and chairs. You'll find a seat across from an airplane that crashed through the ceiling amongst a pile of various debris and complimentary tap water. They'll put a thin glowing brick away in their pocket, and ask if you'd like a burger. You'll both have burgers. Medium rare. You'll notice their tailoring is suited perfectly to themselves. Bun to seed ratio? Game on lock down. The airplane will ruffle your hair when you explain how the shortness of your pants developed without your noticing. It will ask you about your parents. It will roll you over and scratch your burger filled tummy, and chuckle as you push its wings away. 
"You are a dog"
"No I'm not!"
"You are a dog"
"No!"
"You are a dog, and dogs do not need pants at all."
"I'm not, and you must take that back or I will make you look mean in public."
"You are a dog, and knowledge of this truth is beyond you."
The airplane will ask you on a walk. This approach has happened many times before, always successfully distracting. First, you agree, then, a strong line is inserted through your belly button, and threaded between your organs, to exit your backside. This line is wound tightly around the upper half of your torso, arms bound to your sides, hands free by your hips. Legs, also free - to walk. Half of these experiences have ended abruptly after the plane took off, sucking you up within it, and ejecting you, rocketing over fields of crumpled tinfoil. The other half of these experiences (this one among them) end in being spoon fed ice cream.
"If you are not a dog, then why do you let me walk you?"
"I am generous with myself."
"And you are excited by airplanes."
"What?"
"You are excited by airplanes."
It's true, a fantasy goes that the next time this plane lifts you above endless sunglasses, you will not be ejected. You will meld into the pilot's seat with your perfect length pants, well suited to the altitude, and padded in the knee for incidents of impact. You'll be accepted and relish in the knowledge of flight. See everything from within a hard bodied tube. Grow soft and fat in seat belts. Be alone.
Be where the ground looks like far away sponges, that you'll never have to touch. 
"Would you like another spoon full of ice cream?"
"Oh, yes please"
"And would you like another spoon full of ice cream?"
"Oh, yes please"
"Another spoon full?"
"Oh, yes please. Um, airplane? It seems that this pants store only has burgers and ice cream in it. Could you untie me?"
"And would you like another spoon full of ice cream?"
"You are not listening."
"That is true, I have difficulty listening"
"Please untie me, I have to find another pants store. My ankles are freezing."
"You are a dog, you do not have ankles"
Uncertainty creeps into your newly cleansed mind, replacing the day's confidence with maggots. 
"Perhaps you're right"
"Oh dear, I didn't think you'd ever see. Your ankles aren't freezing, it's just that your legs are too hot."
"Wait, I have ankles"
"No no, you are a dog."
With that, the airplane will lift you to a home without mirrors. There you will be untied. You'll wander through halls of windows to a kitchen with stainless steel appliances, where a distorted image of yourself in the polished stove door affirms the suspicion that you've been duped. There clearly is a patch of skin exposed between the top of your shoes and the bottom hem of your ever shrinking pants. There are round ends of bone working just beneath the surface of this skin on either side. Light blue and purple veins trafficking your blood to and from your feet. 
The airplane lied. 
With this understanding, there is only one thing left to do. In the dead of night, when it is resting in it's hangar, enter the airplane quietly. Each of your footsteps will translate to dreams of stealthy termites, marching in to chew away at leather upholstered coach seats and fleece blankets. This will in reality, be you, clipping the threads that hold cushion cases around cotton seat pads. You will marvel at the usefulness of your own thumbs as you form a new pair of pants, padding in the knees, leather placed strategically for seating stability. You make quick work and sneak into the pilot's cabin fully suited. Grab a parachute, strap it to your back. Freeze on the scene of you in the doorway, zoom in to focus on a seat lit by various day glow dials. Hold the shot and let the light illuminate a single tear that rolls down the entirety of your face. Ease into the chair. Wrap your fingers around the yolk, and gun it. Rocket STRAIGHT up. The airplane will take a few minutes to become fully conscious from its resting state. Use this time to gain more altitude. Feel yourself press into your bucket seat with the force of cheek wiggling Gs. The airplane will buck as it attempts to right itself. Continue mercilessly, feeling all of your visions snap to configuration around you. Safe in seat belts, melded in this moment. Existing with longer pants. It's almost time to evacuate as all your dreams have been realized. The airplane will begin to rattle as bolts loosen and turbine engines choke from various meetings with unlucky pigeons. You are nearing the apex now. Force yourself against gravity and common sense to the cabin hatch. The passenger cabin has released its contents of oxygen masks by now, and electric sparks emerge from embedded backseat screens like the mouths of cheap Godzilla windup toys which play jittering images of sequels no one wants to watch. Time to jump. The airplane, now just past its apex of ascent begins plummeting back to earth. You grip the doorframe of its now open hatch against solid winds, until the time comes to release yourself. Now. Fall from the ransacked cabin and feel a jolt as you open your shoot. Calm infuses the scene as billowing nylon fills cupping enough air to hold you in a gentle glide. You steer yourself to follow the airplane's descent from an easy distance. You like to watch. It attempts to pull up from the free fall though it is sputtering from lack of gas, and its arc ends by entering the side of a large glass box. The shattering of this box pleases you, as the only thing inside of it was a machine that dispenses luke warm coffee which someone had already taken the first sip of. Rescue ants will find the airplane there and bring it back to its hangar in moments - this will not be a task delegated to you. Instead you will return to your neighborhood far from this jagged scene on the outskirts of town, and plan a time to wash your sheets. Perhaps you will take a trip to a golden lit hillside later where time moves slowly through the mist as your newfound human husband cradles a small version of yourself with its muzzle covered in  pleasant candies. You'll remember the airplane with distain and wonder how you could have ever understood its speech let alone how it could have fed you so many burgers. These thoughts will be disrupted by a happy tableau that fades into an unforeseeable old age, but before that you will all look at each other and chuckle for different reasons.

WHAT IS MANIFEST?

Physical production of dreams is deemed indulgent by cultural conservatives. These are the same concerned parties who believe our economy - ruled by the logic and consensus of a failing star, must dismiss anything implausible. The market is reserved for supposedly utilitarian transaction of necessary goods and services only. Aside from analytical angles, dreamlike atmospheres reveal constantly shifting zones of hypnosis produced by consumptive attractors. Every seemingly unexpected passing stimulus has a cash register at its nucleus. If we are to draw distinctions between dream and reality while passing through these zones, we must begin to redact the definition of manifest. 

Clear or obvious to the eye or mind

"The system's manifest failings"

This is a recognition of judgement in that we admit to plutonic ideals of working systems whenever confronted with a failing one. The dichotomy of existence creates a chasm for which manifestation must be the bridge. It is possible for this means of traversing the vacuum between synoptic firing to waiver before reaching physical reality. This jump in registration may be violent enough to abort any number of possibilities.

Display or show (a quality or feeling) by one's acts or appearance; demonstrate.

"Ray manifested signs of severe depression"

These introductory results suggest that manifestation is also linked to a pantomime of mental atmosphere which produces inclement emotions.

It is appropriate then to consider logical creation as a separate strain, existing outside of emotional eruption. To cordon off impulsive thoughts and censor them even from oneself through force of will maintains social lubrication. Agreed upon sanity is the bedrock of industry. Through this bedrock runs rivulets of contradiction though. Occasionally we encounter someone like Steve Jobs describing a vision of his empire he received through hallucinations induced by LSD. It is then possible to place a positive value on the term manifest, as he had a dream which was translated into physical profit margins. 

Logic and rational is prone to growths that blur any distinct boundaries to its core location. Ancient history is reformed into a base of tangible fact for mysticism and superstitious belief to flourish. The Grand Canyon is home to structures carved away by The Elements before time. This is why there are howling spirits within. It is a collection of generations of ghosts. We may choose to marvel at how old the canyon is, how it's harsh existence would easily eradicate us. This binary fact of the canyon's switch being left almost eternally in the on position in comparison to ours being an accidental bump in a dark room might also evoke the vertigo of the sublime. In cases like this, rational thought is shown to have its borders drawn right at this edge between knowing oneself to be in a canyon, and knowing oneself to be in a canyon of time. The introduction of time may in this example create sensations of a spiritual realm. Though everything in the universe is technically the same age, we don't experience a submission to the ages when confronted with a field of springtime daisies.