even though i’m not taking professor marv’s high art class, i thought i would join in and do a series of my own. critiques accepted as always. seriously, someone comment on this blog or we’re gonna go on strike.
My students had their final critiques this week. In advance of the crits they asked if I would (read: challenged me to) make something to show along with them. I accepted the proposition and made four collages. I hope I get an A.
Here is my artist statment:
Truth of the matter was, stories was everything and everything was stories.
Everybody told stories. It was a way of saying who they were in the world.
It was their understanding of themselves. It was letting themselves know how
they believe the world worked – the right way and the way that was not so right.
-Novelist Harry Crews on growing up in the South, 2003
I believe my work is inextricably bound to my experience of growing up in the South, specifically to the unique tradition of storytelling that exists there. While not adhering to the traditional structure of narrative by eschewing plot, conflict and resolution I seek to open relationships between fragments of content - combining images to form ad-hoc narratives, representations of memories and embodiments of fears. The pieces and parts work together as an amalgamation of connotations and allusions that describe an archeology of the present through a personal vernacular that is tangential and ambiguously melancholic.
I was in a line at the supermarket the other day, and I had all my things on the little conveyor belt there. There’s a gal in front of me that is staring at me and I’m getting a little nervous and she continues to stare at me. And I keep looking the other way. And then, finally she comes over closer to me and she says: “I apologize for staring, that must have been annoying. I, I…you look so much like my son, who died. I just can’t take my eyes off you.” And she precedes to go into her purse and she pulls out a photograph of her son who’d died. And he looks absolutely nothing like me. In fact, he’s Chinese. Anyway, we chatted a little bit. And she says: “I’m sorry, I have to ask you. Would you mind, as I leave the supermarket here, would you mind saying “Goodbye mom” to me? I, I know it’s a strange request but I haven’t heard my son say, “Goodbye mom” to me in so long, and it would mean so much to me to hear it.” And I said: “Well, you know, okay, yeah, sure… I can say that.” And so, she gets her groceries all checked out, and as she’s going out the door she waves at me and she hollers across the store: “Goodbye son!” And I look up and I wave and I say: “Goodbye mom!” And then she goes.
So I get my few things there, on the conveyor belt and the checker checks out my things. He gives me the total and he says: “That’ll be four hundred and seventy nine dollars.” And I said: “Well, how is that possible!?! I’ve only got a little tuna fish, and some skimmed milk, and mustard and a loaf of bread.” He goes: “Well, you’re also paying for the groceries for your mother. She told me you’d take care of the bill for her.” And I said: “Well, wait a minute! That’s not my mother!” And he says: “Well I distinctly heard her say as she left the store, ‘Bye son!’ and you said ‘Bye mom!’ and so what are you trying to say here?” I said: “Well, JESUS!” And I looked out into the parking lot and she was just getting into her car. And I ran out there. And she was just closing the door, and she had a little bit of her leg sticking out of the door and she was pulling away and I grabbed her leg and I started pulling it…
Just like the way I’m pulling yours.
-Tom Waits, “Missing My Son,” from ORPHANS - Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards
