My father brought home FBI WANTED POSTERS his friend, the agent, gave him. I spread them out on the bed and frightened myself with aliases, previous crimes, and last known locations. What is white slavery? He has a bazooka? The square inked fingerprints looked like Neolithic patterns connected to the criminal’s inner mind. Photographs were specific yet vague. He could be at the music store, in line at the Frozen Dairy stand. If a car slowed down, surely one of the most wanted had followed me – possibly for hours.
Something connected these two works spatially and visually in my imagination. Maybe at first the subtle earth tones. I must have made three dozen digital collages for the GIF. Used many.
Pottery Vessel in the Form of a Ram, Unknown artist, Western Iran, 1350-800 B.C., Ceramic Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Juan Gris, 1912, Still Life With Flowers, oil on canvas, 112.1 X 70.2 cm Museum of Modern Art
I thought the gallery in Yorkville might be a good fit with my work. The owner wore a sophisticated black dress. Maybe ten years older than me. European. People told me my work was European. She told me to spread it on the floor. She sat in the only chair. After an hour and a half – of what I thought, seriously I did, was a meetings of the minds – she said, ‘Of course, you know you’re not a fine artist.’ I walked out of Yorkville more than a bit shaky – but dazzled by the timing of her coup de grace.
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