title : eye
medium : oil pastel on paper, wood support
dimensions : approx. 2′ x 3′

This piece came along with a herd of others, in 1997-8. I was still in the habit of harvesting from magazines, excising text and snippets of images for free-association reassembly. Increasingly these collage experiments were hit with more and more pastel and paint.

Women’s fashion magazines are among the richest veins to mine, eye-candy, page after page. I was stunned by the emergence of the junkie aesthetic. I won’t be surprised if you don’t remember this period, especially if you have sense enough to pass by such things. Suddenly the supermodels dropped another 20 pounds. Their bodies looked and indeed had to be – starved. The pallor of their flesh was deathly. The goal of cosmetic application was to render bruising around their eyes, hollow their cheeks. These women looked drug addicted and beaten up. What was the effect of this visual radiation on the children and young people who absorbed it?

Those magazines are full of eyes. I looked and looked and looked into their eyes. I began cutting them out. I spent three weeks, nine to eleven hours a day, slicing out small rectangles with an eye in each one. I pasted them on a board four feet high and nearly two feet wide … this is a study of one of them, no more than half an inch wide.

I’ll offer up another poem that seems … fitting :

Niagara Falls summer 2001

Pilgrim’s progress –
wax museums, haunted houses.
Theatre of virtuality.
Twice as real.

Waxen women wait
for the currency exchange.
Animatronic fortune teller
likewise waits, boxed in.
Subroutines activate
transubstantiations of cash.

Severed voices slurp down outside walls,
gravy from a can.
Family dining, prime rib of beef,
our heads are full of voices.

“Your blood will curdle
as you edge your way
through the crypt.”

Young women play oyster,
loiter in restaurant doorways,
entreat you with
“best food in town… ”

CIRCUS WORLD
writ large in blazing pink
neon and flashing bulbs,
noon sun.
FUNLAND!
Plywood and fading red,
five options;

* Become A Human Cannon Ball
* See Circus Freaks
* Change Your Appearance In Our Magic Mirrors
* Become A Circus Clown
* See If You Can Keep Your Balance On Our Tilting Floor

Rat king, dance us around.