Hope of a Condemned Man
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Akrylik on wood
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8ePp8EFqfC/?igshid=76hbxsn6k467
Young Death
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acrylic on metal
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8biBarF32V/?igshid=156m9qinmko7i
Work on paper b-side from the 2019 October show, made from my landlords garbage. (at Bushwick, Brooklyn)
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8W81WEl9wG/?igshid=1tnlw9h2fbc8r
It was always getting real up in the Hotel Alexandria in downtown LA. The place came complete with ghosts, hard luck, dead decadence, and everything inbetween. I used to hole up there with this guy who called himself Robert on the weekdays and Romeo on the weekends. He was a paranoid Chilean break dancer who was convinced his whole life was a CIA experiment. Romeo and I used to turn our days inside out. It was like a magic trick - we could make nights out of mornings, we could turn anything dark. We rarely left downtown. Sometimes we’d go over to Echo Park to some crumby house party but only to raid the medicine cabinets, and sometimes, in the morning, if we were out of beer, we’d go downstairs to the Down and Out since they opened earlier than most of the other bars around, and the bartenders there were used to us, so there was no judgement and always a couple free shots. The outside world was spooky, the daylight was a guillotine, so we never stayed out too long. Somehow we always made it back upstairs to Romeo’s little room alive. It never felt like we made it home in one piece though. It was like every time we left the Alexandria the world would break off another part of us. We got used to staying put in that little room - the low lives on the top floor singing, “High in heaven at all time an all time low.” The best and worst times all at once. (at Hotel Alexandria)
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8R5M4SlWgs/?igshid=zzm3tphev22t
Portrait of Robert - a homeless, ex-NASA scientist who I picked up hitchhiking in Texas years ago on Thanksgiving. He had rode his bike from Tucson all the way to Texas to see his sister outside San Antonio. He told me some pretty spooky stories from his days as a rocket scientist, and it doesn’t matter if they were true or not. The other day I found an old photo I had taken of him and decided it was time to finally paint a little memorial to him.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8Ja4bKFV3F/?igshid=18f10cf5xsv71
DIRTY, POORLY DRESSED
On the dogs’ path, my soul came upon
my heart. Shattered, but alive,
dirty, poorly dressed, and filled with love.
On the dogs’ path, there where no one wants to go.
A path that only poets travel
when they have nothing left to do.
But I still had so many things to do!
And nevertheless, there I was: sentencing myself to death
by red ants and also
by black ants, traveling through the empty villages:
fear that grew
until it touched the stars.
- Roberto Bolano
https://www.instagram.com/p/B8HQI2IFfzI/?igshid=rcnq6eswoyr3
I’ve thought about The Odyssey almost everyday since reading it as a teenager. Maybe that’s because I’ve spent the majority of my life lost as hell. Most people think Homer was a man, but Homer was most likely a woman, probably a teenage girl. A lot of evidence pointing to that theory, but the strongest being the work itself. Dudes rarely make things that strong, or that intelligent, and they hardly make things that last.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B79PepTFNYv/?igshid=7qlbrimoktc9
Made it through another year - the strangest one yet. The world’s still here, and somehow I’m still here. Looking back 2019 feels more like a pack of stray dogs than an accumulation of time. Psyched to be alive, to be married, to be able to make things. Hang on to each other.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B74EeIMllAJ/?igshid=37lmy9d5le7v
