tiny paintings

corner closet

an acrylic, 36 x 52, reminiscent of childhood. Childhood has many terrors for some of us. I cannot speak for people who remember it as an idyllic time where an adult remembers being affirmed and taught. Instead I remember feelings of guilt and shame when I remember childhood. I seem to have learned wrong lessons - or not been aptly taught healthy ones. So this painted memory for me contains an element of terror. Perhaps not so for everyone. I remember the closet at my grandparents, filled with quilts, filled with fabric, dark and quiet, smelling like soap. Like bread. Like cotton and sweat.

gargantua

Drawn when I was rating essays
a bull fight with a giantess
devouring the crowd
piagghi [sic] banging drum

Jami at Chicago's air port, the big one

engine

loading baggage at jackson hole

lines of snow

lines of snow

pan

I can't remember what Jami baked in this pan, but the pattern, the tonal range and arrangment of elements appealed to me.

the erratic

we snow shoed over a moraine, exciting for me: this exploration of a glacial landform that I'd studied in class 26 years ago
now to finally walk where the glaciers scraped up boulders in their labored flow
leaving them behind in recession as the earth warmed
so that when i said, "there's an odd rock that seems to have nothing to do with its surroundings," our guide said, "that's a glacial erratic."
wonderful to see it there, where it's rested far from its origin
round and snow covered
how i wished it was in my back yard
like wordsworth's daffodils i recall it in my mind
and heft it on my shoulders
to bring to syssiphus that we might roll together
away from the hill and toward the beach
where such rocks form a marvelous jetty
that we may fish from
and all our friends

glorious new year 2010

aspens on the granite canyon trail between moose and jackson hole

i'm learning from my disability, my eyesight, the eyesight that can't be fixed, that i don't want fixed
that if jesus were to walk in this room now and say
how'd you like to see like everyone else
i'd say no which astonishes
people and would me if the roles were reversed
and a cancer patient were saying that they
were happy with their cancer
or a deaf person their deafness
but my brain was formed around this disability
like tree roots meshed among the rocks
and though someone might quibble with the tree's formation
it's none the less rooted

tan

before and after

At the top, in a destroyed polaroid (intentionally) is a painting of a girl jumping through a hoop. The bottom image is that painting before I painted a dress on her. I like having both images.

busy loading images on facebook and forgetting to put things up here

He is high and lifted up and his train filled the temple

so sang the pentecostal song leader at this little chuch

meeting in the bank basement in the middle of the week

where every week I brought mom for my appointment with despair.

He is high and lifted up and his train filled the temple

and I'm not certain if there's another verse to this song

over and over again, screaming practically at the top of her lungs

through pevy speakers in a room no bigger than 30 feet deep

if that

And his train filled the temple

my favorite part was when they insisted that I pray for my eye to be healed

that it was from the devil and I needed to "rebuke" satan

and claim the victory "thank you jaishus."

God help us

attempts to clothe some figures

a pen and ink wash from 1993

could it be that long ago - but witness the difficulty of capturing the tones

it's a delicate thing

a figure staring into a mirror

her face hidden but for her mouth

mystery and revelation at once

family photos on vacation at panama city in 1971 or 2

top: my grand father stallworth, me, my cousin, kevin, my grand mother stallworth, nanny

middle: me, mom, dad

bottom: me, nanny, aunt sherrie

conjoined twin santa

disco drawings

The series reads from the end at the top to the beginning at the bottom. Revelers are stranded on a rock, perhaps temporarily or a bit longer, who simply began in a small club, without clothes, soon in a large group, then exhausting themselves in various diversions. On the rock they wait. It's very Blanchot.

introduction

My therapist refers to a moment in my life as an introduction to adult sexuality - which is a funny way to think of it, almost a textbook kind of label. So I did three drawings, at least, on this theme of an introduction to adult sexuality: basically nude individuals loitering like walruses on the sunny rocks, their pudenda and secondary sexual characteristics hanging out nonchalantly.

bay area nudes

What I did with the color and contrast functions that come in the basic editing function of what microsoft gives us to edit photos with on these things. The bottom reminds me of posters done in the bay area in the 1960s. Hence the title.

title page to an old sketchbook