“Home, Here is Love, Love is Here”, Loveless Letters Series, No. 13

This is the third piece of the Loveless Letters Series. The first was exploration through an accident. The second was the uncontrollable gush from years of pent up imagination and desire of freeform. The third piece is about regaining control through environmental restrictive measures. I couldn’t be in my studio to create these anymore, because left to my own devices after this experimental phase of the stream of consciousness series, I would go further into a spiraling blather of blunderbuss nonsense. I needed to regain a sense of structure, yet continue in my imaginative pursuits of rediscovering the icon in various different ways. I set myself with these rules:

1. Every element on this canvas had to be used from something I didn’t own. These elements could not be anything that belonged to me, or resided in my studio.
2. Much like all of these canvases in this series, they had to go with me WHEREVER I WENT. This included cafes, temp jobs, beaches, the gym, and even hiking up 1600 ft to the top of Mt. Hollywood. If I was outside, the canvas had to come with me. However unlike the other ones, this COULD NOT be created in my studio.

With those rules, this canvas was made with:

1. Coffee from the House of Pies , 1869 N. Vermont Ave. Los Angeles, CA 2/15
2. Coffee from Bru cafe, 1866 N. Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 2/16
3. Coffee from Fred 62’s 1850 N. Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 2/16
4. Coffee from an office job 1910 W. Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 2/16
5. Highlighters from an office job 1910 W. Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 2/17
6. White out from an office job 1910 W. Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 2/17
7. Staples from an office job 1910 W. Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 2/16
8. Red Sharpie from an office job 1910 W. Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 2/17
9. Tapatio (later sealed) from Swingers Diner, 8020 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles 2/18
10. Pen from a random stranger outside a church courtyard in East Hollywood. 2/18
11. Pen from a stranger inside Bru cafe,  1866 N. Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 2/16
12. Black acrylic paint sourced in SGV 2/14

When coffee is mentioned before, its literally the coffee from my cup from various different establishments near my studio. Since I couldn’t work in my studio, since that was the rule, I’d skip over to the diners and coffee houses and work there, often spilling coffee onto the canvas, and pressing the base of cup in a circle to make a stain. At one point, a patron at a diner tried to stop me during one of my pourings, exclaiming “What are you DOING?! You are ruining it!”

When an office job is mentioned, I randomly pick up temp jobs here and there to support myself as an artist in launch phase. In this case, I was working for two days as a desk clerk at a local union in Echo Park. I brought my canvas with me, since the work was slow, and with permission began to use all their office supplies to create a piece. People seemed pretty intrigued rather than bothered by my work, except for when I used a stapler. One of my coworkers asked “Why are you stapling the canvas”, to which I replied “Because I have to”, and thats the truth…. if the object is there, and it is readily usable for the piece, then it has to be used.

It did however get a little awkward when I was called into a meeting to take notes for the director, the lawyer, and the client on the phone. Everything was fine until I realized that they were drinking out of smaller coffee cups than I had used on my canvas in my staining in the cafes and diners. I’m taking notes, and I can feel this pressure in me to figure out HOW i was going to get their coffee onto the canvas. I was diligently taking notes, and suddenly there was this momentous pause in the conversation, I quickly grabbed the lawyers cup and poured a little bit onto the canvas, and pressed the cup into it to make a circle. He paused and emitted a ‘uh…p” noise out of his throat while watching me use the piece to make my work. There was this awkward silence while I did it, but the conversation continued without a blip. They looked thoroughly amused at my eccentricities, and honestly I wouldn’t have done it if I had thought it would have caused an issue. .. but nonetheless life went on, and as you can see, there are two smaller coffee rings from the incident on the canvas.

One notable thing about this piece is the patterns inside the “HERE IS LOVE. LOVE IS HERE”. This pattern was something I used to be known for in my early work when I was a sketch artist (pre painting). I had lost that ability to create patterns like that in 2006, and suddenly found my hands redoing them out of the blue. You will see in future pieces that this becomes an integral part to the Loveless Letters Series.

(UPDATE AUGUST 30th: SOLD)

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