“Sold in Face, Bubbles in Space”, The Human Condition Series, No. 23

Three months ago in April I found myself fidgeting with a blank piece of canvas in a sectioned off back room of a gallery west of Chicago. I wasn’t allowed to go into the front room just yet, as I was to be introduced to the collectors with an introduction and  Q & A once the room filled up. In that hour I sat there staring at this Mickey head over and over again, and wanted to create something from the anticipation. Much like the No. 14 piece “Home, Here is Love, Love is Here”, I wanted to find some element from the room I was occupying to get a creative kick start and ultimate one of a kind ‘in the moment’ fixture to the beginning of the piece.

I searched around, past the markers, and the paint, and brushes that already honed in on the area, and finally focused on the stamps that laid in perfectly organized format at the end of table. I quickly, and without hesitation, grabbed the ‘SOLD’ stamp, which clearly was for their sales slips on pieces that had sold, and began to hammer the canvas repeatedly over and over again. Honestly I had no idea what I was doing, but much like all of my work, there really are never mistakes, just layers and layers of work over each other, much like the waltz of time and sedimentary rock. And with that being said about time,  before I could start actually working on the piece, I was called up to front of the gallery for my presentation, and the progress of this series, was not completed until a later date.

After that show, I was booked for another show in Chicago a month later at the Center on Halsted and had another project on redoing a couple previously sold Mickey heads, and suddenly I found myself completely burnt out and just unable to do anything but sleep for days. I had, for the most part since the beginning of my relationship with Disney, been a steamroller of work, but finally I had succumbed to my human need for rest, and began this month long hibernation of various other side jobs and much needed slumber.

When I awoke a month later, I sat there at my drawing table for hours, just staring at the sketches of ideas and blank canvas. My hands, like bib lettuce, lackadaisically, flipped through pieces and pieces of unfinished work, until I came across the previously “SOLD” stamped piece. I stared at it for a while, and much like coffee for the morning person, I just kind of slowly woke up and remembered that first show… being in the back room, the smell of cologne and perfume from the main room wafting in, the sounds of conversations beginning to pipe up, the crowd clamoring upwards, and more than anything the adrenaline of my first solo show with Disney at “Art Partners Gallery” .

From there I took the same ‘stream of consciousness root’ that I had done before and kind of let my hand guide me through scribbles of what was going on in my head at the time. This piece is called “Sold in Face, Bubbles in Space”, which represents the ‘sold’ stamps in the face, and the commentary bubbles in the rest of the space. This piece dually acts as a piece of art AND as a device for personal positive feedback. These words are to be viewed as not commentary for the actual piece, but as commentary for the viewer FROM the actual piece. (IE: you are ‘thumbs up’, ‘amazing’, ‘super’)

This is No. 27, completing this project at 27% of the actual goal of this project.