Ten X Ten X Ten

The South has always haunted me, and rightfully so because it’s where I grew up. The dreams taste bittersweet and sludge through my electric metropolitan brain like slow molasses covering the Earth. While I walk through the city blocks of Chicago, flashes of kudzu and humid nights rise up into my swimming dreams like steam erupting from potholes in the empty city streets of my head. These reveries of the South do not carry the concrete visions of Atlanta nor the banjo twangs of Athens. They whisper memories of Spanish moss caught in the tangles of lonely street lights and jazz of Savannah, Georgia… they silently sputter a cough into my ear of jittering flashbacks of Charleston, South Carolina’s soft ocean… they briefly mention a quaint memory of soft architecture of Mobile, Alabama. All of these cities are whispering sisters eating at the table of southern life, and yet.. in these memories, none of them sit as boldly in their chair as New Orleans.

New Orleans does not whisper in my ear, but croons from a far. She is a blues singer covered in the soft historical darkness of cigarette smoke and perfume. She is flashy on the outside, covered in the beads that are thrown off her balcony to the people who drunkenly visit her. She is a coquette who winks and carries the smirk that curves like the twisting veins of a french horn. To tourists she is a natural bon vivant, but to those that live within her… know that beyond the cash and crowds of lotus eaters, she carries the weight of her own history.

I drove through New Orleans by way of Atlanta to Houston back in 2006. My ultimate goal was Houston, Austin, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and finally to my new home out in the rainy metropolis of Seattle, Washington. I had a ford escort, $500 in my bank account, and a months worth of time to kill. Katrina had devastated the landscape, and even after her brawl with New Orleans, the storms still came. The sun was beginning to set as I arrived, and on the left of the highway the dark end of summer thunderheads billowed into an arc over the highway.. almost creating this vision of me traveling through a tunnel of bruised clouds.

It was the first time in my life that I ever saw lightning strike across the shiny lemon dime of the sun.

As I arrived into New Orleans the wind began to pick up with small spattering gales of wind and rain. I had parked at a gas station and began to search for hotels via the ones I had written down in my notebook. Everything was booked, and when I ran inside to ask the gas station attendant why, he simply looked up at me like I was an idiot and said “Well where else are they going to go?”… and I suddenly understood what he mean’t. Everything was booked because the people had lost their homes..

I hopped back in the car and drove around the city for a bit. I expected it to be a ghost town but that wasn’t the case whatsoever. The city looked dark and lonely, but the lights wavered sadly in each window that I passed. It looked like the tourist pamphlet I carried, but as if the tourist pamphlet was waterlogged and all the ink from the pictures of the festive buildings were bleeding out into obscurity. I quickly headed out and crossed the Texas border, in where every insect imaginable seemed to pummel my windshield like flying water balloons of disgust. I finally arrived in Houston and laid my tired head against a friends pillow and slept.

I remember my dreams that night, which consisted of me repeating the same drive over and over again through the streets of that city. It was never ending, and every time I woke up and fell back asleep… BAM! There I would be again, driving endlessly into street corners that would begin again. Everything led back to square one.

10 years later and out in Athens, GA I sought to complete the 2nd to last piece of the Metropolitan Series. It was here where I would relive those memories, and despite that I only visited 10 streets of that magnificent city… I fell headfirst into researching everything I could about that damaged but majestic blues singing sibling of the south.

This piece is called “Nouvelle Nouvelle”, and goes over the districts, streets, and parks of New Orleans. Inside Mickey’s face holds some of Louisiana’s famous phrases as well as a bit of Creole words in the mix. This resides as No. 9 in the “Metropolitan” series and No. 96 in the TENxTENxTEN collection.

While I had lived in both Athens and Savannah, Georgia. I spent most of my time on the outskirts of Atlanta. I was confused for most of my time in that town, as I was incredibly odd and often felt misunderstood. It wasn’t until middle school, in where my sisters obtained their driver’s licenses, that I would truly the see a place where I belonged.

One of my first vivid adventures into the city was with my sister and her friends traveling down 75 south to Little 5 Points for a weekday hang out. Here I dizzily wandered around at 13 years old around this vibrant district of head shops and punk rock stores, all the while floating through the soft breeze of Nag Champa that effortlessly wafted into the air. All the punk rockers and hippies were walking around the place, and I was in awe and in love with everyone and everything. I remember thinking, “I want to be these people. I want to live around these people”, and for one of the first times in my life I felt like I belonged.

Later on that night I was sitting near my bay window out the burbs and playing music in my walkman while I stared out dramatically (as I often did and do) and thought about what I had seen that day. My sister walked in and said … “Hey see that light thats glowing over the hill outside your window at the other cul-de-sac? Thats Atlanta.”

I had noticed that glow for years but never knew what it was about. I hadn’t even thought about it or asked why it existed, but from then on I stared almost every night at those lights and wondered what was going on in that glow. Years later, the minute I was able to drive, I ended up in Little 5 Points out in the city, and immersed myself in the place that I loved so much. I would end up later going to high school out there, and MARTA became my main source of transportation. I’d ride Lenox to the center of the city in 5 Points and then catch another train eastbound to Inman Park.

When I had the opportunity to move out of Atlanta, I took it without hesitation. Atlanta was like a mother to me, raising me slowly to understand how to navigate through a densely populated area… and like most children who want to explore the world… I had to leave her. I soon left to Philadelphia and from that point on I never looked back.

I sometimes think over the years about what it would have been like if I had never left Atlanta. Would I have been an artist? Would I be in love? Would I be jaded that I never took the opportunity to leave, or would I have been eventually grateful that I never left because of some opportunity that wouldn’t have unearthed itself anywhere else? Regardless of these thoughts, I’m grateful for all the accidents, troubling times, and lack of security for my decision, as it has brought me to this moment in my life now.

So in tribute to the metropolitan series, it seemed fitting to do a portrait of the metropolitan mother that raised me. This piece is called “Atlanta Clockwork”, as the structure reminds me of a clock. 285 is the circumference highway that acts as the shape of a clock, all the while the North/South and “East/West” highways act as minute hands to tell the time of the city. On the outskirts are geographically accurate areas of the burbs, while inside the face encase buildings that represent the districts and streets of Atlanta. The stripes that cross through Mickey’s face represent the color of the transit system MARTA, and in the features contain more districts of the city.

Ever since I created this piece, I have flown back to the city that raised me to remember what is was like to live both inside and outside the perimeter that I grew up in. I thank the people in this city who helped raise, teach, and love me…

….and to Atlanta, my first metropolitan mother, I love you and thank you for everything.

In January of 2014 I moved to Las Vegas from Los Angeles to begin my artist residency at “The Container Park”. It was off of Fremont St, a previously abandoned portion of the old strip that was being revitalized by “The Downtown Project”. My gallery was in a cozy metal shipping container that nestled into a sea of other shipping containers filled with artists, designers, restaurants, and various shops. Despite my hard working business partner and the traffic of patrons that perused through the area, which left me with a lot of inspiring connections and conversations, I was for the most part, very alone.

I lived in Henderson by myself in a two bedroom studio. One bedroom was where I worked, and the other was where I slept. In the daytime I would drive out to downtown from the 215 to the 15, and pass Las Vegas Blvd to the historic strip, and work in the shipping container. As the sun would set, I would hang outside the gallery and laugh with the next door glass artists Mya and Elisha, and gab with the street artist MISCR8 and talk about where our future in art was going. At night when the gallery closed, I’d walk out of the park while a drum circle would blare in its exotic beats, and a massive metal sculpture of a praying mantis on a tank would shoot balls of flames from its antennas into the night air. I’d drive home, often the way I came, only to paint more in the studio until I would fall asleep at my desk and wake up starting the same story the next day.

This was everyday.

Las Vegas was one of the most entertaining, and yet heartbreaking cities I had ever lived in. In the daytime, the city was obscured by mass waves of light colored buildings that swallowed the entire city grid in a misty blur. What happily existed was the massive beautiful mountains and thick clouds that painted itself in such a majestic way. In the day, the natural landscapes were the saving grace of Las Vegas. When the sun would set, the city began to groggily wake up with its drowsy sparkles of neon lights, and by complete nightfall the city was a massive beacon of metropolitan lights… I’d often, in the middle of the night, get in my car and drive on St. Rose Parkway to look at the neon grid.. I’d spend hours beyond the parkway on a random hill with a bottle of sparkling water and watch the city burst into a radiant flame by myself.

The strip itself, while incredibly welcoming to those visiting the city, felt completely out of reach to me as a resident. It was a city built on tourism, and those that lived there catered happily to them. In the strip, controlled chaos and bliss existed for those visiting it, yet those that lived there, it was a different story. The slogan “Whatever Happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas” was such a powerful word for those living there, because we in fact, stayed in Vegas with those experiences.

After 8 months I had only created one Mickey. The work I was creating was mostly for a series called “Mojave Metropolis” for the artist residency. I spent a lot of time working in merchandising and the business aspect of licensing, which left little time for me to really concentrate on the project. In September, the artist residency was over, and I was on to my next adventure out in Chicago. I woke up at 3am, and drove all my things out of the city. In the darkness, I drove through Las Vegas Blvd to say my last goodbye. I watched mass waves of people still partying, laughing, and happily screaming.  I watched the hotel workers stoically work through their crowd as if it was any other day. I saw showgirls glittering in the night, dancers dancing, and fire performers blowing balls of flame into the night air. I drove past the copied versions of New York and Paris, out into the wedding chapel area, and into the light bulb sparkling district of old Las Vegas, which flashed of such a vibrant history of a place that hasn’t existed anywhere else in the world. Finally, I drove through the broken lonely and abandoned streets of a Vegas forgotten… with gutted out hotels that once held such a beautiful and exotic American entertainment culture. I hit the highway North to Utah, and watched the neon lights slowly fade into the distance.

The slogan, for those that visit it, may hold true, whatever happens there, stays there.. .but for those who lived there.. actually experienced and worked in the city.. once you leave there.. the memories, the people you loved, the people that helped you, the people that broke you, the loneliness, the heartache, the beauty of such vast expansions of the metropolis in the Mojave… they don’t stay in Vegas.

They stay with you.

This painting, while in the Metropolitan series, is the first piece that talks more about the emotional landscape than the actual physical geography of the city. The references of locations like Seven Hills (a sector of Henderson), South Eastern Ave, Ann Road, Lake Mead, Green Valley, Tropicana, Sahara, and more, exist in the background of this piece. References also exist to Las Vegas like Mojave sun, miles of sand, monsoon season, pyramid luz, clouds, and dust yards. Finally there are personal references and timestamps such as ‘this is not a test’, HWY home, work work, 110F, solitude, and vision that exist here as well. Finally, I chose these all together to create silhouettes of buildings that swarm in color around the outskirts of Mickey, that when cross into his face become an obscure and textless form. This represents that Vegas is much more than just the strip, but it is the residents, the outskirts, the mountains, the hope, and experiences that make this place its embodiment.

I first fell in love with Denver back in the year 2000, when I was traveling from Chicago to Santa Cruz for the summer in a gold sparkling pickup truck I nicknamed “Liberace”. This was my first experience road tripping across America, and I was starry eyed and in consistent wonderment the entire time. For more than 20 years I really hadn’t experienced any kind of travel, and I saw Denver as this magical paradise thousands of feet up above sea level.

13 years later, in thinking back to that wonderful place, I decided to make Denver a part of the Metropolitan Series, and flew out there from my home in Los Angeles to draw a map of it around Mickey’s face. I had stayed with a friend from high school in Marietta Georgia, who gave me the low down on the entire city, and I spent 5 days walking and taking the train across the city to get a feel for Denver’s surroundings and inhabitants.

Out of all the cities I have visited, Denver’s aesthetic was the most unique. Most of the time I can pinpoint similarities in architecture influenced by geography and history in the US, but Denver was built on an entirely different platform. It wasn’t Southern, Midwestern, or Pacific. Denver.. .. was.. Denver… a mix of classic architecture infused with natural elements that reflected the mountains, forest, and rivers.

I was overwhelmed by the hospitality of Denver’s residents, who often reminded me of the easy going Northern Californians of Sebastapol and Southern Oregonians. The friends I stayed with wore costumes and rode bicycles through the town with thousands of other residents who did the same. The stress of traffic strained madness from Los Angeles somehow magically washed away, and I found myself whimsically walking down the street playing music in my ears and feeling that Denver was the cure from all the pressure and heartache over the years.

It was a dangerous feeling too, because I knew if I spent any time longer in Denver, that I would be packing up and leaving ASAP to become one of its residents.

Even now, when times get tough in whatever city I’m in, I think back to that week where I laid out in the park watching the sun set during a jazz festival with friends. When I’m sad I think about walking around aimlessly with no direction whatsoever and taking the RTD to 16th street. When I am uninspired, I think about the Denver Art Museum, which was one of the most INCREDIBLE museums I have been to on the planet… and getting lost in the random rooms of beautiful work that I have waited my whole life to see (IE: Sandy Skoglund “Fox Games”, Nick Cave “Sound Suits”)

In this piece, entitled “Mile High City” (in reference that Denver is actually a mile above sea level), goes over the attractions and districts of Denver. In the ears it says “Silver Boom” which goes over the Silver Rush that made Denver a prominent figure on the US map, and MTN life, which is about the culture of the city.

Here are the following attractions going clockwise from the lower left side.

1. Denver Art Museum
2. Little Man Ice Cream
3. Blue Bear Sculpture (Convention Center Sculpture)
4. National Western Stock Show
5. Tattered Cover Book Store
6. Mountain Views
7. Larimer Square
8. Colorado State Flag
9. Confluence Park
10. Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum
11. South Platte River
12. Botanic Gardens
13. Lakeside Amusement Park
14. “The Aliens” Sculpture
15. Union Station (Train Station)
16. RTD (Transit System)
17. 16th Street Mall.

Inside Mickey’s face are the following 68 districts:

1. Country Club
2. North Capulo
3. East Colfax
4. Speer
5. Belcaro
6. Cole
7. North East Park Hill
8. Washington Virginia Vale
9. Montbello
10. Hale
11. University Hills
12. Wellshire
13. Rosedale
14. Gateway
15. Green Valley Ranch
16. Montclair
17. Indian Creek
18. Virginia Village
19. Five Points
20. Cory Merrill
21. Lowry
22. Hilltop
23. City Park West
24. Union Station
25. Civic Center
26. Baker
27. Curtis Park
28. Chaffee Park
29. Skyland
30. Cherry Creek
31. Regis
32. South Park Hill
33. Sloan Lake
34. Cheeseman Park
35. Stapleton
36. Elyria Swansea
37. Platte
38. Clayton
39. Auraria Park
40. Hampden
41. Washington Park
42. Ruby Hill
43. Globeville
44. Sun Valley
45. Barnum
46. Whittier
47. Berkeley
48. West Highland
49. College View
50. University Park
51. Highland
52. Capitol Hill
53. Lincoln Park
54. Congress Park
55. South Platte
56. Kennedy
57. University
58. Sunnyside
59. Goldsmith
60. South Moore Park
61. Marlee
62. West Colfax
63. Bear Valley
64. Villa Park
65. Fort Logan
66. Marston
67. Harvey Park
68. Athmar Park

This is the 85th in the TENxTENxTEN Collection, and the 5th in the Metropolitan Series.

For half of my life, I spent looking at Chicago in a 2 dimensional sense. It was just a word with a pin next to it on a map that laid against my wall. This map had pins of all the cities I wanted to travel to, because as a a gay kid in Marietta, Georgia, the first thing that I wanted to do when I came out, was move to a big city, because I knew, than in the city, people understood you more than they did where I came from.

Years went by, and I had eventually moved out of my town and spent it moving around. At first it was just around the South as my own wanderlust had training wheels, but I eventually had gone to the North East, in which to my dismay, didn’t really fit either. I was on this big search to find the perfect place, and the West Coast was my next destination.

My first visit to Chicago was this slight hiccup in my travels that carried me from my brief home in Philadelphia to my new home in San Francisco. I spent a few weeks traveling here and there, checking off all the cities from that old pinned map, which now laid folded up in my glove compartment in my truck. Chicago, was just supposed to be a check off the map, … because in my mind, my head was made up for San Francisco.

When I had arrived to Chicago, it was like the whole world imploded inside my brain. My eyes could literally NOT comprehend what it was seeing. Sure I had spent weeks in New York City, being that I lived a hour away by train, but Chicago was a whole other kind of metropolitan beast, because Chicago was beautiful.

And I was in love.

It was the first time that I had fallen in love with a city. I had, never, for the most part, felt comfortable where I lived, nor where I visited, and this place totally caught me off guard. I spent the Summer in this romantic whirlwind with the city, spending my days riding the CTA to different districts, and spending my nights alone with music blaring in my ears out near the lake. My young head was blurting out a mosaic of dreams that could not be stopped. It was this inanimate intimacy that I had with this city, a brief love affair with a noun that only described a time and a place, not a person or thing.

So when I had to pack up and continue my travels, my heart laid heavy, and I felt distraught and sad. My last day I just sat there on the CTA. I didn’t care where it took me. I, listless and numb, just rode for hours and hours, listening to music and memorizing station names as they squealed into my view. I eventually drove West, and continually and obsessively talked about that city until eventually, my sweet love hangover dissipated and my attention for San Francisco grew slowly but surely.

Eleven years later I returned to Chicago for a visit. My brain and heart, wrung dry from my stays in San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles, slowly but surely ignited again like an old flame when I had arrived. Memories opened like a flood gate and I remembered being incredibly young and incredibly in love with a Metropolis that contained some of the most magnetic and incredible people I had ever met. In homage I began to paint this series into my “Ten By Ten By Ten” Disney collection.

This piece is about the CTA of Chicago. Each color panel represents a station line color, and within each panel is a station on that individual line. This is in dedication to this amazing transit system, and even though its main purpose is to guide us to our next destination, it also serves us as a vehicle of contemplation and daydreaming.