10.26.2006
Unfinished Artist statement. let me know what you people think
I took this off. Too much visual space. If you are still interested in reading it, it is now posted as one of the comments, instead. For fun, here is a picture by Jason Bright.
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4 comments:
"somehow seemed to imply that nothing had changed…that the past was waiting exactly as it had always been, except that it was a complete lie."
It's these lies that made you suffer the most. There are the ones that make you wish things were different.
I was fiddling with the whistles that gramps gave me, and looked closely to the illustration and words on it. "St. Michal, pray for us". The picture is of St. Michal battling some sort of devilish fiend, ready to destroy it with his spear.
It seems odd, but for the first time I thought to myself... why did he give this to me? Then this thought jumpped into my head.
The man didn't have an easy life. His own "wife" and daughter didn't even go to his funeral. Worst of all, grandma tried to tell me that I should be sad and that he wasn't a good man. This twisted me in 80 different ways.
Then on my 18th Birthday mom told me some storries about how I came to be, and we got onto the topic of grandpa. She did mention that he had his troubles with alcohol and everything else. All said, she still trusted him to watch me. Even though he would still drink, he wouldn't get really bad.
I honestly don't remember seeing an ill side of them man, and this made me think. What if I was there to help him battle his deamons?
The man is a complete enigma. You know you were always his favorite, though. That has to be somehow really inspiring. Maybe you should consider it a gift that you get to live with that idea of him, rather than any sort of reality which eventually always reveals itself as unquestionably average. I think we're forever on the lookout for superheroes, some people find it in Jesus. People no longer with us are also great candidates because they are somewhat imaginary. I think you should pay homage to it and be glad that it is a part of your story.
You should post it here as your comment. That way it doesn't cause confusion in the front with all the text, but people can still ready your brilliant words. ;-)
In 1992 I came to The States from Poland, from a town the size of a thumbnail, called Ustrzyki Dolne, or Lower Ustrzyki. I was dumped out in Hamtramck, Michigan; similar size, different hand. I did not understand the magnitude of the change then. But age came like sobriety and I became hyper aware of this abstract sense of longing. I spent a long time believing that my identity was buried somewhere in Ustrzyki, a place that finances dictated I could not visit. Slowly, though, I came to terms with the idea that the loss itself was significant and enriching, even if a little melancholy. ( ;) )That realization exposed one of the most significant thematic influences on my work: the universality of transience, in all of its loveliness and pain. It is also why, in many ways, I create transient art, using natural circumstances which cannot be recreated without looking completely contrived.
In terms of execution, having grown up in Hamtramck, a city to which I feel oddly tied and one that is in a constant state of disrepair, and remembering Poland’s general atmosphere of dilapidation, has nurtured this long existing fascination with objects, aging, the past. However, instead of perceiving aging as a transition to nonexistance, the longing inspired a much more romantic view of aging as a residue of being, perhaps because objects, residues, were all I had access to from my past. Therefore flawlessness, in terms of appearance, is boring to me. This is very much the motivation for my use of found objects in art making. I work to imbue my ideas into items that were once alive, once used…ghostless skeletons that are ready to take on whatever ghosts I impregnate them with. They already have residue, and are metaphors for rebirth, changing hands, for a past recorded only in wrinkles.
I have always been interested in manipulating space in unconventional, perhaps selfish but thoroughly enjoyable ways. As a child, my cousin and closest friend, Eve and I would frequently hang our collaborative paintings from the ceiling. My grandfather’s bedroom had an impact on my perception of space as well. He and my grandmother separated, essentially splitting their apartment in half. He lived out of his room, with one bed, a table, a chair and a large cabinet on which he distilled some sort of liquor. On the floor, everywhere, were engines, machine parts, tools, and the whole place smelled of 30 years of chain smoking. I remember sitting with him as a kid and never questioning whether or not he enjoyed the space. Then age comes, sometimes like sobriety and sometimes like a fifth, and you become drunk with formalities: the television in the living room…couch…end table..lamp. I, instead, threw a king size bed into a 10X10 room and can sleep on it in whatever direction I choose to lay. I would like to think that, within reason, the same kind of selfish lawlessness applies to my creating art.
In the late 90’s my grandfather passed away and my father returned briefly to Poland for his funeral. While there he videotaped as much as was feasible, including my grandfather’s bedroom. On the wall of my grandfather’s room was a framed picture of Jesus, and tucked to the side of the frame were passport photographs of my father, mother, myself and my siblings. I was floored. This man whom I had damn near forgotten lived every day with those photographs, ones that somehow seemed to imply that nothing had changed…that the past was waiting exactly as it had always been, except that it was a complete lie.
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