I am neck deep in studio mode right now as I have a show opening at Joe Bar on April 11th. Put it on 'yer calendar, I'll update with invitation links and what not when I have 'em.
The show is called How Goes the Battle?, and it's about anger, surrender, and the failure of language. I readily admit that it's a cathartic personal therapy project: I've been sorting through the wreckage of a devastating breakup. Each piece is paired with a poem by Kay Ryan. Rather than describe more, here are some detail shots from a few of the pieces and the text of their accompanying poems:
Wooden
In the presence of supple
goodness, some people
grow less flexible,
experiencing a woodenness
they wouldn’t have thought possible.
It is as strange and paradoxical
as the combined suffering
of Pinocchio and Geppetto
if Pinocchio had turned and said,
I can’t be human after all.
Shift
Words have loyalties
to so much
we don't control.
Each word we write
rights itself
according to poles
we cant see; think of
magnetic compulsion
or an equal stringency.
Its hard for us
to imagine how small
a part we play in
holding up the tall
spires we believe
our minds erect.
Then north shifts,
buildings shear,
and we suspect.
Losses
Most losses add something —
a new socket or silence,
a gap in a personal
archipelago of islands.
We have that difference
to visit—itself
a going-on of sorts.
But there are other losses
so far beyond report
that they leave holes
in holes only
like the ends of the
long and lonely lives
of castaways
thoughts dead but not.
