Arthur--Painter and Fortune Teller

This is a portrait of “Arthur” that I completed just two days ago (5x3 feet). Arthur is a homeless man who spends his time painting on wood and canvas. His pieces range from small (3x12 inches) to large (10x6 feet). His paintings are interesting, but I first got to know him when he had inherited an old set of tarot cards and was trying to make a few bucks telling fortune.

At the time, I wanted to learn how to read palms and tarot cards, so I thought I might learn a few things from him. I really don’t think he had much experience with tarot cards. The cards were just something he was given and he was mostly improvising with great sincerity. I didn’t learn anything useful but I did appreciate his effort and commitment in something he wasn’t well versed in. It was as if I were to pick up a deck of tarot and immediately set up a stall to tell fortune with no previous experience at all… Something I would never have the guts to do, and something I could never do a hundreth as well as he did. So I appreciated his flair and hustle.

Since that time, we have become friends. I have not interviewed him however. I just feel as if he’s the type of person who hides deep, personal feelings behind his jolly, cheerful exterior. I don’t feel like I’m at the point of being able to penetrate his facade. Perhaps one day I might… Then I will ask him to tell me his stories…

Jose V.

This is another “retro-post” of a portrait I completed in late October this year. It is a portrait of “Jose.” The actual shoot was taken a few months ago, but only recently had I finished the life-sized (7x3 feet) composite piece. Of all the people I have photographed and interviewed, Jose was the one who had the most impact on me. This was for many reasons: One was that this man has high spiritual energy. He’s like a charismatic shaman lost in the mass of homelessness. Second was that this man has gone through hell and abuse from as early as three years old. That he turned out to be such a gentle spiritual man (instead of a angry psycho) never ceases to amaze me.

My interview with him lasted more than eight hours, spread over four separate days. I felt an honor that he would sit with me and tell me his most personal stories. The exchange was exactly what I quest for in what I do in art or anything else in my life. As Carlos Castaneda would say, the exchange was a “gesture” between him and me. And we sat in truth for a few moments in time.

Mother/Father Piece

This blog was started to document the progression of the art project "Our House," but having gotten into the spirit of blogging, I feel that this is an excellent way to record my overall artistic progress and development, and also a good way to reposit any major ideas and inspiration relevant to all my ongoing projects--not just "Our House."

So to make this blog more complete, I will enter a few “retro-posts”--posts that refer to a few important points in time that happened before the beginning of the blog.

This particular post refers to the above piece of my mother and father (3x6 feet, done in early November this year). The working title of the photograph is “My father left us for greener pastures, fresher faces, and a new family. Forty years later, mom met him again at a convalescent home… I felt a light, and it opened me.”

The title is long, but I felt it had to be so because the photograph will have more impact if the backstory is somehow conveyed to the viewer: When I was child, my father was a successful and thriving businessman in Malaysia. In the Chinese culture of the time, it is common for successful men to have mistresses on the side. And when I was six, for whatever reasons known only to him, he decided to leave our family to pursue a larger business empire, a younger wife, and a new family.

Anyways, to make a long story short, about forty years later my dad was put into a convalescent home by his latest family. We got a call informing us of his whereabouts. So my mother, my sister, and I went to visit him. This is a picture of their first meeting in forty years.”

When I was there, there was an opening of light, an opening of enlightenment in me. It was a special moment in my life and, I’m sure, in my mother’s as well.

"Religion" - Readymade and Sound Sculpture

I had gotten an email notification of a DADA/Surrealism/Readymade/Found-Object art show, and it occurred to me that this could be a good venue to put out my first “sound-sculpture baby” to the art world at large and see how it is received or rejected. The entry deadline was only a couple of days away so I mostly cloistered myself within this project this last week and finished it a few hours ahead of the deadline.

The title of the piece is “Religion”. It comments on Consumerism as the all-encompassing religion of America. A lot has been studied and written about Consumerism as a religion, for those who are interested in reading a sample of these available on the internet, I have listed a few links at the end of this post.

“Religion” is a piece about the “voices” of things. Phenomenologically speaking, the things we interact which are imbued with meaning. Objects speak to us with the voices that are given to them in our daily interactions with the world at large. In American culture, advertising is the foremost authority that gives voice to the objects all around us. These voices are “transparent” in that we are not conscious of what is spoken but, unconsciously, they speak clearly to us of promise: The promise of validation, recognition, acceptance, status, love, happiness… On the other hand, they also speak of lack, shame, inadequacy, rejection, and outcast. These voices pass, unfiltered, into our subconscious and they echo transparently inside heads. What they say is unheard, until they are translated into our interior dialog, which are then spoken with authority and heard clearly as the voice of our inner self.

“Religion” gives clear voice to the three shopping bags colored red, white, and blue. The voices are made opaque and there is no denying them any longer. The sculpture of the sound is made like echoes that reverberate from the universal static signal of advertising.

In the piece, a pair of speakers is hidden in the bags, and the sound (10 minutes) is run on a continuous loop. As an update on the previous "sound system" post, I’d say I’m generally happy with the entire system. The sound quality is equivalent to my current home stereo, which is of a fairly decent quality. It won’t blow any audiophiles away, but it will get the sound-sculpture job done. The only obvious complaint is that the fan of the power amplifier is rather noisy. Which might pose a problem when I start experimenting with live sound; I’m sure the mics will pick up the fan noise with no problem at all. But, hey, it was a cheap power amplifier…

Below, I list three web articles that talk more about Consumerism as a religion: (I can't seem to be able to make the web addresses into links. So please just copy the lines and paste to the browser address field. Sorry.)

http://www.planetpapers.com/Assets/1618.php (“The Myth of Consumerism”)

http://www.rochesterunitarian.org/2000-01/20010729.html (“The Religion of Consumerism”)

http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_07/issue_09/opinion_04.html (“The Religion of Consumption”)