Personal Work: TRIPPPLLLE PETTTALLLED FLOWWWERRRSSS

Personal Work is a section dedicated to my own artistic projects past and present.

In the summer of 2016, I was invited to come to Hudson, NY to participate in a group show (titled Too Much of a Good Thing) curated by artists Rose Salane and Dylan Kraus. The work I created, TRIPPPLLLE PETTTALLLED FLOWWWERRRS, was a short poem (incorporating some hand drawn illustrations) formatted into a vinyl wall text. It was an approach I'd used for artworks since my show Book of Shadows in 2012. 

By 2016, I'd also been adding illustrations to my poems and creating minimally graphic prints to display in shows. Both the print and vinyl pieces were made with the same process: I would write a poem, create illustrations, lay them out in an image file, and then send the final image to be manufactured by a printing service. I opted to automate the process rather than create the prints by hand, because I was resolutely not practicing like an artist who had a studio: I wanted the pieces to emerge into the physical dimension as if from nowhere; to impart a sense of opaqueness about their origins. I think this has to do with dissociating the writing from myself – of not wanting it to be read as my voice, but simply as some voice from an unclear source.

I had been performing music with my voice (and via my physical form) for years, and I think about this as a contrast to the text pieces. It was two extremes at the time for me: the radical presence of performance, where I was watched and acted in real time; and then the almost completely disembodied practice as a writer, particularly in these types of pieces where the voice's identity is ambiguous and indiscernible. Also, much of the writing I did outside of my personal practice was in some way secretive - often as "ghostwriting" that was not explicitly credited to me.

The 2016 exhibition in Hudson was held at a gallery space in a building behind the Basilica Hudson, a cavernous venue that hosts festivals and performances. In addition to the wall text piece, I also did a performance inside the venue, which Rose and Dylan were able to gain permission to use. Inside the vast space, which would normally be filled with people and large concert equipment, I played over a modest PA to the small crowd who had gathered for the opening, under the glow of long strips of LEDs I had brought for the occasion, which resembled a landing strip arranged in formation on the concrete floor in the dark.