#136 Fusion

24x48 Roofing paper & acrylic on Masonite.

#77 "America"

Fusion 18x24 $2,400

#30 We Are What We Eat

Assemblage. 25x16 $2000

#12 Memorium

Asemblage. Auto fender fragment, 11x11x5 CLAIMED

#10 Piece of the Puzzle

9x14 Assemblage $300

No Revolution wihout Poetry, No Poetry without Revolution

#173 33x22 t-shirt from Guitarmy 99 mile walk, Philly to Zuccotti Park, acrylic on plywood

Photograph and create poster, and the original is yours

Beyond Non-Violence

I've come a long way from a belief in non-violence, though I was never an absolutist--siituation is everything--why I refused to accept a CO classification (pacificist) from my draft board--and ultumitally arrested for refusing induction) . This is not an easy admission--not for personal reasons, but because I know that the use of force is never in itself 'just'... in that, those who perish, are more likelly to be those who are not culpable (there are no 'innocents". Nenetheless.. I cannot but accept, however reluctant--that it must come to this if we are serious about changing this order--this Empire of Money and Death. And if I believe this--that I must be willing myself to take that on, that resposibility. We cannot remain pacificts. Though those who do--are not necessarily complicit.. we need them, too. As healers. As medics. As mediators. Let us not attack them. But thank them... not everyone can be on the front lines.. but those who are first of all, healers.. we must honor and respect.

When Resistance demands more than Non-Violance

I've come a long way from a belief in non-violence, though I was never an absolutist--siituation is everything--why I refused to accept a CO classification (pacificist) from my draft board--and ultumitally arrested for refusing induction) . This is not an easy admission--not for personal reasons, but because I know that the use of force is never in itself 'just'... in that, those who perish, are more likelly to be those who are not culpable (there are no 'innocents". Nenetheless.. I cannot but accept, however reluctant--that it must come to this if we are serious about changing this order--this Empire of Money and Death. And if I believe this--that I must be willing myself to take that on, that resposibility. We cannot remain pacificts. Though those who do--are not necessarily complicit.. we need them, too. As healers. As medics. As mediators. Let us not attack them. But thank them... not everyone can be on the front lines.. but those who are first of all, healers.. we must honor and respect.

Bradley Manning: Rally at Fort Meade

It was good to see what I'd guess were more than 1200 people outside the main gate of Fort George G. Meade, U.S. Army base, where Bradley Manning's court martial is being held, but the disproportionate number of older people--with almost half in their 50's or more, was perplexing. Where are those of Manning's own generation?

I was also a bit troubled--and this was likely my private feeling, and not a reflection on how seriously others took this rally--but I wasn't able to get into anything like a festive mood. When asked if I'd enjoyed the rally, I didn't know what to say. We marched in the heat, listened to speeches (none of which my ears were able to grasp), there was music. But there on the other side of that chainlink, barbed wire topped fence, with its WARNING signs and security guards kicking up dust as they sped past on their absurd, 4 wheel military golf carts--was a man in a cell. Three years with no trial. The decision--however many years are handed down, a fait accompli from the top echelons of our Empire of Money & Death. All those chants about 'freeing' him, so much rhetorical bluster. It was important to be there. Bradey Manning must not be forgetten, and those he threatens by the force of his naked conscience, have to know this, and be reminded again and again.

But I felt neither joy nor hope, and the opposite of powerful or effective. This might not be such a bad thing... that our actions should not require 'belief' in some all but supernatural efficacy of our success. We act because it is right. Because we must. Even when we aren't able to imagine anything close to success...

Revolution, Force, Building a New Order (or workable chaos)

I accept the necessity of strategic force in opposing oppresion, but a new order cannot be built or imposed by force. This is an enormous problem and contradiction inherent in any revolution, and one we will have to face, honestly, realistically, creatively.

From Protest though Resistance to Transformation

Let protests and steet marches and celebations be the visible face of a deeper and more lasting resistance, and resistance be the intersection of transformation, and let that transformation be so deeply rooted in our animal being, in the crops we plant to sustain us, in our enbodied communal imagination that no one will ever dare again to exploit and use and kill our fellow humans or animal brothers for their profit, or trample on those they believe to be weak or strange or unworthy, for until we come together in love and mutual aid, we are all weak, and strangness is our beauty and our glory, and until lives grow out of the compost of creative life in everyone, we are unworthy to walk on the good earth that sustains us.

Understanding One's Symptoms

Understanding one’s symptoms. Long sleep last night. Almost 12 hours. Down at 10:30, up at 10:00. Stirred to waking, as usual, by low level anxiety.

No bed time wine last night. I’ve been self-medicating for chronic, low level physical anxiety. Break the habit. Two days. My head feels more clear, anxiety still there.

Describe: heart rate slightly higher than normal at rest. emotionally on edge. General feeling of dis-ease with myself, my being-in-the-world

Effects: Makes every ‘task’ –everything that feels like a ‘task,’ more difficult to initiate. I haven’t even been able to spend time reading for months.

If it weren’t for making art I don’t think I’d survive. This is not hyperbole.

Even those tasks (not directly making new work: improving drawling skills, working on anatomy, figure drawing), while they give pleasure when I do them are difficult to initiate. Felt resistance. Like having to push open—or through—an impossibly heavy door (… better a metaphorical door than a wall).

Procrastination becomes a symptom. On-line chess. The intersection of the physical neural/chemical conditions, and situational conditions.

Resistance. To being pushed into pre-existing choices—of any kind, whether concocted by others or outside circumstances, or by myself (making plans, schedules). The line between here, always fuzzy. Thus, the relief of art—and gardening. Purely spontaneous action. What I aspire to—my jouissance ?) to do nothing else? Make art. Tend my garden.

Conclusion. Incurable condition. Find the least destructive way to alleviate the aggravating symptoms. Less wine for starters. More art. But then… what do I do with what I’ve made? Find places to exhibit? Do the promotion required to sell? Why do I have to think about that? More anxiety—more stuff I ‘have to” do.

Incurable.

The Great Disaster

The Great Disaster we're all a part of isn't the one in the headlines. It's not a sudden catastrophe. A day of horror. An explosion on a street. Planes hurtling into high rises. It's long and drawn out, incident after incident, law after law, arrest after arrest, murder after murder--none of which are the Great Disaster, but each are a part of it. More like a movement of techtonic plates--every tremor, every seismic event, is but the visible part of an imperceptable change of the landscape, of the shape of a continent. More like the melting of the Greenland icepack... we see the calving of the icebergs, as spectacular as the are, but not the rising of the oceans--which doesn't happen in an hour or a day. I'm speaking of the end of this civilzation... of all that's been built on and dependent on the delusional autopoietic machinery of capitalistism and nation states that it created to serve it. We can feel it cumulatively... feel that everything is changing, the world as we have believed it be is already no more, but then... it looks not that much different than yesterday, or the day before, and we go about our lives, oblivious of the escalator of extinction we're all riding together. lnevitable as growing old... noticable only when we look back a decade, or two or three, and see the marks of death written across our every feature.

#161 New Mexico (3)

9x31 New Mexico. Acrylic on composition board. $400

#160 Rio Grande Rift (2)

10x34 Acrylic, New Mexico sand on composition board $400

#159 Rio Grande rift, New Mexico

11x35 New Mexico dirt, acrylic on composition board. $400

 #151   35x24 Fusion

Acrlyic on Masonite, pieces of plastic

#148

# 148 Assemblage "The course of true love never did run smooth"  48x22, weathered board, plastic, roofing, rope, sparkles, acrylic on composition board on Masonite.

Thinking about the spirituality of the visual. How when I make visual art, there is no need for reconciliation with science. There is no need to distort syntax, to subvert grammar to say what I'm impelled to say. No need for defiant credulity, for magical thinking.

<"Inelectable modality of the visible... thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane.> "

... at least that if no more" from Joyce, Proteus. Episode 3, Ulysses

I make stuff... assemblages, paintings.. is this 'art?' I don't know. Used to be artists would think there might be a future where what they did would give pleasure, would expand the visiion of future generations. But we don't have that now. There's only, 'now.' It's pretty clear the power elite are psychopathes, concerned about nothing but their own delsusional idea that THEY can survive, even as they orchestrate the destruction of the rest of us. It's a relatively new idea... making art with no concept of 'posterity.' That there will be no one left to pass this down to. If Van Gogh were working now--there would be no future generations to appreciate what he had done. There is no comparable fantasy for working artists in this, one of our last generations. You just do it anyway... cause you have to. Like Camus' doctor in The Plague. You go about your business --though you know there is no hope. You cannot save the victims of the plague. And we are all victims of this plague.

#140

#140 22x25 Fusion. Acrylic, roofing on PVC

#141

Chromatic Fugue, 48x24 Acrylic on Masonite $2,000

Self Portrait

Wells Fargo Trial: Not Guilty!

News reports:
Breaking News: Philadelphia Jury Acquits 12 Wells Fargo Protesters in “Citizens’ Foreclosure”

 Links below

PhillyCom

FireDogLake

Adbusters

You Tube of Press Confeence

PHILADELPHIA--Twelve protestors arrested in November 2011 for occupying a Center City Wells Fargo branch have been found not guilty by a Philadelphia jury. Defendants claimed they were staging a “Citizens’ Foreclosure” on the bank for engaging in discriminatory lending and sapping millions of dollars from the School District of Philadelphia. After viewing video of the protest and hearing defendants’ testimony, a jury found all 12 defendants not guilty on charges of conspiracy and trespassing.

“This verdict shows that the people of this country stand on the side of justice and not the reckless profit-driven motives of big banks,” said defendant and Occupy Sandy organizer Larry Swetman. “I hope this decision will give the United States government the courage to start taking these banks—the real criminals—to trial and to hold them accountable to the people, instead of letting them hide behind back-room settlements.”

One of the only Occupy-related trials in the country to be argued before a jury, today also marked the first civil disobedience Free Speech case in recent Philadelphia memory.

“Today the people of Philadelphia defended the First Amendment,” said Defense Attorney Marni Snyder, one of seven lawyers who volunteered to represent the protestors pro-bono.  “We sent a clear message to the District Attorney’s Office: prosecute the real criminals at Wells Fargo; these twelve defendants stand on the side of justice.”

Defendants included a non-profit housing counselor, a Wells Fargo mortgage holder, a local teacher, an activist who participated in Civil Rights Era struggles, and Temple and Penn graduate students. During testimony, they pointed to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission’s report on Wells Fargo’s prejudicial lending practices and investigations by the Pennsylvania State Auditor General’s Office to draw connections between Wells Fargo’s profiteering and the defunding of our communities and school district.

“I’m excited the jury chose to stand with us and ask the real questions about Wells Fargo and our city,” said defendant and future public school teacher Aaron Troisi, “Questions like, can we really afford to let Wells Fargo to continue robbing from our children and stay silent? Wells Fargo and other banks are partly responsible for the situation our schools are in now. The banks have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from our schools and city.”

The group was defended by seven local lawyers working pro bono:, Leo Mulvihill, Jr., Marni Snyder, Paul Hetznecker, Michael Lee, Michael Coard, Lawrence Krasner, and Jon Feinberg.

#133 Subpoena Dog/ Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs Willard R Johnson

33x22 Fusion. Scraps from Subpoenas served to Wells Fargo Defendents, acrylic on Masonite. (On Permenant Loan)