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No Record of this Time

by

5″ x 7″

I wish to have no record of this time. The events leading up to this time, this time itself, and whatever follows.

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There are no objects any more

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8″ x 10″

There are no objects any more. There were never any objects. Now you know. Don’t look for me. By the time you read this I will be far away. You will never find me.
– Gabriel Josipovici

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St. Augustine

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10″ x 14″

And I became to myself a wasteland.
– St. Augustine

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V.I.P.’s

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8″ x 10″

Some of the important people from the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

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My Body Rolling Away from Me

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11″ x 14″

I am not afraid of being sick, but of losing my body entirely. Misplacing it, and having to go without. Like any of the ghosts we hear about, the ones from the movies and our imaginations, they can see things, but cannot be seen. Cannot touch or be touched because they have no mass, only invisible vapour. I fear my body rolling away from me, like a coat button, under the radiator. I would have no fingers to reach for it, and no way to use an impliment to retrieve it. And no voice to call for help from a friend or loved one.

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Offer of Marriage Refused

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7″ x 7″

This drawing is based on a Harper’s Weekly Illustration (1860’s), “Offer of Marriage Refused” is its caption.

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The Bedraggled Mother

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11″ x 14″

On the wall of my Grandparents’ dining room in Natchez always (since the beginning of forever) hung a print of the 1906 George de Forest-Brush painting called In The Garden. I have only known it by its nickname within the family: The Bedraggled Mother.

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Mrs. Danning’s Class

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12″ x 16″

Rediscovered this painting I did in 2007 of my first grade class in Waukesha, Wisconsin in 1981. My friend Nehal there in the front left with the gold satin shirt. I still like this painting, especially the yellow and black shapes on the bulletin board.

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The Effect is Cumulative

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3″ x 5″

A drawing about my attempt to change the way I make my N’s. From the jagged up-downdiagonal-up, which I’ve never liked, to the more appealing dome-shape. It hasn’t taken hold yet, but the process is underway and I will enjoy signing my name better with my new N.

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Scratches

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4″ x 6″

This is a collaboration with Laynie Browne, for the postcard collection of the Academy of American Poets. The text — punched with the timeless and immutable Dymo label-maker — is an excerpt from her brilliant novel-in-progress.

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Poor Possum

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5″ x 7″

From a group of five drawings of roadkill made while driving across the Smoky Mtns to teach at WCU years ago. Thanks to Ann Patchett for sending me the Gerald Stern poem below, a perfect pair.

Behaving Like a Jew
by Gerald Stern

When I got there the dead opossum looked like
an enormous baby sleeping on the road.
It took me only a few seconds—just
seeing him there—with the hole in his back
and the wind blowing through his hair
to get back again into my animal sorrow.
I am sick of the country, the bloodstained
bumpers, the stiff hairs sticking through the grilles,
the slimy highways, the heavy birds
refusing to move;
I am sick of the spirit of Lindbergh over everything,
that joy in death, that philosophical
understanding of carnage, that
concentration on the species.
—I am going to be unappeased at the opossum’s death.
I am going to behave like a Jew
and touch his face, and stare into his eyes,
and pull him off the road.
I am not going to stand in a wet ditch
with the Toyotas and the Chevys passing over me
at sixty miles an hour
and praise the beauty and the balance
and lose myself in the immortal lifestream
when my hands are still a little shaky
from his stiffness and his bulk
and my eyes are still weak and misty
from his round belly and his curved fingers
and his black whiskers and his little dancing feet.

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Emma, Her Book & Heart

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30″ x 40″

This painting, still in process, and its title are taken from a book that my mother read as a girl, given to her by her great grandfather, and now I have it. I’ve been enjoying the little illustrations and just yesterday decided to read some of text. Great little coming of age story, florid and earnest, it provides courage for the developing Victorian schoolgirl.

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Wastrels in a Bunker #1

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8 1/2″ x 11″

A process sketch for a collaboration with Kate Bernheimer. It will be unfolding in the coming weeks, so you’ll be seeing quite a bit of these two castaways.

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Xia’s Library Bunnies

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Xia is the daughter of my friends Kate and Brent. They bought the drawing I did a few months ago of a bunny that I dreamt I check out of a library and then forgot about. Xia has been making tender drawings of that drawing and I’m proud to show them here. Thanks for contributing to the Work-a-day page, Xia!

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Paragraph (with Laynie Browne)

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A small collaborative piece with Laynie, an excerpt from her novel in progress. Possibly more along these lines to come.

from Periodic Companions

When we are all assembeled in memory I ask myself why sometimes it takes so long to
compose a paragraph but O. says it is because we have to be able to comfortably inhabit
that space. He isn’t talking about reclining or tromping about but the physical sensation
of words falling out of the mouth, off of the fingers. He says this very confidently, as
if he has spoken of himself as made up of characters of an alphabet as long as he can
remember.

—Laynie Browne

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Search Party

by

11″ x 14

There had been a murder. No one knew what happened to the boy, but a group of conspiracy theorists had gotten in trouble for trying to sneak out to the bottom of a swamp where they said a couple of renagade cops were holding the child at an underwater roadblock.

All the tv crews came out to document the quarrel between the local police and the conspiracy theorists. The sheriff finally decided that it was his jurisdiction and not against the law for them to go under the water to look for the underwater roadblock.

So we were all there at the edge of the swamp, and getting in the water to see what would happen. The newsmen were chest deep in the still water with dress shirts and microphones describing the scene as the preacher who led the group disappeared into the water with a flashlight.

You could see the light of the preacher’s flashlight go further and further out and before we knew it we were all following him.

Someone in the crowd said, if you go too far into this, you’ll hit the Mississippi River and there’s no way you’ll survive. The water was still, but the further we went, it became clear that what we were sloshing through was not a swamp, but the overflow of the Mississippi and that eventually we would come to the River itself.

I was travelling with two newspeople and I saw that ahead the water was not still but raging and screaming. It’s the River! Grab something! And just as our bodies were going to be pulled into the current we grabbed a concrete pylon and pulled ourselves onto what turned out to be an escalator. It was a down escalator, and still functioning, though at this point it was pouring rain, and the three of us looked up the escalator with water cascading down its steps. I was imagining how difficult it would be to go up this eascalator, with its downward moving steps, and how I desparately wanted to. One of the newspeople said: there is always something creepy about an escalator. I said, yeah, I know.

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Darling Ann

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12″ x 16″

Last weekend I found this oil on masonite painting of Whistler’s Mother at the thrift store. The face was no good, but the atmosphere was suitably somber. So I bought it for $2.50 and changed the face, added a gold leaf (really gold foil candy wrappers) in the shape of a face, a celestial phantom. And added “Darling” up at the top. The small “Ann” at the bottom is the signature of the woman who painting the original copy. I put black tape over her last name “Finkle”. So this is dedicated to all the Ann’s, Anne’s, and Anna’s in my life.

At some point I’ll get a better shot of this piece. Some of the detail is lost here.

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Anima Sola

by

11″ x 14″

Colored acetate is a transfixing material.

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