the first year

This still is from “Sweet Movie”.   I once used this image for a poster for a band I played in called Larryland.  I've never actually seen the move.  Little did I know that it's banned in “many countries to this day”.  For me, it’s just an image in my brown accordion file that speaks volumes about anxiety.  His nonchalance about the situation cracks me up.   

I got this film still along with a stack of others from  a mail order movie rental  company I worked at when I lived in Chicago.   They were the first Netflix, but with VHS.  It was mostly foreign and independent movies. They had every movie you could imagine (even banned ones)!   I’ve flipped through this stack photographs so many times over the years that I can’t imagine the accordion file without them. 

Last April I started this blog of images, art, my view of life through the lens of my studio with the intention of sharing my process.  In doing so and to my pleasure, I’ve discovered the simplicity in how I make art.  It’s about waking up, absorbing life, and hoisting it all onto the compost heap to see what breaks down.  It’s in the studio where I let the connections between what’s random and what’s not come together and land.  It’s here that I quiet down and listen.   

I look forward to another year of collecting, gathering, sweeping life up into a pile and having a look!