Sunday, January 31, 2010

I Go to Places



I go to places. I walk around in them. There the architects grapple with issues not yet fathomed and are rewarded for such efforts. The citizens are not afraid of nightmares, but live them in harmony with waking moments. In the galleries, the works are in progress and occasionally updated.

Friday, January 29, 2010

J. Todd Dokken


1987. The artist purchases Dokken's Back for the Attack on cassette. Taken with the recording, the artist then, with a paint pen, draws the band's logo on the back of a jean jacket. A trench coat length jacket at that. Later, no longer impressed with his own attempt at lettering, the artist covers up the handmade logo with a mail ordered back patch that reads: "KISS: If It's Too Loud, You're Too Old."

2010. The artist replaces his long lost tape with a used compact disc copy of Back for the Attack. Seeing that while there is some filler on this recording, he remains taken with it. Oddly depressed and uplifted simultaneously by his own acceptance of the junk rock as transcendent material, the artist draws the logo again, this time in his sketchbook as opposed to on his apparel, along with portraits based on the photos in the disc's liner notes.