You Have Earned Five Dollars, acrylic and ink on flyers, linen tape, 28 x 17 inches
June 2009
painting, 1990
the original is 40 x 30 inches, acrylic on canvas, and in color. it's meant to be a goof on expressionism, somewhat, and I think I like it better as a black and white book illustration.
Update: Need to add a few sentences to this post, as the image above is completely overwhelming the "camp child" below. In the past have described such writing as a "text buffer." Almost no thought is given on blogs as to how visual content interacts with nearby visual content. Museum curators go to great pains in the placement of art on walls, to the extent even of placing a weak piece next to a strong piece so as not to have the works "vibrating badly," as Walter Hopps once stated it. Yet on blogs the most outrageous juxtapositions are made. To some extent we rely on a kind of selective blindness, such as you see in newspapers when an image of a vivacious fashion model sits next to a story about people dying from living too near toxic waste. But it's also a lack of attention to design. Etc.
"Jam Science (Organic)"
"Jam Science (Organic)" [mp3 removed]
Used the MIDI notes of an earlier song ("Rinso Piano") to trigger "rock organ" samples and superimposed the organ parts on another previous, mostly rhythm piece, "Jam Science." Had to shuffle the "Rinso" segments around to find the best-sounding parts of the rhythm score for them to interact with, but didn't want it to resemble those '90s techno remixes where isolated phrases of a song float around on a pre-existing rhythm bed (not too much, anyway). Some head scratching went into making a de novo work. Parts of it sound like a house tune and really cook. Would like to get it all like that.
Hollywood Ending for Kagemusha
If that Kurosawa movie of 1980 (plot summary) were remade today:
--The impersonator, instead of dying in a hail of bullets, would jump on the back of Lord Shrigen's previously untamable horse and lead the clan to victory.
--His three years as a "shadow warrior" would cause him to mature from a common thief into a Lord and learn a valuable lesson about his better nature.
--An ambiguity would exist whether the impersonator actually learned these lessons or whether he was channeling the ghost of the dead Lord.