my first public showing
I've been living in the place where I am now for about 8 months and have never really bothered to make it very homey. I mean I moved in my furniture and stuff, but in all this time I've never really unpacked completely or put any paintings on the walls or anything. For the longest time I'd been doing my miscellaneous arts and crafts on the dining room table. The two cats that also live in the apartment with me seemed to take great pleasure in knocking the scraps of paper and rolls of tape on to the floor and eventually the mess grew so large that it eclipsed the entire surface. Even though neither my roommate or I really use the dining room table for its entended purpose, I felt that it would be better to move my personal art into my personal space so I finally broke down and purchased a drafting table. It turned out to be quite an enormous piece of furniture that necessitated some drastic rearranging of my room to accomodate it. In the process I realized just how little I actually ever moved in to this apartment. Most of my stuff was crammed in the same corners of my closet as when I first arrived. Crates containing cds and lamps and art supplies lay dormant, frozen in the first day that I took up residence in this place. So I began to clean and pick over and reduce the piles that had not never been sorted before moved only transported. In the process I'd found several old paintings that I didn't want to keep but I was too lazy to paint over. I've collected several canvases that had been placed near the dumpster at my apartment complex emblazoned with images that had a similar sort of feel to them - they were ok, but felt like they needed to be pushed out in order to make room for new work. I've taken the paintings and painted over them on a couple of occaisions, wondering about the person who painted them (all the canvases were signed by Kelly Reinhardt). So I hoped to instill a similar sort of wonder in someone else by taking a page from Kelley and writing my website in sharpie on the back of the paintings and having a 2 AM opening at my own makeshift gallery. My hope is that someone driving by will see them, pick one up, take it home, check out this website and have a brief glimpse into the life and art of another person, however as I write this I can already hear the trash trucks scouring the streets and I know they've already shut down my little gallery before it even had a chance to see the light of day.
The Junkman makes music with mailboxes, saw blades, frying pans and beer cans. But he has also composed two pieces for Twyla Tharp and performed with both Eminem and the Louisville Symphony.
