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| Sarah, 2002/2008 Oil on Encaustic/Acrylic on Board. 4" x 4" |
Remember each box seeks to preserve something. It is storage. It's not a living record - just a dead butterfly pinned to an old cork board. It is documentation and validation. It proves to me that my time had mattered.
To the viewer, I'm not sure what these are. Individually, I think they'll be odd little excerpts from something bigger. Collectively I think they'll be powerful. They'll be a cross-section of the last 30 years of life. Of America and pop culture.
Ultimately, I think they can only be considered at one large installation of a collection of smaller paintings. They are not complete works of art in their own right. They are pieces of a larger idea, and will be seen as so someday.
Above you see Sarah. She is my friend who I worked with at Chicago Children's Museum. We did all of the art programming together in 2001 & 2002. During that time she taught me what toile is. I'd never even heard the word. She dragged me into a Pottery Barn and pointed it out to me. Now I know what toile (or I suppose more accurately what toile du jouy) is. During the time we worked together, we ate a tremendous amount of peanut M&Ms. The combination of these two visuals is a powerful reminder of our time together.
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| Chris, 2003 Oil on Encaustic/Acrylic on Board. 4" x 4 |
This is Chris. When we were in college, Chris incorporated many images of Fisher Price little people into his work. We have been friends for years, but in that process we also became colleagues, as he is a member of my art staff a camp in Maine. As partners, co-teaching drawing and painting in the Fine Arts studio, Bill Watterson's Calvin & Hobbes and the funny ways that their relationship mirrored our own became a recurring theme.
As the Little Boxes progress, I predict that my excitement to see them all in a shared space will also grow. With that I further predict that my motivation to find such a space will also increase, hopefully.
In the meantime, please know that these are two of approximately 400 small paintings. I may post them in greater numbers later. Now that I'm doing the math in my head, I see that if I only post Little Boxes once a week, I would still need 200 weeks to cover the full scope of the project.
Although, I did grant myself the 2016 extension so...we've got time.
(You may resume applause.)
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