True Story

I just finished this piece tonight. I'm still not sure how I feel about this one, but I'm excited because I think that the next piece I do will be really nice- I'm figuring out lots of technical things about how to work with these new materials. I'm using magic markers in addition to my usual ballpoint pens, and I love them to death.

This one is called True Story.





The little text on the left says "All our nonsense aside, one never quite expects to feel this way." Then below that there's a cockroach saying, "Much less talk about it." Below that there's another bug saying "Much less make art about it."

Right above the dove heads there is a pair of ants: one is saying, "To preserve appearances" and the other is saying "We keep mum about feelings. (Dumb.)"

The rest you can read for yourself.





Or maybe not. The tiny text says, in pink, "Must we stick to" and then in black, "deep words about superficial things and superficial words about deep things."



One of my teachers in grad school was the incredibly charismatic poet and art critic Bill Berkson. I remember distinctly that he once said that there were two kinds of people- those who were interested in people and those who were interested in things. The latter was preferable- the distinction was framed in terms of being interested in art or being interested in gossip. I tried hard to give the impression that I was interested in things because I was totally fascinated by Bill Berkson. (As had been, it was rumored, Bianca Jagger, so I was in good company.) In any case, his offhand remark has not aged nearly as well as he had, and this piece is, among other things, my rebuttal, twenty years later. (Although I won't love him forever- that part is about the baby bird.)

You can see bigger images here.