Sunday, April 8, 2012
STEP THREE: FUNNY PICTURES AND DRUG REFERENCES
"Clonazepam", 2011
Fun things to do when you are kind of high on prescription drugs: Draw a self-portrait in Photoshop, as in the image above.
This was not at all an original concept. There's another guy who has made a whole practice out of making art that is about his experiences with altered perception and substance use. His name is Bryan Lewis Saunders, and you can find his website here: http://bryanlewissaunders.org/drugs/
He's pretty honest about how fucked up his project was in the beginning, and that it almost caused lasting damage to his faculties, but I'm fascinated by his dedication to making his intoxicant portraits an authentic experience for his own purposes.
While we're on the topic of depicting drug experience in visual art, let's also embed a link to the most fantastic video ever to appear on the Youtubes, "Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No" by James Blagden.
Most newer Mac products come with a webcam that can tilt and bend the face in stupid ways, which is where I think most of that creative impulse to depict oneself while in an altered state gets deposited. They all preselect an algorithm that makes predictable facial shifts appear on camera. I don't like most of them, except for the vertical flip, which allowed me to see what I would look like if I had perfectly symmetrical facial features.
FRIGHTENING!
STEP ONE: TELL A STORY
I lived in Seattle in my late teens and early twenties. I think that you know this already.
I got a job shortly out of high school at Seattle Art Supply. The business is gone now, but at the time was a fairly successful vendor of fine art products, most of which the staff couldn't afford without either the staff discount or the five-finger discount.
The pay was kind of shit, like most retail, but it had its perks. One of those perks was working in the Market neighbourhood, at the bottom corner of Belltown, right before it got all full of condos and was still this sort of no-man's-land of cheap rental units and questionable brewed coffee. Neighbourhood still had some character then, is what I'm saying.
One of those characters was a guy named Darryl. Local artist. We used to save the leaky tubes of paint and broken pastels for him to use. He came by almost every day. He would purchase material if he'd made a good sale. Hung out on a couple of corners, hawked his wares. He painted on pretty much any flat surface, so tile, shale, plaster, pressboard, 2x4s, everything.
I bought a piece off of him, Electric Schoolteacher, but I ended up leaving it in the care of my ex when I left Seattle. A figurative piece, a little deKooning in execution; electric because she's neon blue with a pink miniskirt and schoolteacher because she's also wearing glasses. Probably my favourite out of any art pieces I own.
Fast forward a decade later: I move to Portland from Vancouver, where my ex and his lady are also living, for a little while longer. I ask about the Electric Schoolteacher, because I would like to install her in my new home, whereupon I'm sadly informed that she was stolen years ago when they first moved into their house.
I have since often wondered what's happened to Darryl and was pleased to come across news of this documentary that someone made about his art and his process. Darryl is a pretty visionary artist.
Darryl Ary Trailer from Pathetic Pictures on Vimeo.
And a happy ending! I found the Electric Schoolteacher leaning up against a tree on a Portland side street several months after arriving in Portland. COSMIC
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