Roots Design: Art and Architecture for the People

"Faith is a means by which one resigns oneself to the present in order to invest in the abstract promise of the future."- Cuauhtemoc Medina Implied in this defining is the intolerable dimension of the present. The not-right-ness of now. In societies of plenty it is not the radical faith of Roman Catholic Europe and it's Conquests so much as the obstinate pagan rituals and ecstasies, like Burning Man, that displace the discontent of a people into a place of never coming to be. The ancient Egyptians, with their millennial Nile rhythms and ossified social structure, employed conservative religious narratives that functioned as continuance rites; their is no longing, no faith in them. But for the laboring masses? Which animal headed deity promised deliverance? Which was not a player in the annual pageant of sowing and flood, harvest and continuance, subservience and dominion? In this context, the monotheist impulse could be read as a proto-socialist uprising. Deliver...

It's funny when, how, given enough time, and distance, ideas can just crystallize in the mind, they emerge, following a written (drawn) structure, ineffably certain; maddeningly clear. My paintings are about space. I am interested in space. In how it is constructed, in how we perceive it. And how shapes of it define what is and what is not. I am fascinated by the political implications of space, and the psychological. And it is this thing, this noun, this obtuse, effusive noun, that drives me to make my pictures the way I do. See I make records of movements. These records are always threatening, in my experience, to dissolve into unorganized conglomerations (re: my studio, truck, etc) of junk: meaningless. Detritus. Chaos. The human will, with it's disposable, no, opposable thumb and soaring visual capacity and preoccupation with the future (re: fear), cannot exist, has no reality, without them, these records of movements, but they must be actuated, they must mean. A...

Oakland Joey doing "The Douche" She just doesn't know what to say. It's so...round Girl can boogie on her bootie like nobodies biz dreamtime, sunset/moonrise on All Souls Eve in Alamo Square Park

So, a few weeks ago my good friend Eugene Steele approached me and asked me if it would be possible to construct a temple that incorporated many aspects of the religious history of the world that would celebrate the diversity and uncanny unity of humanities' highest spiritual ambitions. Sure, no problem I said. I haven't slept since. The All People's Temple is 12' x 8' painting on 1/4 " door skin that has been jigsawed out into sections representing religious architectures from various historical periods/geographic regions. The pieces fit together and will be mounted on a 3/4 " plywood backdrop that supports a painting of a stylized Tree of Life, representing the organic and biologic unity of our species and planet. The performance will involve digital video and music created and sequenced by the !APT to create a loose narrative expressing different periods of the building of the All Peoples Temple, which will be enacted kinetically by the acclaimed perf...

Step 1 ish

Like these guys, and more. So much damn feeling all the time. Se la vie, je suis. The fat comedian said: "If you were one of those dumb americans who took French in high school instead of Spanish, I hope you get stabbed at a taco truck." God, I love taco trucks. They're part of my heritage. Let us pray now