March 1, 2017


     These drawings are positioned within the larger world of culture and politics, and embrace the social history and thought of emancipation. The Situationists (1957-1972) attacked capitalist exploitation and its resulting alienation in the lives of the industrialized populace. Elevating the value of children's art, raw subjective psychological states, the handmade, and spontaneity was a critique in itself of the oppressions of consumer society. The intention was to liberate everyday life, and to set up situations favorable to authentic human desires, revolutionary activities in the now, not waiting for a future ideal or coup d'etat. These ideas were expressed as theory, action, living, and artworks.
     With these thoughts in mind, my drawings themselves are a situation, a zone in which otherwise different elements confront each other. Photo images of contemporary and historic political protest, politically oriented short phrases, and various pleasures such as aesthetics, the erotic image, the meaningful work of making the drawings, and spontaneity, are gathered onto a single page.
     The photos represent such events as a lynching, police dog attacks black man in the South, Italian female protestor with bloody face, the hand gesture of unity and solidarity, prominent figures from The Paris Commune, illustration of the toppling of the Vendome Column, amateur erotic photos courtesy of the Kinsey Institute. Patrisse Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, early on described the movement’s mission as “rooted in grief and rage but pointed towards vision and dreams”. The situation of the drawing is a tool for remembering what was and could be.