Laundromat Angel | Morgan City, Louisiana

I love a good industrial port city and Morgan City definitely fits the bill. I do some banking and tour around a bit but laundry is critical. The crowded laundromat parking lot is full of homeboys, large families and other rough looking folk loitering outside which has me going into reverse. A lap around town, demonstrates that this is the only option and I return to the same intimidating scene. 

On The Road

I enter and fill two front loaders noticing that it seems cleaner than it appeared from the outside. Thinking that if these folks see my computer they might try to rob me when I’m in doing my laundry, I return to the van to work. Best to get in and out of here. Well, I go back in and find one of my loads sitting in two inches of water. The attendant is nice and helps me get them into another washer but this means I’ll be here another two hours. Annoyed and a bit pissy, I return to the van and work on my now camouflaged with newspaper computer. When finally packed and ready to go, I can’t find my wallet. I search and search and begin to unload the van. A woman, who looks like she has emptied all her polyester bedding from her trailer into her barely running beater, yells “Honey, you lookin fer your wallet?” Stunned, I nod and she says she saw it atop of the washer and turned it in to the attendant. I thank her profusely, feeling the shame of my preemptive judgment of her, this place and its patrons. I’m such a cracker from the north.

Introduction To American Bones

American Bones is a project supported by my friends, family and patrons of my work. It is a two year endeavor that involves completing a two month long painting residency in New Mexico at the beginning of 2012. This will be followed by a five-month road trip culminating in a potential year long residency in New Mexico for the following year. From 2012 through 2013 I will be working on exploring the deep cultural threads of America, both past and present. The paintings and photographs will explore our nation’s regionalism and distinct cultural roots.  Driven by what creates these distinctions, I am examining how they contribute to the common thread that is Americanism. I am painting a new version of Americana.

2012 The Roadtrip:

America by car with a dog is definitively a cultural rite of passage for Americans. My retired greyhound, Diesel Lamar, and “Foxy Brown” my Chevy van, will go from San Francisco to Corrales, New Mexico to complete a two-month artists-in-residency.  I will then be back on the road, going through Texas, the Gulf Coast and the Eastern seaboard all the way to the Canadian border.  In Maine, I will stay for two months to paint.  August will find me back on the road traveling through the Rust Belt, the Midwest and The West, returning to San Francisco on the first of September.

 2013 The Residency:

I am applying to Roswell’s Artists in Residency program, a highly competitive program asking for a commitment of an entire year. I will need this time to assimilate all my photos, paintings, sketches, found images, writings and experiences to create the final American Bones body of work. Here I will come to terms with all I have seen and distill it into a series of work that describes what is and has been American from the Anasazis to the DC Lobbyist.