AUTUMN OF THE OUTSIDER

Art Street - Sacramento, CA 
144" X 84"' X 120"
Ink, Acrylic, Thread, Canvas, Leaves, Wood, Boots
2017

Private Collection

"Will they silence the artists, the poets and the poor, throw them to the ditch,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  on the road to building their playground for the rich?"  

Taking the Art Street concept of the flaneur, the work seeks to create a contemporary connection through the lineage of Arthur Rimbaud and David Wojnarowicz, two artist poets embodying the concept in both life and work in 19th century Paris and 20th century New York, respectively. In the 1980’s, Wojnarowicz created a photo series called Rimbaud in New York wearing a photocopy mask of Rimbaud’s famous portrait in various modern NY urban situations as the lone figure, the outsider on the fringe. Not long after he created the image Silence = Death where he physically sewed his lips together conjuring a myriad of interpretations by the action. The image here is a riff on these two foundations and a comment on the changing face of this and other cities where increased urban development marginalizes certain voices and pushes them off the grid due to a number of economic factors. The installation image is an homage to that figure, an altar to that idea through a large scale portrait of Rimbaud made with handwritten text drawing, boot prints of paint, lips physically sewn shut, and hundreds of gold painted leaves strewn along a boot print reflection on the floor. The text in the drawing is taken from three sources: Rimbaud’s poetry, Henry Miller’s treatise on Rimbaud entitled Time of the Assassins, and the artist’s own words. Part 2 of the project, unseen here and still in process, consists of a contemporary take on the Rimbaud in New York narrative but set in Sacramento with a Wojnarowicz mask replacing the Rimbaud mask.