Just published e-book on Lulu.com

http://www.lulu.com/content/1064343

http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=1198115

Hope to publish more of my works and writings there and recommend LULU to you!

"And Thou Art" .. we are One with all things, or so it feels in certain moments. I found an interesting fellow, Dr. Alesha Sivartha (1834-1915). He was a writer and an illustrator of life, I was looking at his drawings and his words. He seemed to have that zeal for life itself, in understanding it, in feeling it.

Sometimes you have people life Dr. Sivartha or Leonardo da Vinci and sometimes you have people smoking on a street corner asking for nickels and dimes, dodging the blue and red lights. You have genius and you have survival. You have knowledge and you have addiction. You have mind expansion and mind deflation. You have close-friends and you have stranger-friends, whom you see every 20 years or so, like a shooting star.

http://nichirenscoffeehouse.net/Sivartha/index.html

Let me tell you what is happening.

A man at the train station saw my art work in the folder portfolio. He happened to be one of the directors of the art guild and recreation centers in Rahway. His name is Ally. He said when he returns from vacation he wants to give me exposure in Rahway, and maybe other places. My sister said the other Art director was asking about me and wants me to work in his art gallery, the Art Guild in Rahway. Out of nowhere this happened.

I went to a poetry reading in New York at the Planet One Cafe, with my friend Isaiah, who is a DJ and spinner, poet and educator of world history. A woman there saw some of my work and is interested in somehow exposing it. She said now she is working with a French artist painter in curating his show. She is a curator.

I am taking a sculpture class with Seth Goodwin, the director of the Red Saw Gallery. He has been offering me much advice and coucil. He has been on me about getting a website, and suggested a man by the name of Sebastian, his former roomate, who lives now in Jersey City. So I might be meeting with him to begin that process.

Lets see what will happen ...

I've been working in the art Gallery at Kean. The current Exhibition is Called East TRansplanted West. 7 Chinese Artists in America.

Behind all of this I am filled with assignments and projects for school, and paintings and collages and realtor magazine comic books with homeless drawings glued and juxtaposed onto black and white houses of stone and brick, glass and fancy railings. Imagine that! I'm trying to travel to every train station on the two rails that I ride, from north to south of New Jersey. I just feel that expressing the emotion and reality and fantasy and allegory of New Jersey can be seen through the destination and departing stops of our lives, sip sip, puff puff, hello hello, snap snap, play play, hey hey, scream screaM !

I paint AL and DErick, major works I feel, LArge. More paint than usual. More COllage. More texture in the face of AL. More interior emotion and narrative in the body of Derick. Backgrounds merge with Foregrounds. Works look like palets, works are becoming like Sketchbooks, works are coming alive, I feel.

I spoke with my one painting instructor, who is Polish, and a great figurative painter, who shows in Chelsea, NEw York. She said a lot of my art work was derivative of modern art, like Chagall or Basquiat, because I wrote text in my art work or painted a face with a double eye or tilted head. I didn't know what to really feel. I understand it is important to be aware of your influences, to know who came before you and who did what. She did say the work was mine and that it was very personal.

When I paint I try to paint the series of sights and sensations that have somehow found there way to my eye and mind and soul, and I try to transfer these kinetic spasms and splotches of color and beams that carry word into a painting, or whatever you call my works, maybe just art. an art of something. I'm trying, I am really trying, to just paint for the sake of living and trying to extend the image like a limb or a bough or a bridge to the stranger man or the stranger woman, to weld experience and dream, thoughts and storms.

This is what has been happening ...

Sometimes I think that the process of creating art, i.e. photographing, sketching on trains, painting stains on cotton canvas, sitting and listening to music, glueing scraps of paper, smudging oil on clothes, I sometimes think it is something just of my own world, my own subjective interpretation, or understanding, of this world around my eyes, and that maybe it isn't so important.

But then when the art itself, by itself, looks back at me, it is a look of powerful Spirit and greater than anything I intended, immersing my self into the art so deep that it is now impossible to abandon this life of creation, or so it feels. To look at the process, to see it developing and docking like the boats at bay, buzzes the mind and brings a joy to the Spirit.

This here is a close-up of one of the works in the show at Red Saw Gallery. I centered in on the sketch book, which is close in this photo, but the viewer can feel free to open it and look inside, to see the drawings, the other people the artist saw and heard. The sketch book was a way to include them. IT was a way to let them in, to offer another dimension, more space. There is always enough room. We can always find a way. But that is not the only reason. I want the viewer to look at the work as if it is like a story, for it to be an intimate encounter, a searching, a reading, a discovering. Like when reading books or a novel or an art journal or your long lost mother's diary that she might have left behind.

RED SAW
Presents
PULP
works on paper

June 2nd-23
Reception June 2nd 6-9

Daniel Brophy
Sarah Davis
Matthew di Leo
Jerry Gant
Johann Joshnowitz
Michael Metzger
Erick Osman
Jesse Wright

Curated by Seth Goodwin
After party at 27MIX

Red Saw Gallery
585 Broad Street, Newark, NJ 07102
redsawart@gmail.com www. Redsawart.com
Open Thursdays 6-9 and by appt.

The "Works on Paper" show is coming up soon. IT is from June 2-26, at the Red Saw Gallery, redsawart.com is the website. I have been working for many hours, going through many cds of music, from rock, to pop, to classical, to electronic, moving fast and slow, organized and shuffled, nevertheless I have been on track painting these tracks. I've been superimposing my soul into these works. They are intimate works. They are like some of the earlier train station works, but something new about them is happening.

I've been growing more confident in the art. Some days I am not so confident. So I pray. I pray for the strength to believe and have faith. I pray that my mind will be calmed. I pray that the imagery of this life flows into it just enough so that I can create an important art for those who wish to look.

Tomorrow the gallery director comes to my studio. He will choose which ones he wants for the show. He said that he would like 5-7 of my works in the show. I hope some of them are not too big. I hope he likes what has happened in that attic over the past 2 weeks.

One night I decided to paint AL. I began drawing with vinal charcoal on a piece of board I found. The next morning AL was in the tunnel (AL was missing for a year).

I have been painting with the creamy oils. Painting AL's face almost made me cry. I was thinking I might want to give the Bridge painting to Bono. I'm finishing up the semester, studying Kant and Hatshepsut.

I believe art can perform the act of a miracle if the artist is willing to follow through and act with it. I was thinking about the artist and how the artist invests his time in the stages inbetween the rest and art-making act. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about how far do I really want to go with the power of art. I believe Plato had something to say about beauty. I believe Kant had something to say about Beauty. I believe all of us have something to contribute to beauty and what that really means for the world and for ourselves.

I went underneath the bRidge last night. Its such an empty place. I wonder where all those people came from in the painting?

I was thinking last night. I was thinking, "all these things underneath this bridge, (i.e., plastic forks, soup tins, grocery cart wheels, broken vhs camera, metal crate, bottles, stones), all of it, all of it left-over, the remnants of someone's desperate hour or hours, someone's shadowy escape. why do I find myself looking at this trash. but is it trash? it was once touched by human fingers. Why do I find myself picking up a piece of ripped clothing stained with dry blood, tucking it into my sketch folder? Its so empty underneath here, its so rocky, so dark and lonely." All I knew was that I needed to be there. I need to sometimes be there, to wait there, to lean against the wall there. It is like some monastary. It just feels good to be out and to watch the world, even the lonely world, or lost civilization(s) underneath the bridge.

I was thinking. I walk to look. I was thinking. Whenever one goes to walk, something will happen to them, a person will stop you in your tracks. I was stopped. His name was roB. He said, "do you got 50 cents for my friend here who needs to get home?" After checking my pockets, I said, "No, I don't. I use my money for paint. I usually don't have any money on me." Rob and his friend asked me, "What do you paint?" I told them, "I paint people." Rob's friend responded, "You can make a lot of money doing that!" Rob said, "Hey man, do you think you can design my tatoo?" I said, "Maybe."

Rob's friend left. It was just me and Rob. I've seen Rob around, just never spoke with him. He said, "Why do your drawings look like that, like broken people?" I said, "Its just what happened when I was drawing. Sometimes I am not always in control. I feel more free drawing like this." We then drew some windows on this train I drew earlier. He said, "I am f... drunk, hope you don't mind ... I work too much, I have no time."

That was it really. He looked drunk. His head was hanging. He spilled his orange soda and yelled, "Oh shit!"

I've been passing in and out of consciousness, whatever this means.

So this is what is going on. The bridge is safe in the gallery. One of my professors wants to come to my studio and buy another piece, a larger piece, the same professor who bought "Empty Pockets." The briDge hangs. The paints have arrived. I ate Tofu at a friend's house.

Tomorrow is the Exhibition opening for us students. The Bridge is on the faR back wall in the Middle of the Gallery, exactly where I imagined it to be, and it was there when I walked in today. ThE bridge speaks all Languages. It tilts. IT spills. It has no home, just temporarily renting out in this space. (It cannot fit in my house, so I have to figure out what to do with it after the show.)

People have been looking at the bridge, close and from afar, and have asked about the bridge. IT has been good to talk about the bridge. People have talked about hope underneath the bridge. People have said how so much is happening. Some people cannot stand there too long, they walk away ... maybe afraid to confront it for what it might reveal to them. I don't know. Most people have stood there and really looked, which is what I hope for, it is for them, I did it for them.

Feelings change every day, every second, even ... you cannot always depend upon or believe them ... the other day I was depressed about the paintings, like "what am I doing?" ... then with a couple of glazed strokes here and there in a new bridge painting and the thought of the first bridge being hung in the gallery made me feel "good, aware and confident" in the paintings.

If the artist can just paint the right amount of strokes each day ... he will know refreshing mists of rain on his face ...

I have a meeting with the city of Elizabeth about the Bridge Exhibition. The Youth and Culture Department want to see the art, to give a presentation. I emailed them and was told to call them. So I did that. And now this is the next step. I want to buy a portfolio book and put digital images in it, along with writings, and maybe a dvd. All I can do is let the art speak for itself as itself.

I contacted Matt today, he is coming over to build the frame for the Bridge Painting, which will be in the Large Kean Gallery across from where I had the show. I am excited to see it stretched and ready to hanG. I feel close to this painting, like something is new about it, something that combined all the paintings into one. I don't know.

I called Derick in the tunnel, I think his mother picked up, she said she hadn't seen him in 3 days. His girlfriend's number was not available. I will keep trying, or wait for his call. We are going to have a collaborative tunnel art event, jazz and painting.

The tips of tubes
are now chimneys
and smoke-stacks,
oozing with paint,
paint as puffs of smoke.

I have been lacking in the reading. I have been caught up underneath the bridge for most of my days...

Sometimes I do not even recognize my own working.
Things just happen.