A Word of Explanation:

Many years ago... the 1980s, I was living and working in New York City. While I had been exhibiting, I still felt very much the "outsider"; not a part of any group, trend or movement. Not feeling proper recognition as an artist, I chose to make a simple work that I felt would state my connection to the flow of art history.

I placed myself, naked, within a sandpainting in the corner of my studio on 42nd Street. Photographed myself crouching in the sand with a rope tied around my waist. In the final work, exhibited in 1990 as part of a solo show with American Fine Arts, Co., that rope, when it exited the frame of the photo, was lined up with a section of rough twine which continued out across the wall. That twine, chosen to duplicate the look of the rope, was then tied around a second photograph, the "Venus of Willendorf".

In this way I was hoping to present myself as tied to the very first example of art; connected to and through all of Western art history. Perhaps naively, I didn't realize until recently that by creating this particular work I had set off a chain of events as surely as Indiana Jones stepping on just the right cobblestone in that temple.
Looking back, I think you'll agree that there was very little information about this Mayan Apocalypse thing before that time, the moment I created this work.
If you look carefully, the rope which begins at the beginning, at the Venus, is tied around my waist and then just stops. It doesn't continue through me on into the future of art or, for that matter, the future of the world...
and it does say: "I AM THE CLOSING DOOR, I AM THE DOOR THAT CLOSES."

[BACK TO MAIN 2012 PAGE]