Trapped Spirits - Part 1

While roaming around in an antique/vintage market place in Greensboro, NC a few years ago, I occasionally noticed among the bric-a-brack stuff a doll or figurine catching my attention because of some odd or weird vibe that seemed eminate from within it. Obviously, the form and/or face objectified the sense of weirdness, but the energy of the form was heightened. Having my camera with me I began to shoot photographs of them; at home later, they got filed and put away in the hard drive and that was that. The next time I was down there again, a year later, I noticed a few more odd dolls and juxtapositions of them, so recorded them as well.

Fast forward to one of the local Art Walk Fridays a few months ago. I was in a crappy state of mind when wandering in an out of lord knows how many galleries and studio spaces that night, and got really cranky and judgemental with thoughts of how nothing was holding my attention long enough to even warrant stopping in front of what was on the wall....anywhere. Bored to distraction but for some good cheese I found to eat at one gallery, I left for home, grumbling and muttering to myself, "am I so numb nothing is getting through, or was the art as bland as it seemed to me?" I can be a total art snob ass, so it's hard to say.....and certainly I haven't changed the world of art history with anything I've done, but that's the way it went down.

When I got home, I thought about the creepy dolls in my hard drive, and driven by vitriol (is that the word?) I brought them out and feverishly started working on them long into the night, figuring, at least if you saw one of these fuckers blown up large peering out from up on a wall, it would make you stop and feel something, at least for a moment. I certainly know this idea of images isn't new, and shock factor is a cheap shot, but oddly, over the last few months, it's come to me that this body of images actually follow quite closely the night photographs of "Lifting the Veil of Night" that I've been doing for probably four years now.

It's all about concealment.

I'll get all talky about that in the next post.....for now, here are some of the "Trapped Spirits" that are gonna be blown up 24"x36" big on Kinko paper and t-pinned to the wall of Points of View Gallery in Raleigh some time in April.