2008 - 2009

"A Season in Hell: A Divine Commedy," Installation.

"MARIA:
Let's start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
When you read you begin with

CHILD:
ABC

MARIA:
When you sing you begin with
Do Re Mi"

It really is brilliant lyric. The pairings of lyric, the repetition. No so much imaginative which it is but extraordinarily well executed. After my season of disability, some things change. Somethings are the same.

Architecture plans: Panel 1, Frame3

Architecture plans: Panel 2, Frame 3

Architecture plans: Panel 3, Frame 4

Architecture plans: Panel 1, Frame 5 & 6

2006 - 2009

"The Life of Jesus Christ II," Photographic Series.

2006 - 2007

"Jonathan and David: An Old Testament Story of Gay Love & Commitment," Large Scale Paintings

August 2005

"Quejaditos Y Milagros,"  A Contemporary Collection of Northern California Saints Paintings

"Big Wanda of the House of Fur Bikini's"                                
(April 2005)                                
36" x 24"                                
Oil on Panel                                 

“Quejaditos y Milagros”
“Little Complaints and Miracles” are a collection of ex-votos** for mixed blessings. Like the proverbial backhanded complement, “THOSE pants make you look thin,” these self-portraits are a record of lessons for me on being human mixed in with ingredients from the Frigidaire, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and early Country & Western music. The paintings draw on the likes of Queen Elizabeth, Moses, Kitty Wells, Pam Greer, and events such as Fleet Week, birthdays, and talk about the miracles of everyday which seem like the budget on the movie Titanic.

The accumulation of images in a painting can be looked at as one might listen to Bop: initially overwhelming hooting and grunting, and then later as a coherent expression of an idea. My friend Mona, teaching me about Bop, said “You have to let the music pass through you without listening to any one thing.” These paintings which seem a bulletin board of comment and which may seem “weird” at first viewing, are meant as an invitation to the viewer to look into the paintings and call on our compassion for what it means to be fully human, wicked and divine.

**A word about the form: An ex-voto is a votive offering to a saint or divinity. It is given in fulfillment of a vow (hence the Latin term, short for ex voto suscepto, "from the vow made") or in gratitude or devotion. Ex-votos are placed in a church or chapel where the worshipper seeks grace or wishes to give thanks. Shrines decorated with ex-votos are often the destinations of pilgrimages.

Ex-votos can take a wide variety of forms. In the church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde in Marseille, France, the site of a major local pilgrimage, the ex-votos include paintings, plaques, model boats, war medals and even football shirts given by players and supporters of Olympique de Marseille, the local team. In a corner of the basilica of Saint-Joseph du Mont-Royal in Montreal there is a tall wall with thousands of crutches and other supports from those Brother André supposedly healed. Pope John Paul II recognized the authenticity of the miracles and beatified Brother André in 1982.

 June 2005

"Spooky Like Nina Hagen, The Saints Go Marching In"

Diptych, 24"x36"

Oil on Panel

“Spooky Like Nina Hagen: When the Saints Go Marching In,” is about living in within history, in the present, and looking toward the future. Being a Southerner, an American, gay, and an honorary Latina Catholic, my paintings bring together emotion, machinations, and spirit, and applies a visual megaphone to them. This piece gathers together not the nirvana or even mild disenchantment of how the world should look and behave, but reflects the racism, warmongering and religion gone wrong, a peoples desire for revenge rather than justice which consumes the state of the nation. Pain, fear, and loss can bring beginning--a place where imagination grows towards hope with the shadow of history and a compass to the future. Just as Martin Luther King, the Society of Friends, Mattachine Society, and Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, for me faith must remain in my own footsteps, one step and then the next. When you look at this piece think about the juxtaposition of the traditional Mardi Gras funeral hymn as an insistent punk anthem to better place and time, amped by Nina Hagen:

We are traveling in the footsteps
Of those who’ve gone before
But we’ll all be reunited (but if we stand reunited)
On a new and sunlit shore (then a new world is in store)
And when the sun refuse (begins) to shine
When the moon turns red with blood
On that hallelujah day
Oh when the trumpet sounds the call
Some say this world of trouble
Is the only one we need
But I’m waiting for that morning
When the new world is revealed
When the revelation (revolution) comes
When the rich go out and work
When the air is pure and clean
When we all have food to eat
When our leaders learn to cry
Oh when the saints go marching in
When the saints go marching in
Oh lord I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in

September 2004

"Alter-D Pieces," Saca-Profatychs

""Where Oh, Where Are You Tonight? Why Did You Leave Me Here All alone?  I Searched The World Over And Thought I Found True Love. You Met Another, And 'Plbbb' You Were Gone." After Giotto

Diptych, 80" x 55"
Oil And Gold Leaf on Canvas

These pieces were painted as alter pieces. Sometimes meant to lampoon, empathize, and always to comment and make meaning, these allude to the New Testament story. Maybe you will remember the historical religious paintings as I've reconstituted them in a regional landscape, Midtown Sacramento and the Yolo Causeway. But like similarly handled orange juice, those original paintings don't come back quite right. These pieces are intended start to articulate how the current religious culture as distributed via Fox Television makes any sense to me—a gay, liberal, soy milk drinking Californian in the year 2004. But I also see that my own beliefs are full of contradictory richness and assumed values. But I refuse to give them up without thought, label them as bad, or walk away. What I hope that I'm doing is up-ending my personal tea cup and bin of beliefs and when the contents fall out, divining for value with compassion.

These paintings allow me to acknowledge the goodness of others, and often humorously my own self-obsession. My Dad is for me, St. Jude, Patron Saint of the Impossible. He is the reason these paintings are even hanging on the walls: he helped me build the canvases, the frames, and a giant suitcase in the back of my truck to carry them in. And my friend Debra said upon seeing my paintings, "A little narcissistic, aren't we?" Laughed at me at me while my underwear wadded, and I gasped. And Terry who is James the Greater, Patron Saint of Generators, flew from California to buy and drive a generator 9 hours across Florida to his 75 year-old aunt’s house, sans garage and back patio, because between hurricanes her boyfriend broke up with her and took back the one he loaned her.

These are faith stories: past and present, great and small. And this group of paintings proceeded in just this way: talking, dreaming, laughing, and family making.

May 2004

"Sex And The Single Saint"
24" x 36"
Oil And Gold Leaf on Panel

The fascination with sainthood grew not out of growing up Catholic, but rather as an evangelical-charsimatic-pentecostal-fundamentalist Christian. The Biblical stories of childhood and the stories of the saints enchant and entertain. Much of my current work-both in terms of materials and content-draws on the intersection of my personal geography, history, and historical art. Gold leaf and oil mixed with isolation and the Yolo County landscape combined to produce a visually dark and brilliant meditation on disappointment and hope.

August 2004

"Reflections on Women: The Strength Within," A Group show and Fund Raiser "Women Take Back the Night.

"Even Pallas Athena Surprises Herself And Burns The Toast"

20" x 20"

Oil And Gold Leaf on Canvas

Athena the Goddess of War, Wisdom and Poetry is a woman of thought, action, and reflection. An actor in life, she is, as we are, surprised by the ripples of her actions and is surprised at the power that they make. In doing important things, we sometimes go unconscious in the everyday and, in this case, Athena looses the toaster and needs to laugh.