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The Junkyard

Posted on January 27, 2011January 29, 2011 by Varg

View Larger Map Update: More from Candice here. I just bought a ’90s era truck and it needs a few things so I ventured out to “Pull-a-Part” out by Boomtown Casino and the Harvey Canal a little while back to get a tailgate assembly, a door cable and whatever else I could find on the…

Soft Sunday

Posted on February 17, 2008 by Varg

It’s Sunday morning and Mahalia Jackson is humming through the Winamp. Rain is trickling through the busted up gutters and we can barely hear the calliope from across the river behind hallelujahs and upper rooms. In a moment, I will step on to the porch, drink some milky coffee and consider how to muster up…

Oh The Humidity

Posted on June 8, 2007 by Varg

Today was the day. The day when people talk to total strangers about the humidity just for the sake of empathy. Walking into Walgreens, a black man man mutters “shit” and a white man concurs, “nasty out here.” The steamy cottons and rayon stick to spongy skin and upper lips are porous. The windows are…

The Catch

Posted on February 13, 2007 by Varg

There is a sublime sense of gratification in the catch. It feels like a feat. A crucial play in a big game. You’ve gotten some small purple, green and golds and even some dice but that something special has eluded you. You scan the float and find the right reveler. Not the one plundering their…

There Comes A Time For Empathy…

Posted on October 26, 2006 by Varg

There is a time when empathy becomes too much. When, for one’s on good, they can’t take on any more of their friend’s and neighbor’s subtle suffering. Sometime, you have to stop feeling it all. The bodies were everywhere. And not only during the storm. Even before. In a city like this, the bodies just…

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Rejoice!

I say that a lot. I sign many pieces with it. I do this because I believe our lives are a true happenstance. A brilliant occurence from nothingness. We are so rare. We are so unlikely. And simply being born isn’t enough. From there we must survive, endure. So each morning, after our Sun departs and is reborn again. Please, for the sake of your ancestors and the Universe in general, hoist that cup of joe up and say, “Rejoice.”

Ours is a soulful existence. No matter how many McMansions, polyester fabrics, auto-tunes, modified foods and social networks we surround ourselves with, we are all still native, passionate beings made of ancient matter. We are organic and we have soul.

Wood also has a warm, soulful quality. Wood has a memory. It retains smells, traumas, events. It even has a calendar. This is why I have chosen it as my medium, for its old soul. I like to think the wood in my work is in its third incarnation. First a tree, then a home and now art. If you have a room that needs a little soul, get a piece. A room can never have enough soul.

My inspiration and subject matter comes from many sources, among them: Humanism, old ballads, trickster tales, flora and fauna, science, myths and folklore, stringed instruments, brass bands, amber spirits, lady vocalists, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Some of my pieces are there just to make a short, simple statement about what’s important in life. Some are more diffuse and abstract in meaning. A personal drama, an enduring line from a poem or novel, a poignant song lyric, the legacy of an important person, a fleeting thought … these are the subjects of my art.

I use hearts often because they are a very abstract way of depicting the human soul without also employing the very subjective human form. The symbolic heart is an apt representation for a person’s experience and essence. A body can immediatly conjure happiness, sorrow, youth, age, anger, bliss. These emotions can get in the way. Sometimes it’s simply about the experience.

I am the son of a sailor and a social worker, the grandson of a gypsy, a dancer and a nurse. I spent my youth moving from port city to port city, watching a lot of road go by and reading World Book Encyclopedia. After my parents settled down on the Gulf Coast, I was a miscreant youth, destroying cars and taking the wrongs things too seriously and the right things not serious enough. Eventually I began replacing my imagination with experience.

I will use any salvaged wood but prefer swamp cypress and longleaf heartwood pine.

I despise waste. Particularly the waste of organic matter. Trees are magnificent. They were here before we arrived and they’ll be around after we are gone. I’m making an effort to save as much wood as possible. Creating art is fun too. But beyond communicating with folks, but beyond making money ad providing for myself, beyond rescuing flooded parts, beyond reveling in the ethereal aroma of heartpine that hasn’t seen the light of day in 400 years, beyond all that, I am trying to make a simple comment on waste.