Madness – Page 5

Nola.com: The Inmates are Running the Asylum

Posted on April 28, 2007 by Varg

I have noticed that Nola.com has incorporated a blog-type comment system into some of their their online news stories. The system allows anonymous comments by everyday Internet users on the stories posted. This can’t be good. What? Free flowing opinions and immediate reaction to local news not good? Reactions are fine. But these are anonymous…

Continue reading

Mainstream media

Posted on February 6, 2007 by Varg

I have always hated mainstream media, and I hate it even more that they are poised for their next blown-out-of-proportion-fest, the killer astronaught lady. Well, I didn’t get done thinking “Why the fuck are they covering this and not New Orleans?” before I clicked on to the long-ago-abandoned Web page of MSNBC and was surprised…

Continue reading

Read Ears? How Do You Read Ears?

Posted on December 17, 2006 by Varg

From the front page of award-winning Nola.com today… Nice.

Continue reading

Seven Shot on Thanksgiving Night. Wait, What?

Posted on November 26, 2006 by Varg

I was checking the news Thanksgiving night on Nola.com and read these headlines: “Two dead after Mid-City shooting.” Then… “Thursday night gunfire kills two more.” Then… “Sixth Ward violence claims another.” Then… “Two men shot in Mid-City” All separate headlines but three of them were about the same incident – a Mid-City shooting in which…

Continue reading

A Dying Breed, Cause They Are Old You Know?

Posted on November 17, 2006 by Varg

This is a questionable headline in today’s Times-Pic and Nola.com in reference to aging Greatest Medal of Honor recipients: Heroes by any reckoning, the soldiers who helped win World War II are a dying breed. Now, I understand that these decorated octogenarians (who defeated Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo) are passing away at an accelerated rate….

Continue reading

Nola.com: The Blind Leading The…

Posted on October 18, 2006 by Varg

I’ve never had a problem with the Times-Picayune. As daily newspapers go, it does its job. Dailys are supposed to be huge, lumbering behemoths whose responsibility it is to be the most accurate and thorough reporter of news in any given city. The daily doesn’t have to be edgy or artistic. It needs simply to…

Continue reading

Previous
1
2
3
4
5

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.