One Small Step For Man One Giant Step For Corporations or Adios Amigos

Body

Oh Cisco oh Pancho! - I've been wondering about how all those western shows on TV when I was a kid affected me as an artist. I read about a new book from MIT Press about artist's magazines and the train of thought made me think about the Artpolice as a gang, a gallerist I met in Los Angeles thought Artpolice was a gang albeit working with ink on paper. What ever when the Artpolice was young we were comrades like in a French foreign legion movie. So this new book seems to focus on New York zine scene more that outlanders. I'm going to make a little library at my show at Walker next year (Jan.19-May 6 2012) for Artpolice and Man Bag things maybe put some things out for viewers to examine. Maybe some books too and a couple of Barcelona chairs! They must have some couches at Walker. It's Friday  July 8,2011 in South West Minneapolis on the opposite side of Lake Harriet.

Top Ten List  - 1. Hopalong Cassidy

                        2. Lash LaRue

                         3. Gabby Hayes

                          4. Jingles - Andy Devine

                           5. Cowboy Curtis

                           6. Roy Rogers tied with Gene Autrey

                           7. Clint Eastwood as cowboy with no name (Italian films)

                           8.  Rooster Cogburn by Coen Bros.

                           9. Zorro

                           10. Jack Palance any Western

 Now real bloggers have photos of all these stars. I remember when Gabby Haynes died in 1969, he'd done a kids show after his film career vanished tv really killed the B-movies and the Westerns - people wanted bigger pictures. Spectacles for a new Empire. But the b movies were on tv along with a lot of westerns really dreadful cliche ridden films. I think about films because films define us at the films we chose to see. And as a visual artist I do think of film as an adjacent art. I think the cowboy films enhanced my fantasy life what I might do when I grow up. Being an artist as a child doesn't seem so far fetched and if your mom is all for it then yes you can do it. The work reflects an anxiety at it's own existence knowing how perilous life can be has been might be. One discerns this desperate element in one's work at times of ruin and collapse.

 These cowboys rode through our lives on the flicking so gray screen of our old tv. At one point cowboy shows were broadcast at the time time on different stations. I recall seeing a cinema made up like a cowboy saloon with hitching bars for non-existant horses. Kids dressed up in their cowboy outfits to go to the movies was encouraged at this theater. And it seems to have satisfied this need for stories with justice freedom (and the Amerikan way). Along with country music which misses nothing in it's narrative of the trailer park reservation for white trash America. Flicker on old TV - now all this is gone replaced by so-called reality TV shows. Which are very retro in that they remind me at least of the amateur element in early tv. But really the Bachelorette takes the prize for smarmy she no beauty no prize brain-wise fussing over her selection of utter himbos.. One of these gents to be her spouse oi, they deserve each other. It's Amerika the land of the hype.

 So I remember going to the park with my Mom and her friend (a dude) and I was promised a Howdy Doody marionette if I was good (kept my mouth shut) anyway we stopped at a toy store and they bought me a Mr Bluster marionette because they were sold out of Howdy Doody puppets. As you may remember Mr Bluster was Howdy'd landlord and he was always threatening to put Howdy out. So this marionette had some very bad karma.