Recent Masterpieces

On the night of Friday, August 13th, 2010, I suffered a minor tear in my left calf muscle trying to run through a fountain with Veronica. She successfully made it to the other side and back dry, while I took two running steps before the snap in my leg sent me hopping in sickly retreat to the starting point. Not my proudest athletic moment, and for someone who lives at the top of a five floor walkup it was a reckoning. But I did have the good fortune of dating a terrific girl, and she took me in for 5 weeks as well as my dog, and took true VIP care of us both.

When New Perspectives Theatre Company approached me about Theatre is Served, I was convalescing at her apartment, my leg in a cast. What astounding timing, except for their need for it to be a “work of art” completed yesterday. Not being in possession of an operational time machine and being a notoriously slow worker to begin with, I got to work on it right away and was pretty diligent in logging full working day hours on it each and every day I had. But my deadline did require an extension to the absolute boundary of what they could tolerate and still make use of the piece in time for an upcoming event, or about two weeks. Some artists can churn out brilliant work in hours, for me two weeks is often barely enough time to sketch out my ideas and to allow those ideas to begin to marinate and take form. But I did my best in the finite time I had to bring them something resembling a finished piece, a “work of art”.

Theatre is Served is a staged reading series in which the audience is served a meal which has a thematic connection to the play being read. The notion is that this dining experience echoes the French cabarets of the 19th century, and therefore the piece was to be fashioned in the spirit of the old cabaret posters. How could I not immediately turn to my fellow whoremonger, Toulouse Lautrec, for inspiration? He became my clear, instant muse and his work my palpable template. There are three elements in my piece which directly lift from him in reimagined forms, in this, my homage to the master, Toulouse.

I’m one of those people who look back at college fondly and maybe a little more often than I should. Glory days? Not exactly, but I developed a pretty rich social life at SUNY Purchase. I learned a few things, in and out of the classroom, and I seemed to come to know a lot of people in my community in a relatively short time. I was a very active boy.

In the moment I wasn’t able to appreciate the experience, of course, the way I do in reflection; much as I don’t experience current moments the way I will in reflection, hopefully. It’s the people from that time and place at SUNY Purchase still keenly in my life as well as those more peripherally so, and those with whom I’ve reconnected or with whom I may reconnect, which keeps my nostalgia potent by continuing to bring fresh input and opportunity.

The filmmaker Wendy Jo Cohen was studying for her BFA in Film while I was at Purchase, and so as you can imagine I was out-of-my-shoes thrilled when she reached out to me to do some artwork for her current project, The Battle of Pussy Willow Creek. I drew two related pieces, Operation Helping Hand and Operation Divide and Conquer for the film, a mockumentary she wrote, directed and produced about “the outrageous tale of four forgotten heroes, the [Civil War] battle they fought, and the bigoted political cover-up that erased their stunning victory from the history books”. My drawings are only small contributions, since scores of renderings by dozens of artists appear in support of this fantastic tale of American history.

The Cinematography by Matthew Howe is sweet, and not just because of all those memories of playing Dungeons & Dragons with him both at Purchase as well as for several years after in the basement of the Knight residence on West 93rd Street or the West residence in Park Slope. One of the talented comedic principals in the cast, Maureen Brooks, was my most significant girlfriend at SUNY Purchase, and one of my most significant romances of any era in my life. We lived together, and dated for several years after school as well, and off and on stuff & etc. There were probably other SUNY Purchase alumni who contributed to Wendy’s film, too; after all, it has a rich cast of contributors. Anyway, let me not look back more than I should.