Java.June.2016

It’s been more than a decade since you returned to Arizona from New
York. How do you feel your art has changed or evolved?
Artistically I considered myself much more a fiction writer when I was living
in New York. I was painting then, too, but mostly I was writing every day,
in a dedicated closet at a child’s desk and chair in room 1024 of the Hotel
Chelsea. That big day in September [9/11], I was on the way back from walking
my son, Tosh, to school and I was intent about a whole day ahead of writing (I had
some serious momentum going for a book I was writing at the time) when that
spectacular set of events started to unfold.
A dastardly case of writer’s block ensued, and some other kinds of blocks. When I
finally found my way back to Phoenix and could justify creating again, I landed on
the visual side of things, painting and collaging and connecting found-sentences
that unfold and evolve much like writing does. For five of those years, in a project
I call “the sentence camera,” I wrote overheard sentences of interest to me on my
arm in Sharpie. At the end of the day, I’d write these individual phrases in a book,
and these unrelated things would connect to themselves, to each other, and form
an uncanny prose.
What creative works are inspiring you lately?
My friend Bryn Chancellor recently published a book of short stories titled, When
Are You Coming Home? It’s beautiful and reminds me where I was once, and
that I still want to write. Musically, I’m inclined to the random and have been
experiencing a lot of what a friend calls “talknology”—amazing coincidences in
language and theme, as if the podcast were coming from inside my brain. Early
on, I was very connected to John Cage’s ideas in discovering chance, and I think
that has been a fundamental itch I scratch in my work.
What does exhibiting your work mean to you?
Communication. Connection. Story. Synchronicity. We’re all in this together. I’d
make these things whether they’d be exhibited or not. I’m not at all technically
adept, I can’t draw at all, and I often say, “I use paint more than I am a painter.”
What I make is a result of these limitations. But as my piece, I planned to mail
them, says, “listen, I must speak you something.” I know that connection, or even
comprehension, isn’t remotely going to happen in every piece with every viewer,
but when it does, the synchronicity makes my brain tickle.
Casebeer
“I Hope You’re Feeling Better”
Tilt Gallery
Through June 14
Closing reception: Thursday, June 9, 6–10 p.m.
www.tiltgallery.com
Now a Leading Independent Research Firm Proves it, 48x48
The Dog Bone of Inequity, 10x10
There’s One Reason, 20x20
JAVA 17
MAGAZINE