objects we live with can excite us .. the ones we we leave behind will eulogize us ...

... elvis was adopting certain images of himself, using objects as hidden references of who he was, or longed to be ...

... his hand on the grip, this thumb firmly on the trigger, elvis held his gun, but pointed it where exactly, at whom was the business end of his pistol directed, what was he trying to communicate?

blam! bang! boom! ... it's almost humorous to observe his shot out television sets .. .45 slugs blasted through the screen, images destroyed, anger released ... tension and frustration expelled, a beautiful visual of a beautiful man firing his very beautiful gun .. but what did this aggressive, private and revealing gesture say underneath it's surface of visual and emotional composition .. what was elvis really going through?

elvis was made a memphis police officer, an object of authority, an object of admiration to some, and a threat to others, of security, and insecurity ... elvis had the right to carry his pistols with him, he fired them, he connected with the power of the gun, what was elvis's real connection to authority?

elvis's tennessee operators license .. reminds us that he was " just " one of us ... a mortal man, a man struggling to discover his own sense of identity, although so many around him were trying to project their own hidden identities onto him, trying to make him who " they " wanted or wished themselves to be .. they really did want a piece of him, they wanted him to complete them somehow, this mortal, sexy, exciting, but ultimately very human and humble man ...

... a humble man from humble beginnings, whose life would be changed forever, and whose search for his own identity would always be a driving element of his life, both in public, and in private ...

elvis's federal narcotics badge ... his pistol, his federal credentials, his meeting in the oval office with president nixon, the famous photograph of the president and elvis together ... what was elvis trying to say to us, what was elvis really trying to find out himself, what was he missing inside that he didn't have, what was hiding deep inside his heart, his soul ... what did elvis need that he would spend his whole life trying to find out, what do any of us really need?

they were each going through their own private demons every day, each with the weight of the world on their shoulders, and each still trying to figure out how they both fit in ...

stripped of all else, elvis was a complicated man, trying to balance what the public expected of him with what he himself really needed, to find out who he was underneath all the massive hype, fame and unrelenting public attention ... elvis was always on a search back to himself, to an earlier time in his life ... in the end, I think he was really striving so hard to get back to the innocence of earlier times ... to be comfortable just being elvis.

carrying multiple fragments of my restless mind i drove aimlessly and fully asleep holding loosely onto the wheel...

... the city was broken up into flashes of image, pieces of life flickering before me like a remarkable and seductive landscape of infinite possibilities ...

... red red and then black were around me, so I kept moving throughout this image, into this transcendental and beautiful nocturnal world ...

... my mind was following these fragments, capturing moments, holding light, form, shape and tension, carrying me somewhere else...

... the sharp subliminal edits made more sense and none at all, as one image bled into the next, locations became more blurred and finding any new geography was becoming more difficult...

more lost now I began to feel more and more relaxed, giving myself over to the seduction of the dream, the car moved on it's own as i traveled from point to point, losing control of every movement and giving myself over...

i was finally getting really comfortable, totally floating, more asleep than ever before, more awake and alert to my true emotional state. fragments were pulling me away from my own desire to think in any one way, carrying me around, letting everything just happen...

... made no sense whatsover to resist this nocturnal movement or this immense psychological energy that was now moving me around from place to place ...

it wasn't long before they escorted me off the perimeter...

it's around three in the morning and i had been driving all day, things looked so much more innocent earlier, but now everything had turned, people were close by, and i wasn't really sure what was going on in there ...

... it's a post 9-11 world, and we're all looking out more now, keeping an eye out for our neighbors, for people we don't recognize, staying closer to home, and living around what we think we feel is safety ...

... the lights are playing tricks at this point, half tired, pushing to stay alert, to discover what others are feeling inside their private sanctuaries of subdued urban comfort ...

... not trying to make anyone unduly uncomfortable, pretty sure the police are out looking for me at this point ... exploring, seeing, sort of drifting and feeling my way around here - why are " they " still awake?

... turn a corner and it becomes more menacing, the dark night is intensifying more rapidly than it had just an hour before, less people, but they all have a different energy level, far more neurotic, and i still have to navigate and keep an eye out.

it always feels good in the dark, it feels hypnotic and sexual and exciting, like anything can happen in the next moment ...

what kind of a rebel carries both a pistol and a badge?

elvis was just a man reading the paper ... but at the same time was creating a revolution in american music and was about to change forever in the worlds eyes ...

... he would get ready for the day just like the rest of us; out of shower, groomed, ready ...

... but years later, he would carry an authorized federal narcotics badge, a symbol that carries with it the opposite image of his earlier years, a loaded symbol of authority - what was elvis now saying to us, to himself?

... wouldn't we like to carry one of these identity badges too? what do our things say about us, how do we reconcile the different aspects of our personality, of our aspirations?

... then, he would be pulled at by the world's image of him, stripped of his earlier identity, his public image was being remolded and formed anew ..


still holding precariously onto his earlier status, there was always that glimmer that shone from deep within him - he was still this man " king " sitting atop a throne to so many ...

... but what was really going on deep inside of him, what conflicting identities was elvis still struggling to reconcile?

laying down on the ground ... were stacks of targets with bullet holes elvis had shot out ...

coming off the road, elvis liked to let off some steam ...

... who are these people in silloutte, what were the frustrations that were being expelled from the business end of his pistol?

the images looked different in his mind, as they looked different in mine making these Emulsion and gelatin paintings, I was seeing fragments, a discharge of ideas, making my point with liquified emulsion as elvis was making his with bullets ...

... the canvas stretched around the frame as elvis's mood was stretched around his mind, all the forces and people pulling at him, everyone wanting a piece of him ..

... elvis's gun would soon be aiming at a new target ...

authenticity: making real an image the public has made unreal

elvis on his bicycle on a backlot in hollywood, an immediate juxtaposition of real vs unreal, man vs image, representation vs innocence ...

and then the interpretation of the innocence is again brought back to media form ...

as an artist i'm removing the initial context and isolating the conversation, placing elvis's legacy, the public's perceptions and contemporary art into a renewed dialogue.

... using old media to tell a new story, here taking the source material used to make the artwork above, a photo-polymer gravure print, edition of 25 works, 22 x 30 inches, and here making a unique Emulsion and gelatin painting, 45 x 54 inches, applying brushstrokes of liquified emulsion and then dripping stain and gelatin onto the canvas in the dark, I then project the negative/positive image of elvis onto the surface of the painted canvas, then process this material in the darkroom, markmaking and stains still visible on the surface, thus again moving the image into another contextual place.

object of authority

This artifact work pairs the Federal Narcotics badge, given to Elvis by President Nixon in 1970, with his own custom-made Colt 45 semi-automatic pistol.

... establishing the paradox between Elvis’s well known rebel reputation against his lifelong obsession with authority.

The chine colle ( collage ) element brings the viewer closer to the authentic “feel” of the physical object itself - displayed here under glass at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA - this work takes on a new resonance by its exhibition as an object of an object ....

... and again here this same work can be seen juxtaposed against Warhol's Elvis in the background - we can see where Warhol focused on the iconic aspects of Elvis Presley, my works are more about relating to the more mortal man behind all the publicity and hype - connecting us to the private objects he connected to as way of connecting to the more personal aspects of Elvis's personality - exploring the things that connect us back to him.