Pouring My Art Out

What is that? It is contemporary art. How do I know that? Because it is in a contemporary art museum. I am a fan of art. I don’t always get contemporary art, but I support it… even when I was in the MOMA, the Museum Of Modern Art in San Francisco once, and there was a pile of bundles of newspapers tied with string in the corner on the top floor, and you couldn’t tell if it was art or just recycling waiting to be picked up. You had to think about it, so I guess that made it art.

I liked this piece. It was called ‘Fred’. It was, more or less, your basic, orange electrical extension cord… if it had mated with a boa constrictor snake that just ate a really big meal.

I love this one. It is called ‘Tire’, and it is indeed a car tire. A Mexican artist had carved flowers into the tread. I would love to dip that in white paint and roll it all over town.

It is a flag, with a hole burned in it, mounted on a blackboard. Through the hole, you see Mickey Mouse in the desert. Open to a lot of interpretation. But I do now want to get a bunch of small flags and cover something over with them, and then varnish it until the flags are stiff.

Various parts of a cartoon Superman, spilling off a shelf. Ripe with symbolism. Discarded heroes, waste, change, and poor housekeeping.

I was actually working. I pulled some extra shifts at my new gig as a private security officer. I spent 6 hours making sure that nobody touched the exhibits at the contemporary art museum in downtown San Diego.

I am saving up some extra money, because I am leaving in two days for a two-week-long adventure.

I have to say that one room affected me deeply. It was done by a young African American artist. Her dad was drafted into the army in 1966, fighting in Vietnam. Two years later, he was in the Black Panther Party. There were copies of redacted pages from his FBI files, received by the artist through the freedom of information act. He was being investigated by something in the FBI called the Racial Intelligence Unit. WTF? But those two images, taken two years apart, a young man drafted to fight a war that nobody could explain why we were fighting, then, a young man who looks much older. What had he seen in the war? And, more importantly, what had he seen in America when he came home, that changed him so?

Okay, that wasn’t at the museum. That is what happens when your daughter keeps a sweet potato in the warm pantry for too long without eating it. I call it ‘Banana Slug With Purple Hair’.