Going Forward and Backward

Going Forward and Backward

I am a visual artst myself, but I admire musical instruments as works of art, and love guitars particularly; of course because as a child of the sixties that iconic instrument is at the core of my musical vocabulary more than any other.

I have a friend who loves guitars also, but has worked on them lovingly for decades, and carrys in his head an encyclopedian knowledge of very many aspects of their natures, particularly their proper parts and maintanance. Mike is as much like myself as you are like the reflection in your mirror; me being full blown on fire with the creativity of living my life, and he the opposite smoldering in maintaining a domestic and ordered existence.


We have talked of guitars for years in the abstract about early this year I became more inquizative, and so commonly we would review a dozen or more instruments, in detail in manic rapid fire questions and dissertations that drive others from the room until we subside.



I dreamed I asked

Courtney to smoke

with me about guitars

we went from pick ups

frets and screws on sixteen

separate instruments

plus the unknown flying V

that turned up just as I did.

Makers finish

repairing cracks issues

and tools best used. 

A cat here in town

met on the internet

who claims to build

guitars to outfit

cancer struck musicians

cynically I suggest we

scope him tightly before

diving in and suggesting

cycles rather than

heirlooms. Round and

round manic spiral up

rapidly to bounce

between us our brains

alive with input from

one another into

deep files out of the

loop until we can

actually use it. I

laughed recounting,

tossed me an Orange, 

not an instrument

but a dern amplifier

1/15/2014

Tonight I took the magical guitar to Nina Diaz historical second headline show at the Belmont, a tiny venue down on the west side of 6th street. She was great of course, and her band is really fantastic, they really played well to a smaller crowd that last week, her debut. I stood right at the stage with the magical guitar and proved invisible, but guitar soaked in the bands spirit, and the crowd seemed to enjoy magical guitar and pitched in too.

Here is magical guitar's body as Mike gave it to me to begin, along with just a few of the tools that accumulate as you work on electric guitars

 We talked quite a bit at first about repairing damage to many unloved guitars that come to Mike from time to time, as woodwork is an interest of mine, and decoration as well. When I decided to do this project I formed the idea of magical guitar right away.

I decided to keep the guitar body with me everywhere i want, and to collect spirit whenever I could. By showing the guitar body, letting people touch it, people stared at the magical guitar everywhere I went, and for months I took pictures of many people and many places. Hundreds of pictures...

The decoration evolved through different stages, once I decided on a narrative I painted it, captured my process in this series of videos