The True Meaning Of junk drawer©

If junk drawer© is a combination catalog of objects that are arranged, photographed and written about poetically to tell snippets of experiences from the artist life and assemblages pieced together using the aforementioned objects in an effort to disposed of them with the sale of the art and thus ridding the artist of that story, that energy, that baggage, then the large site-specific installation titled ‘no more junk’ is the imagined end result.

A reclaimed vanity painted in black with layers of the paint chipping and peeling away, sits on a pedestal lifting the dresser slightly higher into view. The mirrors reflect your likeness as the viewer but also contain the permanent reflection of the artist, once trapped in place, literally bound with cord to his story, or history.

Mapped out onto his body are diagrams of lessons on how the mind and heart process information, how levels of consciousness work and how one can enter into a state of forgiveness from different directions.

On the dresser a reel of tape spins broken, no longer able to send the same old recordings into the brain, expressing a freedom from negative thoughts and patterns. The drawers themselves are all gone, no longer full of junk, most of it – recognizable in some of the photos in the exhibit – are scattered at the base of the vanity.

Only one object remains directly on the vanity – a one day chip from the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous program. A reminder that some lessons, even with all the clarity in the world, are life long lessons. There is no perfection in life, only a continual practice to be better today than the day before.