Gone
(Underwater In 2010)-A 3-Dimensional Painting
It isn't everyday that an "artist" gets to create
a new art form; at least, I think that's what I have done. If someone out there
has beaten me to this, my apologies to that person.
The piece above is entitled "Gone (Underwater in 2010)",
and I refer to it as a "three-dimensional painting".
Allow me a few moments of your time for an explanation.
I have lived in the same apartment in the San Fernando
Valley area of Los Angeles since January 2001; I love my place, can tolerate
the Valley and mostly ignore the rest of L.A., as either banal, boring or
disgustingly self-indulgent.
Over the years an enclave, as it were, has been established
by a number of long-term neighbors staying in the area, and a
"community" has taken root. People know each other, wave when we see
each other out walking our dogs, or going to our cars on our way to our various
pursuits, stop to chat when we encounter each other on the sidewalks and, in
general, mostly seem to like each other.
I met Sue and Pete (not their real names) not long after I
first moved in; they owned the small place immediately to the west of my
building. I saw them outside one afternoon and stopped to introduce myself and
inquire about possibly renting their garage to house my car. They said they
were glad to meet me, declined to rent me the space and we became, in the
purest sense of the word, "neighbors".
Not best of friends necessarily, but neighbors.
To keep this as short as possible, suffice to say that, we
did all the "neighborly" things I described above over the passing
years; we waved, we stopped to chat when the occasion presented itself (they
loved Harley, the OCOTP, and eventually went out and got a dog of their own, so
taken by HD that they were. Oh, yeah, I forgot, I am Pope John The Tall of the
All John All The Time World Church; read the "disclaimer" at the top
of the page for an explanation of that phenomena.)
Anyway, P and S were my neighbors, and the years passed.
Then came the Great Recession of 2010, and my story turns to
how "Gone" came to be.
Pete and Sue were both middle-school teachers, employed by
private academies here in the Valley. And when the fallout from the recession
finally came home to all of us, they both were let go from their positions in
the fall of 2010, within a week of each other. To put it mildly, this was a
disaster for them.
Unable to find other work, as so many of us were during
those dark days, they were barely able to keep afloat financially, and of
course, like so many unfortunate victims of Mr. Bush's downturn, made the
coin-toss between keeping food on the table or paying the mortgage; the
mortgage lost.
A
plastic bag, blown into the bushes, an overturned flower pot and uncollected
newspapers
They, and their home, were "underwater", and they
lost it. I was devastated, for them. Good people, done in by forces well outside their control.
I saw them moving out one day in the late summer of 2011; I
knew, from the few brief conversations that we had had previously that things
weren't well, but I had no idea how bad they had gotten. On advise from an
attorney, they were abandoning their home, to default on the mortgage.
The property sat empty for months; I walked by it every day
on my morning walk, and it didn't take long for the neglect to begin to show.
There were never the broken windows, the damaged siding and shingles or
graffiti that so often plague empty houses; this is still a very nice
neighborhood, and the damage was not as overt.
But the front yard became a knee-deep prairie of un-mown
grass, weeds sprouted up through the cracks in the driveway, the flowers all
died and were left to turn brown and ugly and garbage began to accumulate
against the corners of the house, dropped there by uncaring jerks and blown
there by the wind. I, and some of the other neighbors, did what we could to
keep the handbills and fast food containers picked up, but the house took on
that neglected, empty look that houses seem to get after sitting unoccupied for
long periods of time.
And it haunted me, both the house, and the situation of it's emptiness.
A
discarded cardboard box and a towel draped over the kitchen island, left by
their owners
Certainly my feelings were exacerbated by knowing the story
of how it came to be abandoned in the first place, but it was still a blemish
on my neighborhood, and a constant reminder of how cruelly the greed and
indifference of the people who run our country and populate our business sector
often effects the average person in America.
I'll skip the sermon; this is meant to be an explanation of
how "Gone" came to be, not a lecture on the evil assholes in our
government and in so many of our large corporations today. Besides, it's become
such a cliche to talk about "them vs. us" and I tire of it.
Since I can barely draw stick figures with any degree of
accuracy, much less paint, I needed a medium to express my feelings about
"the house next store". I'd like to say that the idea for making
"Gone" came to me in a sudden flash of creativity, but the truth is
that I just decided to try my hand at building something like a scale model, as
much to occupy my leisure time as opposed to being an attempt at a great
statement of purpose.
Truth is, I was a month or so into the project before I
realized the theme I wanted to convey. (This is not the first time in the
history of my "creativity" that I have moved, unconsciously, towards
expressing an idea before I knew consciously what that idea was.)
I started on "Gone" (which I plan to be #1 in a
series of several similar projects) in mid-March, 2012; I had no prior
experience with building scale models, no power tools of any sort and no idea
about what materials should be used. Other than a rudimentary knowledge of
carpentry, I was clueless.
A
broken fence-gate, and weeds growing up through the shrubbery
There are a GAZILLION mistakes in this piece; my
inexperience was manifest, and to my eye, it shows. (Yes, the left-hand window
of the bay is WAY crooked; don't even ask how that happened. And no, the angles
of the chimney are not crooked, it was my intention to offset them slightly, so
that wasn't a goof.) But I learned as I went on, and I think I got better at the
process.
Eight months later, in mid-November, "Gone (Underwater
In 2010)" was complete, the first of a series of scale models I'm
planning, each with a different theme. (FYI, the scale was one half inch equals
one foot, and just for the record, "Gone" looks nothing like
my-ex-neighbors house next door; the design was artistic license on my part.)
I'm sorry I've rambled on so long in giving you this
explanation of my "new" art form, three-dimensional painting; thank
you for taking the time to read what I've written.
"Gone", like most art, is for sale; you can
contact me at krissongs@hotmail.com if you're interested or know someone who
might be.
I've also posted a video that shows the step-by-step process
of how I created "Gone on YouTube: if you haven't already seen it, the
address is:
I thank God daily for the gift of creativity He has blessed
me with, and His blessings be on all of you as well.
Love and Picasso (I wish), yours in Christ,
PJTT
copyright 2012 Krissongs Inc.
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