Catch My Drift
On walking, weightlessness and contemporary minimal sculpture
Lees Is More
Kacie’s Freeway exists at the intersection of gas, glass and uncharacteristic Chicago minimalism.
It exists in skeletal spills across a wall. White wires intertwine. Colored light pools, its dull glare undulates on a gallery floor.
I love a cartographer, a romance like a road trip, car culture without the exhaust. Stay celestial, a bumper sticker honks; We are all made of starstuff.
From above, freeways are a gingham weave, a threaded wave, signifying not representing. Somebody in a helicopter always says spaghetti bowl.
The map is not the territory, and blessedly so. In a weighted world nobody rides for free.
I wanna pursue a lighted path away from flesh and excrement, excess and debris— the daily indignities of shared space—and waft like a vapor along electric highways, crawl like smoke, flanked by Blade Runner angels, argon guardians with Joan Jett haircuts, haloed in electric kanji.
You’re never in a grounded place when you start talking about heaven.
Bombardier
Enter Liliy Lakich and her tough girl swagger, playing with flame. She’s on a bender, bombarding in a bomber jacket, embroidered patches from an air strike squad called Doom Pussy on its sleeves.
An After Hours artist in a loft, flinging plaster, topless with back tattoos. She’s scintillating, painting a paramour’s name with black eyeliner, always an economy of line. Muscles flexing, another Kathy Acker fucking in a freight elevator. Neon lovers glow in the dark.
Escaspeculator
Madeleine Hines’ sculptures at Cheremoya destabilized me. I had to hoof it by the gallery twice to make an assessment, but I became receptive to their thingness: silver-black rectangles framed with yellow stripes. Escalator steps at eye level, textured metal grates, steady vertical lines. A single step then three side by side, a dull metal mantlepiece with flaking paint. Donald Judd plus imaginary movement. In what parking garage or department store would I take this action ?
These hung in proximity to her paintings, a series of canvases depicting scuffed soles of various shoes, worn treads at a massive scale.
I am a walker by necessity but frequently by choice. My soles are imprinted by the surfaces I walk across, but also by the clip. I could meander through an art museum with a visiting friend or grimly trudge to a bus to work a minimum wage gig. Shoes set a mood. They’re markmakers, and great objects to render in oil. Animals are printmmakers, tracking mud in compulsive prints. When I wore Coasters I felt like a pony. My feet were hard leather arrows cutting a swath. Bill Keane understood this implicitly. Walking is drawing.
Passing Through
On walks home from work I see a lot of dog turds. Recently they were adorned with American flags—tiny ones on toothpicks. I’m reluctant to photograph dung, but I had to do it… and post it to Instragram, our collective repository. This instinct paid off : A friend revealed she’d seen similar interventions jogging through the LA National Forest. This only led to more questions, which remain unanswered.
As signs around my neighborhood say, Poop Doesn’t Poof. These ephemeral artworks eventually disappeared, but it took a couple months of watching the paper flags sag and degrade. Their provocations remain in my heart and mind, possibly on my shoes.