Back To Eden
Click on the titles below to view the drawing in a separate window while reading my thoughts and comments about it.
A farmer finds himself rapt in a contemplative moment while dispatching a deer. In this metaphysical moment, the struggling, dying deer represents the passing of life, the dead rabbit half buried in snow is the end of life while the farmer is the conduit between these two states. His realization of this is both a spiritual awakening and a source of melancholy. His vision puts him into more vital relationship to the deeper implications of life and death, the currency of a life lived off the land. The problem here is the ambiguity of revelation: how to interpret the vision, what is the Good Land, and how to achieve it.
Dakota Sioux Pejuhuta-tha (Medicine Bottle) sits over the skinless corpse of a settler and performs a ritual to conduct the dead man’s spirit through the process of dying. However, the annoyed spirit emerges “Well, now you’ve done it!” and curses Medicine Bottle with Benjamin Franklin’s words, “Where carcasses are, eagles will gather” speaking to the American symbol’s penchant for death (and an easy meal) and the Colonial retribution Medicine Bottle can expect. Medicine Bottle also curses the dead man “God-damn your shit-filled soul”. The text floating above Medicine Bottle is a beatific, esoteric sonnet instructing the departing spirit to seek peace by cutting attachment to the world left behind or else end up in the “World of Unhappy Ghosts”. The nature of the text then shifts from pseudo-spiritual rationalizations (“All matter is one to him who holds the key to the cosmos”) to the reality of land squabbles “Then there was murder, grim and appalling”.
The portrait of Medicine Bottle used for this drawing was the last one taken of him before he was hung. The text was taken from The Tibetan Book of the Dead, The Bible (King James version), The Conquering Sword of Conan by Robert E. Howard, Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson, and the writing’s of Benjamin Franklin.
The title "Deep Shit" has three meanings:
as in being in trouble
as in spiritual depths, expressed in casual language
as in an expression of sarcasm towards trying to be “deep”
A Colonial Ranger, vicious guerrilla of the forest, drops to the ground in rapt attention, rifle and scalp trophy in hand. “The eyes of the Lord are in every place” emerges from the compost and discarded logs and rocks forming a Christian cross but alluding to the paranoia of the psychedelic state. Indeed, directly in front of the soldier, growing by a stump are Amanita mushrooms, powerful hallucinogens known as Holy Ambrosia. This lowly, snow-covered trash heap becomes an alter to the Old Ways and the weeds are all medicines. A skinned deer head wishes the man well, “May ye live long and be e’er prosperous” (quoting 11th century Tibetan yogi Milarepa not Spock). A true and direct religious experience of compassion, empathy, and altered consciousness. What is “the blood of Christ” that fertilizes “mushrooms and the other healing yerbs”? What does it mean to proclaim “I open my mouth, I eat life”? Is it a justification, a reprieve? As with other works in American Visions, this drawing is about the weedy persistence of overlaid and borrowed-from cultures, forgotten potential, and the problem of trying to return to or reassess antiqued ways. The dogs are mastiff-type dogs that were used to hunt Indians. The cabin is modeled after those used at Valley Forge. “Pray, Plow, Protect” refers to the ideal medieval Holy Warrior who serves God, works the fields, and defends the land.