New Painting: Orange Crush Retrograde

In late 2009 I started a group of multi-paneled paintings called the Retrograde Series. The paintings are an exploration of the memories, questions, sights, sounds, tastes of my youth, and their juxtaposition against each other, and the world around me decades later.

With Orange Crush Retrograde I dive down that rabbit hole once more. A memory of sitting on a bar stool next to my Grandfather, feet dangling high above the floor drinking an Orange Crush soda, blends with a memory of hearing Madonna tell Dick Clark that she wanted to "rule the world". I wonder about the long and short term effects of war being a constant backdrop to the American paradigm, and that butts up against the fondness I had for my armies of little plastic men.

The composition is split into panels and cropped to exaggerate the idea that no one part of the composition is supposed to make a clear definitive conclusion about what the images mean as a whole. The hope is that something new exists for each viewer, and it is up to the individual to decide what answers exist within.

(See the first piece in the series, "Bazooka Retrograde", here)

Currently Reading:
Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

Currently Listening To:
Song: Ten Dead Dogs (iTunes)
Artist: Wild Sweet Orange (website)

Theme Songs

What song should play every time you enter a room? For example, Darth Vader had the Imperial March. Not bad. Makes me wonder...how awesome would it be if you walked into a room and everyone's cell phones started playing the theme song from The A-Team. Or if you were at the mall and every time you entered a new store Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) by the Eurythmics came on over the speakers. Ideally I'd want my theme song to change daily. Keep it fresh. In sync with the personality of the day.

I wonder all this because the other day as I walked into my gym Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen started playing on the stereo. Not exactly my first choice as theme songs go, but I couldn't help but stop and laugh. The first 4 minutes and 38 seconds of my workout were spent sitting idle on a weight room bench, just listening to the lyrics. It was maybe the first time I ever really listened to them. The most ironic part of this song starting to play upon my entrance was the fact that in the thirteen months I've been working out there I have never seen another American. No one there even really speaks English.

I would guess that ninety percent of the music that plays in my gym is American or British music, mostly from the 80's and 90's. Actually, if I'm walking down the streets in Buenos Aires that's the genre I often hear coming out of the storefronts as well. No matter how many times my ears are caressed by the likes of Cyndi Lauper and The Outfield down here though, it's always kind of weird on some level. Like I'm continuously walking through the soundtrack of my youth, but in South America...and it's 2010. The equation of it all doesn't add up in my head, but then again...maybe that's the exact formula needed for the perfect daily theme song.

Currently Reading:
Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

Currently Listening To:
Song: Radio Nowhere (iTunes)
Artist: Bruce Springsteen



For more on how I first ended up in Buenos Aires check out the first post of Harmony and Dissonance.

Bariloche or Bust

"Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean." - John Muir

We spent the week before Christmas in Bariloche, Argentina, a mountain town in the heart of the Andes. Surrounded by snow-capped mountains and lying in the heart of Argentina's Lake District, Bariloche has been dubbed by some as the Lake Tahoe of the South America. For Annie and I it stood as a reprieve from the sometimes maddening congestion of concrete, people and diesel air that is Buenos Aires. For me personally it was a chance to go out on a four day solo trek in the mountains.

25 Hour Bus Ride
25 hour bus ride.
Buenos Aires to Bariloche.
Concrete to mountains.
Height by floors
to height by altitude.
Rolling out across the plains,
and more plains.
Double decker bus.
Three meals of ham sandwiches,
and duche de leche cookies.
Into Patagonia
and the endless expanse of chaparral,
and nothing.
Nothing and dust.
Dust and cattle bones.
Cattle bones and powerlines.
Sticky sun-baked bus stations pass.
The windows feel warm.
We rock and sway.
Dip and curve,
through brick and tin towns.
Sporadic sleep.
Book pages turn.
Movies fill the monitors.
The first in English.
Then two in Spanish.
The last in Japanese?
And we're there.
Real. Mountain. Air.


It took us 25 hours by bus to get to Bariloche. My time there would highlighted by a solo excursion in the surrounding mountains. While Annie relaxed in town, my big green pack and I went off the grid on a four day trek that took me through forests, both dead and alive, and above the tree line in the rock and snow. It was the heart of the spring melt and flowing water was not only a near constant sound, but a frequent source for me to quench my thirst. I would spent two nights sleeping alongside clear blue alpine lakes, and one in the solitude of a damp and flowing green valley. Not only were the wooded valleys and snow capped mountains I traversed interesting, but so were the hikers from Austria, Germany, Scotland, Australia, Argentina and the United States that I met along the way.


Bariloche Hike - Day 1
We walk, pack laden.
Over gnarled stone
and through tombstone trees.
On the ridge we stop for water.
I hear only wind
and plastic bottles.
And then Danny's harmonica.
Dead forest blues.


All and all it was a solid trip. One of physical endurance and mental rejuvenation. Lungs filled. Thoughts expanded. I left wanting more.

Check out all the photos from the trip on flickr here.


The book that made the hike with me:
The Best Short Stories of Jack London
by Jack London

Currently Listening To:
Song: Baltimore Blues, No. 1
Artist: Dear Tick (myspace) (iTunes)

For more on how I first ended up in Buenos Aires check out the first post of Harmony and Dissonance.

Sketch of the Day: San Telmo Bass

The above sketch and haiku were inspired by a visit to the big Sunday market in San Telmo, a barrio of Buenos Aires.

San Telmo market
Street performer serenade.
Cobbled and alive.

Currently Reading:
Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole

Currently Listening To:
Song: Zebra
Artist: John Butler Trio (myspace) (iTunes)

For more on how I first ended up in Buenos Aires check out the first post of Harmony and Dissonance.

Sketch of the Day: La Boca

The above sketch was inspired by a visit to the neighborhood of La Boca in Buenos Aires, specifically the area of it known as Caminito.

La Boca
Next to the murky waters
of an old port canal
we walk on cobblestone
through corrugated tin colors.
Accordians and meaty grills
waft in the damp air.
Vendors line the streets
selling tourist trinkets.
I look for something
amidst the pulsing square.
Something that isn't frill.
Finally I find it
hovering like a ghost
in the reverence
of an old man
and his polished violin.

Currently Reading:
Fight Club
by Chuck Palahniuk

Currently Listening To:
Song: Juicy
Artist: Emily Wells (myspace) (iTunes)

For more on how I first ended up in Buenos Aires check out the first post of Harmony and Dissonance.

Stand By Me (in the Cemetery)

To me some of the most fascinating aspects of modern civilizations are the structures that are abandon for decades and left in disarray. Fragments of what were once functioning parts of a municipality but because of technology, economy, war or any other number reasons, have been discarded and left behind with only a few people around who know the whole tale of their past. Places where mother earth has been slowly breaking down and taking back what was once hers. An amusement park on the outskirts of town. Old grain silos near the port. It was recently though that I discovered abandoned piece of Buenos Aires that was slightly more macabre.

My friend Nate and I recently took a trip to Chacarita Cemetery, the largest cemetery in Buenos Aires. Unlike Recoleta Cemetery, a popular tourist attraction in the heart of the city, Chacarita sits out near the end of the red subway line, Linea B. Similar to Recoleta is houses many open above ground tombs where caskets sit in plain site, however, a large part of it also exists underground. Throughout the grounds marble stairs descend down into immense corridors full of vaults. These underground hallways are spread out underneath the cemetery like an underground college campus.

The cemetery owes much of its immense size to the yellow fever epidemic of 1871. Even much of the concrete wall that encircles it is stacked full of vaults, and in some places they are stacked 25 feet up in the air. What most people don't know, and Nate and I discovered that day, is that there is a back part of the cemetery that is abandoned, hidden from view behind an inner wall of vaults. It was here that I experienced one of the freakiest moments of my life.

This area is accessible to anyone, a person just has to walk far enough to see opening in the wall that leads in. In this abandoned area sits the remnants of an old mausoleum about 15o meters long and with almost all the vault doors missing. It stands forgotten by the city and forgotten by time. When we first stumbled upon it we stood in awe. All around the structure lay fragments of marble vault doors, pieces of weathered coffins, and the shiny crucifixes that once adorned them. Above us, like out of a Hitchcock movie, birds flapped and fluttered, disturbed by the unusual presence of people, or at least living people, near their graveyard home. As we walked amongst the debris it was only a minute of two before we started discovering human bones. A vertebrae here. A femur there. We were speechless.

As we surveyed the perimeter of the structure we noticed large glassless windows at the base and peered in through the iron bars. Underneath the crumbling mausoleum was a corridor of vaults that sat in greater disarray then what lie above ground. We decided to search for a way down, while keeping an eye open for maintenance workers. The main stairwell down at the center was bricked off with shards of broken glass splintered across the top to prevent intruders from climbing over. The second stairwell on the far end was bricked and glassed as well however in part of the wall there was a rusted metal door. If we were to get down there this would be the way. We gave it a tug. Birds flapped out of the archways above scaring the hell out of us. It was unlocked. We caught our breath, checked one more time to make sure no one was watching us, and then made our decent.

I won't describe in detail on my blog what we saw in shadows underneath that mausoleum. What I will say is that what was above ground paled in comparison to that which was below. The 15 minutes we spent walking down were 15 of the eeriest moments of my life. Nate and I both agreed, it was like we we're in a horror version of the movie Stand By Me. And that is how the painting at the top of this post came to be. It is derived from a climatic scene in the movie that takes place not long after a group of friends discover a dead body along the railroad tracks. When I look at it I think not of the four kids in the movie, but rather what Nate and I discovered one day at the cemetery.

Here's preview of pics from the cemetery (click to enlarge).
Check out the rest of the pics on flickr.


The abandoned mausoleum

Currently Reading:
Lord of the Flies
by William Golding

Currently Listening To:
Song: Dead and Done
Artist: Bobby Long (myspace) (iTunes)

For more on how I first ended up in Buenos Aires check out the first post of Harmony and Dissonance.

Raiders of the Lost Park

For a couple of months now my friend Ty and I have been planning a bike ride to an abandoned amusement park, Parque de la Cuidad, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Spring rain had canceled our last few attempts to get there, however, a few days ago, under a warm South American sun, we finally made it happen. According to maps the ride would take us through some sketchy parts of town so we packed light, and did our best to not look like outsiders. Unfortunately there's only so much two 30-something white guys over six feet tall can do to not look conspicuous in a part of town that doesn't get to many imports. It probably didn't help either, at least not while on the bikes, that we both had decided to wear white t-shirts and camouflage shorts that day, although later on I would be thankful for my choice of garments.

Parque de la Cuidad first opened in 1983 and based on what I've found online was open less than 10 years, making it left for dead for almost 20. When Ty first discovered this place a couple of years ago a security guard was posted at the main gate however people were still free to meander through the ramshackle never never land. Unfortunately when we arrived a few days ago we were saddened to see that the gates were gated and locked. Hating to have biked an hour just to see the outside of some old park we made the executive decision to lock up the bikes near the property line and jump the fence. We had no idea if security guards still patrolled inside and there was of course the chance our bikes wouldn't be there when we got back, but we decided to chance it anyway. The two hours after jumping the fence were probably two of the most surreal hours of my life.


(left) a sea of trams | (right) atop the big drop

Check out all of the photos Ty and I shot at the park on flickr here.

What transpired inside? The day after walking through the park I wrote down some of what happened. Below is what leaked out of my pen...


Raiders of the Lost Park - November 5th, 2009

Bike riding,
through city and shantytown.
On the outskirts of town.
Destination vacant amusement park.
Destination faded fun.
Main gates locked equals
time to jump the fence.
And we're in.
No sign of security.
And time stands still.

We walk through images of youth,
frozen and rusted over.
Void of people,
but full of brown flaking steel,
and sun-bleached plastic color.
Full of awe just the same.
Everything green is overgrown.
Birds squawk and holler everywhere.
Parrots, hawks, a sanctuary.
No sign of security.

We walk and we climb.
Climb on everything your not supposed.
Over turnstiles.
Up maintenance steps.
To the top of the giant coaster drop,
and back.
We climb on tracks.
On top of coasters.
We cut every imaginary line.
No sign of security

Nothing works,
and everything works,
in our heads at least.
We push moving parts.
They shriek and squeal.
We laugh.
We snap open Heineken's.
Two beers equals
part of "packing light".
We chill on a plastic and metal,
outdoor table for four,
next to the tower,
the "space needle".
We move on.
No sign of...wait.
Security!

"Down" says Ty under his breath.
We lie flat,
beers in hand.
75 yards away,
he's traveling by scooter on the access road.
He didn't see us.
We wait.
We sip.
He's gone,
and we're up,
heading in the opposite direction of 'him'.

Another roller coaster.
More jungle gym climbing,
and then to the carousel.
We push it,
like a merry-go-round.
It creeks, groans,.
and reluctantly spins.
We leave our beer cans on the revolving steel mass.
Our sign that life passed through today.
Off to the bumper cars.
We move 'em,
and blacken our hands
on decaying rubber.
Manual collisions.
Ty scrapes his arm.
Tetanus shots? We're both good.
No sign of security.

On through a figure eight go-kart track,
and its petrified go-karts,
parked like cars after the apocalypse.
We survey other no-named caged rides,
and survey the sun.
It's sinking.
We could spends days here,
but we gotta jet.
while there's still light.
Back to the bikes we head.
No sign of security.

We arrive at the tree line.
The property line.
Near the fence.
Cops!
Shit.
And a taxi.
What?
Are the bikes still there?
Yes.
We hide under the cover of trees,
and our camo shorts.
Why are they here?
How do we get out?
Deep breathe. We wait.
The cops leave.
A window of opportunity.
We head for the fence,
for the quick escape.
In haste I snag my hand on the barbed wire.
Blood.
Is it bad?
Shit.
Not sure. Gotta jet.
We unlock the bikes in negative 5 seconds
and were outta there,
both with minor injuries.
Battle wounds.
The hand's tender, but ok.
Just scratched up.
The taxi?
He saw us but no worries.
He was in a fender bender.
Thus the cops.
Just ironic timing and location.

I arrive home an hour later.
After dark.
I soak my wounds,
tell some stories,
and sleep like a rock,
or rusted roller coaster.
The sign of security.

(Two things - 1: There's no way I would have gone out there without Ty. It wasn't exactly in the best part of town nor open to the public (at least not when we were there). 2: Were it not for the previous bike explorations of my friends Jen and Ty I would never have heard about this place. Any photos I shot or things I make inspired by the trip are a direct result of their awesomeness.)

Currently Reading:
Monkey Wrench Gang
by Edward Abbey

Currently Listening To:
Song: Outlaws
Artist: Joe Purdy (myspace) (iTunes)

For more on how I first ended up in Buenos Aires check out the first post of Harmony and Dissonance.