DEATH IN BUDAPEST

  The hose has finally thawed and it's been two days since I've had a fire in the stove. The ice is out and even though there's still snow in the shadows, it looks like Spring is here. My place has a tendency to collect the detritus of the long winter. When the snow no longer hides it, I'm forced to clean up the mud covered garbage. In between runs to the dump I think about where to go next with the studio work. My initial worry over not having a "signature" style or vocabulary of imagery was all for naught. The work spewed out- the inner animal seemingly the theme. Although I never know what the next drawing or object will look like. It's all about trying to get in the zone and recognizing the work as it's formed.

For example: Yesterday I drove out to my taxidermist to feel him out concerning a video shoot at his place. He also raises turkeys and deer. An episode of supermodels cavorting with his cute little bambis, before going out and trying to kill one could be just the ticket. But when I got there, his cat Chi-Chi was 60 feet up in a tree and wouldn't come down. She'd been there for three days and everyone (Chi-Chi included) was freaking out. My cat-pimp hand is usually pretty good, but all my kissy noises and sweet talk did no good. A tree surgeon was coming, so I turned the truck around and headed for home. Good luck Chi-Chi.
   On my way back I spotted some bulldozers working a site that I'd had my eye on for years. It was the burial ground for these big carved figures in Vietcong Cages. The artist had long ago abandoned the figures to the elements. They'd been splintered apart, wrapped in barbed wire and burned. With the help of bolt cutters and a pry bar I was able to salvage a full arm and a burnt forearm, which I tossed in the truck. Before the day was out, with the use of an undertaker's cart and some fake snow I'd completed two new pieces- both dealing with death.

Checking my email I opened one from old friend Marta. She informed me that her friend Hungarian fashion designer Tamas Kiraly had been murdered. We had once collaborated on a fashion show to "celebrate" the death of MO David Gallery in the EV. He created a runway completely from garbage and street debris in an old firehouse owned by another friend Rick Temarian. Watching those girls in Tamas' designs try to look sexy and navigate that catwalk still sticks with me. It was brilliant.
  After Marta informed me of Tamas' death I googled him. I had no idea how famous he had become over the years. He was known as "The Pope of Fashion". Turns out he may not have been murdered, but was doing the sex thing with a scarf and it went bad. In either case, the poor guy's dead. All this death stuff came out of somewhere. With the warm weather, things should brighten up. Let's hope Chi-Chi made it out of that tree.