The Temptations: Not the Musical Act.

DESERT RELIGION

Initially, I wanted to make a puppet show for my MFA Thesis Exhibition, THE END IS EVER NIGH. It would have fit in perfectly with my imagery: humanity controlled by outside forces beyond their control.

However, my MFA was in Painting, not in Intermedia, Performing or Performance Arts. I felt it would be too much of a disconnect from the thrust of my Thesis. I also did not feel I had the time or experience necessary to plan out a proper puppet stage at an appropriate MFA Thesis level without enlisting help from people who already had their own crosses to bear.

Becoming a member of the Eye Lounge collective immediately gave me the push and experimental freedom necessary to begin to seriously think of doing a puppet show. The theme of my Eye Lounge solo show is the desert. The desert in the Bible, also translated as "wilderness" is a place for wandering, introspection, exile: a place to return from after spiritual revelation and visions. Since I have always lived in Arizona--near South Mountain and the radio tower lights--in a modernized "quasi-desert," I find this an experience that is hard to replicate in my own life.

I have gone on many hikes, twice to the Grand Canyon, but have never experienced "the desert." I did not feel lost, I do not feel deserted or wandering, because I know that I can go back anytime...there is a trail "back home." The Desert Fathers had no such conceit: they were always living in the desert, as they wanted to escape the modernization of the church as a legitimate, Roman institution. It became their new home for Christ.

Therefore, my home may be a desert, but it does not feel like a desert...there is always a way back home. I have to use my imagination in order to construct a scenario that could even come close to the experience of the Desert Fathers, John the Baptist, Christ himself, or St. John of Patmos.

I worked on a script for a puppet show: Jesus' Temptations (Matthew 4: 1-11) with Tommy Cannon, a puppeteer from the Great Arizona Puppet Theater. I wanted to tap into his humor and improvisational skill to amplify the sense of irreverence I want to convey in the banter between Jesus and Satan. Jesus maintains His cool throughout the process, tempted three times, to return from the experience steeled in His resolve. Satan, though defeated is unchanged by the experience, a Trickster who moves on to others to be made Fool.

I would like to think that it all happened in His mind, as does all of my imagery in mine: Satan may still have been real, as all visions are to the person experiencing them.

THE END IS EVER NIGH

MFA Thesis Exhibition,

Harry Wood Gallery, ASU. Tempe, AZ
November 2-13, 2009

Thesis Statement:

My body of work is envisioned by the spiritual matters of my upbringing. I was persistently taught that the world would end-- and be reborn-- in my lifetime.This world began to seem temporary; every achievement golden, every failure one of impending doom. I extrapolated later that if it had to end, it should take place in a spectacular way.

These paintings celebrate the narrative traditions of both Christian and Secular end-time scenarios through shifting depictions of fools and heroes, gods and demons: my cast of characters alter scale, form, color and role, as they always do in my imagination. I enjoy toying with boundaries between the sacred and profane in these tellings of Christian stories.

The players upon these stages occupy a mythic space; that is, they come from insubstantial ether that I formally compare to my cast of characters, shifting along and through unseen light sources, emerging from dark voids that hold infinite promise of unknown creation. The scenes continue to play out along the surface of landscapes fraught with the doubts that exist in all supernatural visions.

Dain Q. Gore

The Thesis process was incredible. I had the honor of working with many highly professional Professors during my stay at ASU, but three in particular became my Committee: Mark Pomilio, Forrest Solis, and Jerry Schutte. I was glad to work with new artists as well as familiar faces from my undergrad days at ASU (BFA Drawing, 2000).

Munny, Updated.

Being that many other more pressing matters lay at hand in the past, I didn't have much chance or motivation to take pictures of an in-progress Munny. I decided upon the Owl-design, as you can see above. Some of the symbols I wish to add are yet to be added, or have only been touched upon, but include:

-A single strand of silver hair, of which I have many more at the moment...

-Mariachi pants: I have always wanted a pair of those.

-Purple shirt alludes to my favorite symbolic color, Tekehelet (תכלת), a mysterious violet-purple whose original dye-recipe has been lost.

-Feet of clay (from the Bible, alluding to human fragility)

-Bugs in the hair (in the Vanitas genre of paintings, bugs alluded to Sin)

-Hebrew text of יהוה (YHWH) Yod-He-Vav-He, The Tetragrammaton--on the right hand, Dexter.

-Hebrew text of שָׂטָן (Satan) on the left hand, Sinister.

-A Tarot card behind the mask's string, not sure which to depict yet, thinking of The Fool, Death, The Hermit or The Hanged Man (my favorites)

-Additional masks to cover the already-masked face, more pictures of those to come.

Munny on My Mind...

So I've been wanting to paint my Munny for awhile. After some technical difficulties*, I am finally devising a schematic of what it would look like (in my mind). Actually painting it will come later. I am currently thinking: which artists inspire me the most, currently? What simple, direct color scheme would I use?

Some Examples
More Examples (LA Show)
More Examples (Mini Contest)

*Involving sticky acrylic that had to be sanded down

UPDATE! Some of my sketched-out designs...

UPDATE! 3-12-08
Inspired by Goya's Owls, I have decided to do another sketch. (see above fourth/last sketch in sequence)

Owls can be symbols of:
-Superstition (Goya)
-Heresy (Medieval Europe)
-Wisdom (Animist/Pantheist religions)
-Christ's Vigilance (Aderdeen Bestiary)

So I decided I liked the ambiguity of that image, as a mask.
 The theme will be a "self-portrait" of sorts, with traditional green-ink tattoos of YHWH on the Dexter (Right) side and Satan on the Sinister (Left) side. Other ideas I am toying with include feet of clay, and/or a trompe l'oiel magnifying glass on the belly-button to signify the navel-gazing qualities of the self-portrait...

My color scheme will be a simple warm-cool dichotomy, probably emphasizing reverse contrast through saturation levels.

Stay Tuned!!

My Life-Long Dreamytime Sequelmakery

Ghouls'n Ghosts was one of the most influential games I ever played. It has even guided, in some ways, my aesthetic when it comes to the very modus of Paintery Itself.

Here is a piece I wrote about this game, Hosted and Compiled by the venerable Mike Bevan and his Destroy all Monsters!.

And I present, once again, Ghasts'N Ghouls.


Of course, I have played with many other ideas...

...A Riddle?

How can one distinguish between a species and a mutant, if the representative creatures of both groups are long since dead or missing?