I had just taken my final East Coast tour with Cass McCombs when I wrote the text for this video. Our first stop was the Rainbow Gathering in Virginia. At the Rainbow Gathering, my band mates and I wandered around groups of people living as one large camping community, spread throughout groves of trees and flat green pastures. On several occasions while visiting this site, whenever walking past someone, often male, making eye contact, we would be greeted with, “welcome home.” There were sections specializing in certain basic functions; cooking, cleaning, trading wares (miscellaneous items laid out on a blanket in the dirt), and healing. At one point, somebody reminded us to help out. I remember cleaning potatoes, peeling onions, and cutting green beans. We decided not to spend the night at the Rainbow Gathering.
This experience led to my re-evaluation of the utopian values I was exposed to while growing up in Sebastopol, California. The text for this video is based on a mix of personal experience and local lore. I relate my negative childhood feelings about communes to my experience at the Rainbow Gathering. This led to my short lived interest in capitalist aesthetics and media. I began to read The Futurist Manifesto, books by Ayn Rand, and Dianetics. I also became involved with online dating through the Village Voice personals. I’d spend $25 for the opportunity to send around 10 messages or 20 winks. I went on a few dates, but nothing long term came of it. I became depressed and imagined a stand-in to introduce myself and tell amusing anecdotes, like I often found myself trying to do while on dates. This video was the imagined component for a signage style installation in a corporate lobby, as if I were the founder of the company.
Memoir, 2005–2017
single channel video, color, sound, 48” monitor, oil on canvas
72 × 72 inches (182.88 × 182.88 cm)
6:23 min
video distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
I lived off Lombard Street in a private terrace apartment overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge for free. I had free rent because I was the caretaker for the owner of the building who lived upstairs. Her name was Stephanie Bauer. She was about 80 years old. It was a very ideal situation, except for the fact that my neighbor was a handsome French man who had loud sex most nights. Our rooms were separated by a thin door, like the kind of door used for a pantry or broom closet. Unable to sustain a long distance relationship and meet other women, I took a job as a telefundraiser for the San Francisco Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra to get away from the apartment and possibly meet someone outside of my school (SFAI). The office was only a few blocks away, so I would often take long walks around Polk Street. I considered hiring prostitutes, but didn’t and returned to the apartment every night alone. The apartment, unfortunately, had a terrible mosquito problem. They lived in the planter boxes outside of the apartment. I realized they were getting in through a large gap under my front door much too late. I realized this after several nights.
What a Boring and Disappointing Life (brown), 2001–2017
single channel video, color, sound, 48” monitor, oil on canvas
70 × 85 inches (177.80 × 215.90 cm)
21:21 min
video distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix
Studying to be an actor, I read a tragic monologue written by my friend, Nathan Frank (also the camera operator). I started making the video right before Y2K. It was a very uncertain time. This is around the time I painted my first intentionally performative self portrait, aka Me and Molly Ringwald.
Emotional Month, 2000-2017
single channel video, color, sound, 48” monitor, oil on canvas
73 × 85 inches (185.42 × 215.90 cm)
2:44 min
video distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
My friend lent me his Google GLAS when it was still in promotion mode. I started wearing it around the house, shooting videos. It got really hot above my ear and didn’t shoot in the best quality. I didn’t really enjoy using this device. I started to imagine myself as a tech guy who gets into snowboarding, mountain biking, and skateboarding. These videos were shot from the perspective of this character.
Lonely Loser Trilogy: Mountain Bikes, 2014–2019
single channel video, color, sound, 24” monitor, oil on canvas
84 × 75 inches (213.36 × 190.50 cm)
18:14 min
I used to work as a photographer hired by a website to promote NYC and the Hamptons nightlife. The promoters would hire the people I worked for to send me over to their party to take photos of the people there. I would go to 2-3 different clubs a night, 4 nights a week. The range in party goers was pretty big. During my final few months with the company, I was mainly assigned to an after party spot on Broadway called Pangaea. At Pangaea, I photographed Ice T, Sting, among others. The job, for the most part was really fun. I drank so much Red Bull vodka.
Club, 2012
single channel video, color and sound
4:10 min
video distributed by Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI)
Many nights were spent sitting at the kitchen table, browsing the internet while our daughter drifted off to sleep. On one such night, I decided to try my hand at hand modeling using her newly acquired figurines from Disney’s Inside Out and the strategies used in the toy unboxing videos we watched earlier that day.
Inside Out Toys Unboxing (Compilation): Fear, Disgust, Joy, Bing Bong, Sadness, Anger, 2017–2019
6 single channel videos, color, sound, 37” monitor, oil on canvas
84 × 75 inches (213.36 × 190.50 cm)
Two or three songs into the Rage Against The Machine set, I decided to enter the mosh pit and immediately got elbowed in the face. I trudged through thousands of people in search for some ice. I stood about a mile away from the stage with a cup of ice pressed against my eye, watching the Red Hot Chili Peppers perform. In revisiting this footage, I imagine myself going through these painful motions.
Rage Against the Machine and The Red Hot Chili Peppers Live at the Tibetan Freedom Concert, 1996–2019
single channel video, color, sound, 24” monitor, oil on canvas
84 × 75 inches (213.36 × 190.50 cm)