SHOOTING/LOADING : AN AUDIO COMPANION FOR THE VISUAL SERIES DEWEAPONIZING THE GUN

Deweaponizing the Gun is a series that is visual in nature, but the process of creating each work is very dynamic. Instead of painting quietly in a studio, I am outside, using a gun to shoot an image on to a piece of metal. I decided to attempt to capture that energy in a non-visual medium by making an audio recording of the process. The result was Shooting/Loading an audio companion for the visual series Deweaponizing the Gun, a one sided 12 inch vinyl record featuring 17:55 of the sound of me shooting and loading.

I wanted the experience of listening to this record to be challenging for the listener. Under normal circumstances, the sound of gunfire is something that causes panic and provokes a flight for safety. By listening to the gunfire on the record, the listener is faced with the challenge of hearing a normally destructive sound, attempting to resolve that sound to a creative process without visual clues. There are no pictures of guns, ammunitions, or the finished images I create with guns in or on the jacket or the record itself.
HEART OF NOWHERE

From 2001 to 2003, with the help of Jason McMaster, Darryl Jacks, and Joey Mansfield, I carried a video camera to as many interesting and odd places in Alabama as possible. What resulted is a 30 minute video document that deluges the viewer with snippets, all less than thirty seconds, of random and peculiar footage.

From a Christian singer-songwriter at a backwoods karaoke bar having a drunken breakdown on stage, to a person being dragged behind a truck on a flaming couch, to a Goth suspension show where the hooks accidentally ripped out of the legs of a man too heavy to be supported by them.

Heart of Nowhere is not intended to be viewed as a complete record of the subjects featured in the film, but solely as a glimpse of people and places usually kept out of frame.