Death Rides Again

As planned, I met up with new PCNJ director Elise Fuscarino at the Studio today around noon. Shown above is the print I decided to donate- Death on the Highway. I chose it because it's a good print and I have a large edition of them. She seemed very impressed with it, but it still remains to be seen if anyone at the auction feels the same way. My work sometimes appeals to a very specific audience.

As for this print, it has a back story. I went out to Evil Prints in St Louis in 2003, right around this time of year. Tom Huck flew me out, gave me a fold-out couch to sleep on, a fistfull of meal money, and dropped me off at the studio every morning. I had sent on ahead a blank piece of prepared wood and my tools, which arrived the same day I did. The idea I had was a combination of Albert Pinkham Ryder's The Race Track (aka Death on a Pale Horse) and a parcel of classic North Jersey landscape- a piece of the Garden State Parkway that passes through a sliver of Newark, and in doing so runs through a large cemetary, with the derelict remains of an old Pabst brewery and bottling plant looming overhead. The giant bottle had been a local landmark for almost a century (those not lucky enough to be from the Garden State may have seen it in an episode of The Sopranos a few seasons ago, when Uncle Junior is fixated on it while wandering Newark in an Alzheimer's fugue), but was finally taken down last year as the complex is due for redevelopment. I brought to St Louis a few action photos of the scene taken a few times I had occasion to drive by mile 145, as well as a book with Ryder's painting. My only other preparation was a few scribbles on looseleaf paper while waiting around in Newark Airport for my flight out.

My first full day there I drew in the basic composition- the clouds are from Ryder's sky, as are the general shape of the horizon and the road, with the headstones, trees and plant reworked versions of the photos. In the original painting, Death rides a horse, but in my update a car would be required. I wanted a convertible, preferably 70's. Found a reference back at Huck's loft- a video still from the movie Casino. The next few days was a lot of cutting, with breaks once in a while as he brought me around to talk to his classes about my prints. Finished it before the weekend, then spent all day Saturday with his shop assistant as we cranked out the edition of 24. The next day (Easter) we saw the excellent Painted Prints show at SLAM, and signed/numbered the edition. I would have cooked a nice Italian feast for Tom as thanks for the great week, but we couldn't find a single open supermarket in the whole city. Monday I was on my way home, the prints arriving a few weeks later. There are tentative plans for me to produce a new print at Evil Prints in the summer of 2008. That gives me a year or so to come up with another good idea.