dayton is not in ohio

The nature of my work is such that I often get passed over for small group shows that it seems my friends are always being included in… My stuff is generally too big, too involved to install, too serious…

My latest project is none of the above… and I’m going to be in a show!

The concept comes out of a project I abandoned last year, where I began to edit, with a red pen, a printed manuscript of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I had no real goal in mind to begin with, other than having my way with a work that was considered a part of the cannon of Western literature. I started with random annotations and edits until, about eight pages in, I began to turn the novel into a pirate story. This was fun, but the book is far too long to sustain this, and it had become conceptually unmoored. I liked it, but I gave it up as unmanageable.

Then, last month, I was chatting with my friend Wayne Adams, a New York artist I met through CIVA, and he told me of his desire to curate a show all about pirates. I mentioned my old project, and told him I’d like to revisit it, but use a short story rather than a novel. This time I would set out to write a pirate story, giving the project focus.

I began to search short stories in the public domain, and settled on Anton Chekhov’s The Lottery Ticket. The moment I began, I knew I was in love with this project. I love writing, but have never been able to write narratives for some reason. I’ve tried, but I don’t get far. It’s just not in me. Using the narrative framework already in place, the psychological architecture, the character development, I was rolling. I changed names and settings, embellished descriptions, and thoroughly enjoyed laying my own (in this case tragic) swashbuckling veneer on the story. Can’t say that it is good, but it was fun to do.
One of my beloved, astute grad advisers was positive about the project and pointed out (I’m embarrassed to say I had not made the rhetorical connection myself) that what I was doing was pirating. Here I was, a literary pirate, writing about pirates, as if from some intellectual arm’s length. I am a pirate, pillaging Chekhov’s narrative.

So, for the show, which opens this Saturday at Alogon Gallery, an experimental space run and lived in by friends of mine, I will be showing the four pages of the inkjet printed manuscript that I have liberally modified with my trusty red pen. Here’s a horrible cell phone image:

There’s a beautiful appropriateness to the blood-red edits covering the page.

I then typed up my pirated version, doing a little more tweaking in the process. If you’d like to read my pirated version The Wreck of the Revenge, you can download the PDF. You may read Chekhov’s original here.

I plan, finally, to have copies of my story printed, with pirated illustrations, in an edition of small hardcovers. Finally, a small, discreet artistic commodity to hawk. I’ll let you know when they go on sale. Let me know if you’re interested and you may be offered friend pricing…

I also intend to continue pirating short stories. Arrrrgh!