ATTRACTING SHARKS

graphite on stonehenge and denril, pen and ink, 2016
participatory non-numerical connect-the-dot drawings, collaborative poetry
installation view, S’17, Carnegie Mellon University
Most stories are told collaboratively.
‘Connecting the dots’ pokes fun at finding meaning in visual forms that do not necessarily have meaning, as well as being directed in ones approach of creating an image.


So as to make a careful arrangement of the glass after kicking it in, each narrative unit (”dot”) in the drawings was extracted from my personal archived journals, written always in red ink. In one of them I had written, “with this journal I hope to attract sharks.”

victim of the house phone left off the hook / the worst thing somebody would do to your food / Triple ’s’ / turning the thermostat over 100 degrees / the lights in the delivery room

the worst thing somebody would do to your food / buying 1/2 dozen eggs from somebody I have given up on / making things plural / you double-knot my laces / tweezing my freckles / 5

marbles in my uncle’s shoe / closing my eyes, eating white rice / making things plural / hugging the wrong pair of legs

crying over a wedge salad / a bar tab: broccoli / pet jumping bean /
a bar tab: broccoli / delivering somebody’s litter / burying my feet under your butt / a rooster cocks
his head / drawing Jesus crucified with nipple hair / pausing to wash my own feet / making things plural

you graduated in slippers / never learning about the solar system /
four men’s vitamins / keeping your socks on all day 

a boy walks to school and his father drives beside him / grasping time in terms of arthur episodes / spending money in $12 increments  
mices / loving snap dragons / among the things that have been shut in car doors

a live goldfish thrown in my direction / telling the neighbor boy I’m not wearing any make-up


valid hunger / passing go /
changing my clothes from silk into velvet / the traffic lights condescend to me

a spread of what you’d disguise your dog’s medication in / removed shoulder pads and posture / your vitamins / Teddy Pepper / having been told the same secret / talking about Lana del Ray, using her first name / the oxford comma / letting my phone charge overnight

calling late but not my bluffs with the car defrost / recognizing your grandmother for the first time, in a second-hand store

calling late but not my bluffs with the car defrost / recognizing your grandmother for the first time, in a second-hand store // (repeat infinitely)

Mark
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