I don’t want to spoil the fun, so please if you know my work go out and buy a copy of the October Issue of Art in America. Just take a look where it falls. I couldn’t have done it any better. If you send me a copy I will authenticate it as an original piece of art.
Dear Roberta,
Never underestimate the amount of resentment and hostility I harbor towards artists. It definitely springs largely from envy. They can behave quite badly indeed, but I behave terribly. While they operate with a kind of freedom and courage, I operate not on a kind of desperation and fear, but DESPERATION and FEAR. I’m terrified that I will be failure and die without a New York Times review.
It really doesn’t matter how much I toil away in studio or how much money I pour into my art, but it is my freedom to say “I AM the greatest artist in the world,” if I may say so, which really doesn’t require a court decision.
Sincerely,
William Powhida
Never underestimate the amount of resentment and hostility we harbor toward artists. It springs largely from envy. They can behave quite badly, but mainly they operate with a kind of freedom and courage that other people don’t risk or enjoy. And it can lead to wondrous things.
In the end it doesn’t matter how many people toil on a work of art, or how much money is spent on it. The artist’s freedom includes the right to say, “This is not a work of art unless I say so.”
Regina Hackett is absolutely correct, I am a terrible actor. Basically, my accomplice Jeff Parker and I had an ill-defined plan that might look like this:
Get crazy type to play James Wreck
Buy whiskey (Jack, Makers, Jim…)
Drink said whiskey before reading/performance…
Signal to Rod with cell phone time check to start freaking out
Watch Rod tear up $10,000 drawing
Kick his ass out of gallery
Following the whiskey our plan was basically to react to this guy Rod, who was going to impersonate James, a fictional character in our book, The Back of the Line. When the shit went down, and Rod started to threaten the $10,000 drawing, local Seattle PI critic Regina Hackett flew into action causing all sorts of confusion. Rod fled the scene before Parker and I could salvage any sort of closure to the performance gone awry. Personally, I think Jeff and I needed to have finished a bottle of whiskey and made things really uncomfortable by being hammered.
Maybe shit would’ve gotten really out of hand.
Production stills from the set of The Bastard’s Studio, a study for Sofia Coppola’s inevitable film about the turbulent and shallow life of renowned artist, William Powhida.
I journeyed to Seattle this past weekend for a reading from The Back of the Line, a collaborative novel I made with Jeff Parker and DECODE Inc., better known as Stephen Lyons and John Jenkins. Steve is also one of the dealers at Platform Gallery where I exhibit. Steve and his boyfriend John put up with me…er, put me up for the holiday weekend. “You are a bad influence,” was the extent of Steve’s conversation Monday morning after we stayed up past our bedtimes having an iTunes battle. Apparently, we are both fiends for Neutral Milk Hotel and sad shoegazing indie rock. Throw in a few cocktails too many and we edged into some sloppy emotional territory. How can visual art possibly compete with the emotional whallop of a Neutral Milk Hotel song like Naomi or Gardenhead. Maybe it can’t. We didn’t reach resolution on that discussion before the beer and liqour took hold.
But before we got all drunk and emotional about our musical tastes, Jeff Parker and I had been up to no good at Platform Gallery for our reading. Jeff showed up an hour early and started the brown liqour flowing to get us into character. After we ‘finished’ the reading, a disturbed fellow started ranting about losing his job and asking for the art work. Before things got ugly, the Seattle P-I critic Regina Hackett stopped the irate audience member in his tracks. So taken back was the man that he fled the gallery before Regina knocked him out. Unfortunately for Parker and I, the guy was actually supposed to destroy a ‘prop’ drawing and then be revealed to be James J. Wreck, the main character of the book.
So surprised by Regina’s amazing intervention Parker and I fumbled the whole James thing and let our friend run off. Next time, Parker suggested we pull a reverse James Frey and say the book actually isn’t fiction, but based on the very real exploits of James. I now have to publicly apologize for dragging Regina into our planned interruption. “Sorry, Regina!” We then followed Parker over to a bookstore where he read to us and a few tight-lipped wierdos from his new novel, Ovenman. It’s a filthy read about about a guy who blacks out a lot and leaves himself post-it note reminders when he’s not slinging pies or singing in a hard core band that actually hates him. It will stain your shirt, maybe your heart. I did an aborted cover for the novel, but one of the drawings survives faded in the bumble-bee layout. That’s not my fault.
All in all, it was good trip to Seattle and my ego is only slightly bruised and battered after learning that my new favorite enemy Shamim Momim never requested a follow up package of my work from Platform after her trip to Seattle. She liked Jesse Burke though, who does creepy-excellent photographs exploring masculinity in often sublime surroundings. I’m no Biennial artist…just a sell-out loser. That and Shamim barely acknowledged my pathetic existence at dinner at Amalia a few weeks back. Now that was painful.
Next up, photographs from the set of Powhida, the biographical film directed by Sophia Coppola.