A Book About Death

A BOOK ABOUT DEATH : ARTISTS CONTRIBUTE 500 POST CARDS EACH TO CREATE AN UNBOUND BOOK ABOUT DEATH. EXHIBITION AT THE EMILY HARVEY FOUNDATION GALLERY IN NEW YORK CITY. OPENING: THURSDAY 10 SEPTEMBER 2009. EXHIBITION: 10 - 22 SEPTEMBER 2009.

In the spirit of Ray Johnson, among others, this massive open call exhibit and art card give-a-way is assembling both online and at the Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in New York. Principal organizer, collage artist Matthew Rose, lives and creates in Paris and somehow manages to get around. I admire his work.

 I've waited till the last minute to submit my take on the theme, and now I'm breathing hard to meet the deadline. I wanted to create a simple design that would work on a postcard. I liked the anatomical skeleton kneeling in a prayerful pose. As I was looking at it as a thumbnail in my random images folder, I noticed next to it a thumbnail of a pair of old Everlast boxing gloves I'd taken a picture of several years back but had never used for anything. Once I'd made the association between the two images in my mind, I didn't look for any other options. The power in combining them I think, lies, not only in the resulting contradictory pose, both reverential and combative at the same time, but in the various existentional interpretations one can draw from it.