Conceptual Ideas

These conceptual art ideas have not (yet!) been produced. They are presented here in the same manner that Sol LeWitt never painted or drew his own wall drawings. If you wish to produce any of these works, please consult with the artist.

2001

Title: I believe in miraces. A series of paper shredders in a circle, each one with a holy book from each of the major religions poised above them in such a way that one could drop a page into one of the shredders.

Title: Let's play God. A black and gold velvet curtain/shroud that looks and is hung in the same size and manner as if it were covering the Kaaba in Mecca... Inside, it's empty, but you'd hear recordings of hundreds of anonymous prayers and confessions to God.

Title: Shame. A room with photos/images of all the homophobic popes on one wall, and sea of weeping plaster/concrete statues of the Virgin Mary in all sizes facing them.

2011

Title: #NotAll. A wall of photos taken from the 'net of the folks who cam their meth and drug use ... the majority of whom happen to be white...

Untitled: Oversize porcelain "figurines" of guns, bombs, missiles, and army vehicles... even of soldiers... With lovely flower patterns and gold details, of course.

2014

Title: We don't ignore it, we just obscure it. Photo realistic semi-macro views of budding and blooming shrubs and dense trees with some violent crime being committed just obscured in the background....

2016

Title: Sisyphus. Get a 3D printer, and print out plastic replicas of all the plastic garbage floating around in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Bonus: keep a 3D printer in the process of making more during the exhibit in the center, surrounded by the stuff it made. Always display all the objects the 3D printer made in every subsequent showing of this piece.

Title: A tale of two cities. Two rooms... Room one: a perfect seating room direct out of an Architectural Digest photo shoot or 5-star hotel. Room two: all the packaging and waste that was used to create, ship, and assemble Room one.

2018

Title: Palestine. A room filled with a very large conveyor belt that rolls toward the viewer. On the conveyor belt are rocks... so the rocks are rolling towards the viewer, they can fall into metal retaining baskets at the end, or just fall into a pile. Viewers are to pick up rocks and throw them as far as they can to the other side, where they land on then conveyor belt, and the rocks return to the viewer. If the rock thrower successfully hits the far wall of the gallery before it lands back on the conveyor belt, the sound of machine gun fire is heard. -- The conveyor belt returning the rocks is the main point, to me, so if the machine gun sound is too over the top, it can be eliminated.

Title: Everyone is Ugly; Everyone is Beautiful, or Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. 100's of plaster casts of nude, normal, every-day people of every shape and size, ethnic background, etc.; number of men equal to the number of women. All the men posed like Michaelangelo's David, and the women like Botticelli's Venus.

2019

Title: Nero 2019. Construct an acrylic box about 1 cubic foot or 1 liter. Fill with water leaving about a centimeter from the top, and freeze. After it’s frozen, remove the ice block from the box in one piece. — or, just freeze a block of ice the same size and dimensions of thebox. Place an oil lamp, filled with fuel, that is large enough that if the box was refilled with water, would extinguish the oil lamp flame —in the box. Secure the oil lamp to the bottom of the box so it doesn’t float away. Place the frozen block of ice on a fire mesh suspended above the box with enough space to give the flame of the oil lamp room to heat the block of ice relatively evenly. The mesh should allow heat to transfer to the block of ice and allow the melted water to drip into the box below without extinguishing the flame once lit. Light the oil lamp and let the water melt back in the box until the oil lamp is extinguished by the melted water. For extra credit, play streams of the daily news nearby.

Title: Sex. (In response to an exhibit of the same name organized by Goethe Institute and AIC, which curiously claimed to be "groundbreaking" while ignoring the legacy of Andy Warhol's Factory.) A room painted in silver with psychedelic lights and a couch in the middle with a half naked pill-popping socialite tripping out and arranging more pills in patterns around her.

Title: Better than Bansky. Construct a fire-rated glass wall cube over a propane tank gas grill, with a vent to the outside or a really great air return ventilation system. Sell at art auction in a cash-upfront only transaction. When the auction house receives the cash and after the auction house takes their percentage, the remainder of the cash is put on the grill, the ventilation turned on, and the gas grill fired up. Performance is complete when the cash is nothing but ash. Subsequent sales of this artwork are to function the same way. The seller receives nothing for the artwork.

Title: You make your own Heaven. You make your own Hell. (An homage to Rodin.) Get an unfinished, plain (like, no paneling design -- as plain as can be) wood door and door jam from hardware store. Stand it up in the middle of the room -- don't install any hardware -- it's not meant to actually be functional; maybe even a little ajar -- sorta like a door that won't stay closed or blew open a little because of the wind or the door is warped and doesn't exactly close without the hardware. Get stick on lettering and put "Heaven" on one side of the door, and "Hell" on the other side of the door... that's all/done.