Ten-cent
the artist
Deep in the belly of the Meadowlands, beyond the gray floored
catacombs, in the white tiled palaces of the dark lords, I scrape the
mildewed showers and scrub the sweat stained floors. Hunch backed
from carrying towels and laundry, thin haired from the ammonia and
bleach, with skin like an old napkin, and a slight limp because of one
flat foot, I turned to creation as a panacea for the soul.
the art
Castles in the air, constructed with the smells, and odors and
stenches of the locker room. Perfume for javelinas, musk for
meteaors. My creations shorter than an ice sculpture at the equator,
but for their time spent wending through the benches and corridors,
hot tubs and laundry caves, they are god, all of existence. A smell
permeates the soul, you cannot shut your nose once it has entered, and
you cannot predict where it will strike. Complex and striking, the
olfactory sculptures use fragments of life to convey simple truth, but
the wisdom is gained in the searching-- tracing smells to memories, to
symbols, to past events, facts and figures from history and literature
long forgotten. A lame flea bitten mutt could translate in a moment,
but when Andy Warhol "viewed" my masterpiece "Genghis Khan" it took
him seven meditative sniffing to comprehend the piece.
the beret
I wear a Nets baseball cap. They're not very good, but at least they
got rid of Derrick Coleman.
Submitted by Dave Pellicane (dpell@ix.netcom.com), on Saturday, August 31, 1996, from Highland Park, NJ