NUDE

April 1, 2002

There is a restaurant up the street from where I live. "Capo Verde" (plug).

I've exhibited my work there many times.

For a while, it was like it was my own private gallery. I'd do a show for 2 months, then I'd take it down and put up a new show for the next two. I did many shows in a row like that.

Art isn't just about making money. It's also about looking at art.

Most people don't look at art. Not really. Not with wonder. If art is a part of their lives, it's probably because someone told them to go see something, and that "this is what it is". They go to see what they have been told. That's how they see it. Status, size of gallery, advertising they may have seen, which critic wrote what ­ all these things set the viewer up.

Post Warhole, much of art has been about packaging, and the selling of product.

But my shows were in a restaurant with none of that packaging. People had to look at them and decide for themselves if the work was any good or not.

And they got to look at them a lot. Capo Verde is a coffee place, so some of the people were in there many times a week.

And then they could bounce the current show off of the earlier ones.

I think people had a pretty deep experience with my work. Many would tell me so when I'd be changing the shows.

So my current show at this restaurant is of nude figures, done with charcoal and eraser. Nice show.

I never try to sell anything. I don't post price lists or anything. But this time, I put up a sign that said the drawings were for sale for $200 each ­ OR - they could come to my studio and pose in the nude for me for 3 hours, and then pick a drawing from a stack.

"Age, sex, body-type doesn't matter."

"Wow. What would that be like?" (said my notice).

No one has called yet. I don't know if anyone will.

Of course, I'd like it if they would, but that's a future movie that may or may not happen.

But for me, the notice, the written sign, those words, that was my art. My painting.

I wanted to implant in the readers mind the fantasy of standing naked in front of another human being.

65 year old grandmother, the rich businessman, the overweight girl, the buff gay dude, the housewife, the nanny, the guy who thinks he's so cool.

Everyone should carry such thoughts, and keep turning them over and over.

Standing naked in front of a stranger.

Telling someone, someone who is completely different than who you are, your deepest thoughts, fears, hopes and desires.

Observing how the other responds. Listening to their story in return.

It's the magic medicine that will heal the world.