Strange Statement!

A metallic titan peers into a green-grey sky as it offers a pair of mangled bodies in its outstretched right hand to some unseen master above. Ghostly white lane lines push forward toward a distant horizon where an unearthly glow radiates from between two hills in a night full of stars. A swarm of pale pink creatures with coiled tails, webbed feet, and ivory smiles cavort around a block of text promising "Instant Pets" if one simply submerges them in water. A woman reclines on a concrete floor, the contours of her clothing-free body barely covered by a python draped strategically along her left side.

These four images were stamped into my brain in the late 1970s and early 1980s, prompting dreams that were equal parts tantalizing and terrifying as my prepubescent body tried to make it through another night of fitful sleep. Acolytes of late-20th century popular culture may recognize that the first image is the cover of the Queen album News of the World, the second is the poster for the Steven Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the third is a Marvel comic book ad for Super Sea Monkeys, and the fourth is the iconic Richard Avedon poster Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent.

Although the four images have little in common on a surface level, they shared an ability to provoke a younger version of me to think and act. The first image caused me to question my babysitter's potential for violence based on her choice in music. The second prompted me to pester my father into carting me yet again to the movie theater at Parmatown Mall. The third beckoned me to become the benevolent caregiver to a pod of unsuspecting brine shrimp dropped into a greasy fishbowl on my bedroom dresser. The fourth had me wondering why my mother decided that the main entryway to my suburban childhood home was the best spot to display racy framed artwork.

Ultimately, these four images sparked in me an obsession with visuals and text that continues to this day. One reasonably safe and rarely lucrative outlet for this obsession has been collage and mixed media art. My pieces are the covers for nearly forgotten albums by willfully obscure bands that now sell for four figures on the internet. They are the one-sheets that hang near the entrance to that independent movie theater the film nerds like to visit every Saturday at midnight. They are the print ads for products that get shoved onto rusty shelves in the discount stores of a late-stage capitalist society teetering on the edge of collapse. They are portraits of celebrities that never were but one day might be.

Much like those four images from decades ago, my pieces are realistic depictions of uncanny things. They are Uncannily Real. They are Really Uncanny.