Moving On Up
So- my life these days is completely Roq La Rue all the time. I've been painting like a fiend in the new space -which is huge. It's turning out well- really well- if all goes accordingly the space will be amazing. K and our pal B made me a giant desk, and we're putting up shelving in the alcove d'art book section tomorrow- drilling into crappy old concrete. The space has some beautiful architectural details, 20 ft high ceilings, expansive walls, a photo corner (a corner of the room is rounded- like something you'd see in a skate park-the space used to be a photolab, but the corner is so neat I'm keeping it. Probably make it available to photographers on occasion). The "hallway" between the front door, book area, and main gallery has a cut out minuret type top, so it gives the room some distinction and subtle interest. All the lighting is focused on the walls- so the rest of the interior is dim and you don't get blinded by lights. Plus- for once I have a nice floor!
The best thing is that Celeste,my assistant, is coming on full time as the gallery director. This means I can keep working on Ignition's projects. She is really fantastic and I think will help breathe new life into the gallery and help me take it to a new level- which is the whole point of the move.
I'm taking pics of the remodel- and I'll post them soon.

Traffic magazine corrected my name and posted the interview with me about Pop Surrealism online...

Happiness In The Age Of Strip Malls
Lest I sound like my childhood was nothing but sad lonely days I should add that I also had a lot of fun as well. For a brief period when I was pretty young my mother, brother, sister and myself lived in an apartment complex in Macon, Georgia. Every Saturday we had a ritual -which was getting up early and spending all morning doing chores. After chores we’d all pile into the car and go to Kmart (we were all really young so this was before it was a hissing and a byword) get stuff we needed for the house and usually a small treat for us kids. We’d then go to Burger Chef and then spend an hour or two at the library in the strip mall by our house, picking out armloads of books. By then it would be so hot the parking lot tarmac would shimmer with rising heat waves, and we’d stick to our car seats, our backs sweaty and soaking through our t-shirts and terrycloth haltertops. The rest of the afternoon was spent lazing around reading our new books or going swimming at the pool with the other kids in our apartment complex. Even now, when I hear Gary Numan’s “Cars” , I am transported to the sunny sweaty Georgia summers, watching the nut brown, peroxide blonde moms in giant lilac tinted sunglasses slather on the baby oil and gossip while us skinny sunburned kids played around trying to drown each other and swallowing gallons of chlorinated water since we seemed to constantly be shouting. Sometimes a snake would have gotten into the pool during the night, so armed with a plastic bread bag, I would dive to the drain in the deep end and scoop up the snake and set him loose in the woods behind the apartments. The snake was usually alive and I’m glad I didn’t really know that Georgia was rife with incredibly poisonous Water Moccasins…nothing like the protection of the naïve I guess. In the evening we’d go to each others apartments and the parents would just feed whatever kids showed up...usually hot dogs and chips or macaroni and Kool Aid- the stuff kids like. As night fell, we’d head home to our books or “ That’s Incredible!” or “The Dukes Of Hazzard”…wearing our pj’s, curled up in blankets on our white vinyl couch, our arms wrapped around our white German Shepherd Jason as the sound of crickets began to rise in the warm night air.