Back in my misspent youth, I sat in my living room in San Francisco, listening to Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto. “If only I could create visual art that had such exquisite depths, such excruciating beauty,” I earnestly scrawled in my journal on that fateful night. And indeed,notlongafterthatIproducedViewingLandscaping,anartist’sbookabouttheperils of singing in a crowded elevator in San Francisco’s stuffy financial district. “This is a piece of cake!” I cried out joyously, and began to pursue even greater artistic heights (or sometimes depths) as a bookartist.

I gave up my long quest for the elusive Grail of artistic fame, having at last realized that it just wasn’t in me, and instead I began to celebrate what was in me, believing firmly that Truth, like happiness, could come only from within and, contrariwise, whatever is within must be Truth. It seemed imperative somehow that I should share what I found with others, whether they wanted it or not.

“Humorous art, like poetry, has an extra content. It plays, like an active child, close to the big hot fire which is Truth. And sometimes the reader feels the heat.”

—E. B. White

What White didn’t say (but which I quickly discovered) is that Truth is often accompanied by long-winded, boorish companions who inevitably force their way into the most well- intentioned works, but who—if one is to entertain Truth and keep it around for long—must also sometimes be tolerated with a sigh, like in-laws at Christmas.

Brighitta: But it doesn’t mean anything!

Fraulein Maria: So, we put in words, one word for every note, like this…

—Oscar Hammerstein II, from The Sound of Music

In my work, words often share equally with visual elements, and, like many book artists, I perhaps owe as much to poetry as, say, to abstract expressionism. Much of my work is heavily dependent upon literary influences; in addition to my own humble offerings, quotations from the great and the trivial often dot the pieces and are even occasionally credited. Influences from the visual arts are not so easily pinned down—there are doubtless many whose styles I have appropriated without acknowledgment because I have long since forgotten their names. I am greatly indebted to writers such as James Thurber, who once said of his own work, “It is impossible to read any of the stories from the last line to the first without experiencing a definite sensation of going backward.” Just so.

“…and the Devil whispered behind the leaves, ‘It’s clever, but is it Art?’

—Kipling

The output of my artistic endeavors often puzzles and even sometimes irritates art pundits because it defies categorization and seems to lack weighty purpose, slithering like a greased pig around such terms as post-structuralist dogma. The general public, however, doesn’t give two figs for post-structuralist dogma; they rightfully feel somewhat ostracized fromtheartswhensuchterminologyisbandiedabout,andtheyremainmytargetaudience (until they start asking from something in blues and greens to go over the sofa). As for me, I love terms like post-structuralist dogma; of such stuff are a parodist’s dreamsmade.

However, I am not unmindful of the perilous tightrope upon which the light-hearted artist often treads.

“The world decorates its serious artists with laurels, and its wags with Brussels sprouts.”—E. B. White

I await with cheese sauce in hand.