What happens when visual art and narrative collide? 5ive Times Floyd was more than an exhibition—it was my journey through memory, obsessions, and artistic exploration.
With five paintings and an accompanying artist’s book, 5ive Times Floyd delved into my ever-shifting nature of personal experience and how creativity reshapes the stories I tell myself.
Here’s a brief look at the making of 5ive Times Floyd, its artistic inspiration, and how the paintings and book came together at These Days LA last October to create a what I’d like to think was a multi-sensory experience for the people who attended.
Sometimes results arrive from things unplanned. Take for instance, stumbling across an original publicity still of two-time heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson in the middle of a box of junk at a flea market in Southern California. I really can’t explain why some things Found speak to me so clearly. Floyd’s picture gets turned into a gel-transfer diptych on the backs of boards removed from a broken, hardbound book.
But, for some reason, that’s not enough: a book needs to be assembled with Floyd’s image as the central motif. Still not enough: so, combine other found imagery, text, and items into this book in the same way Joseph Cornell did with his Manual of Marvels, turning a simple book into an object.
This can’t be a one-off, either. A short run, limited to no more than something I could accomplish in a reasonable amount of time. Then, with forty hand-sewn into wraps, the only way to really make it right is to add a hardbound edition as well. Still not enough. Somehow, multiple paintings evolved directly from the Rauschenberg / Warhol / Berman sphere of influence using the same found elements in the books. Art from the book as opposed to a book coming from art. As many times as I could pull it off—which, in this case, was 5ive.
That’s what I wrote for my gallerists, Jody and Stephen at These Days. I should talk about them really quick. What started with a close friendship turned into my Sexual Fictions and Floyd shows. Let’s talk about things that often don’t get talked about when you talk about gallerists: the mentorship and advocating and promoting and making sure their artists thrive creatively — while building long-term success and recognition. Also, without mentioning it once, both helped me deal with the one thing I dread most as a creative — the varying degrees of imposter syndrome that fuck with my head almost daily.
I’ll end this post here: 5ive Times Floyd invites you to explore the tension between memory and reinvention through found, vibrant visuals and non-narrative storytelling.
The paintings are still available. I made 50 total books; 40 hand-sewn in wraps and 10 bound in cloth and slipcased. There’s still some copies in wraps available.
