quieter ghosts

Page 3 of “An Exorcism” - The script, in case it may be difficult to read in this compressed JPEG: “It I went to my uncle’s Wilmington, NC house to clear the property after his death. The front door loomed, ominous; a glorious black shadow gaping wide like an open mouth- above me, around me- SWALLOWED. I heard its grumbling at our presence in the whisper of the floorboards as we tip-toed through its dusty belly out into the overgrown acre backyard. I touched a still-blooming azalea, lifting its tender head to the sun. My mother, somewhere, was crying. I could have picked her the flower… But I chose to let it grow.” [Tombow marker, micron]

Page 2 of “An Exorcism” - The script, in case it may be difficult to read in this compressed JPEG: “The author Irving Howe once stated that “perhaps because it had so little else to give its people, the South nurtured in them a generous and often obsessive sense of the past.” That sense of past forges our identity in blood. It’s like we are rooted to the ground here itself, and to all the layers of memory and soil and clay that stains our toes on muddy summer afternoons. Sometimes, though, I feel trapped. Not grounded by roots but stuck waist-deep in marshland mud and swampmuck… Surrounded by a briar patch homeland like Brer Rabbit… A fly, swallowed by a pitcher plant. But those swamps are disappearing, aren’t they? And so too are the pitcher plants.” [Tombow marker, micron]

Page 1 of “An Exorcism” - a 3-page comic about Southern Identity. The “protagonist” and narrator of this story is fictional, but, of course, the sentiments and experiences represented in this narrative reflect, in part, some of my own. The script, in case it may be difficult to read in this compressed JPEG: “It has been said that the South is the most violent and the most religious of American regions. Focus on whichever statistic you like… Our ghosts here are hungry, and they rise from the grave.” [Tombow marker, micron]

a fly.

That tattoo I designed for Chris; he wanted it to include a heart and the Red Hot Chili Peppers asterisk symbol.

“goldfinch funeral”— A painting of my dorm room at Colorado College from my summer stay there when I participated in the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Summer Seminar program. very creepy claustraphobic old rooms. [Watercolor, BIC ballpoint pen]

A still life with my grandpa’s teeth, a dog tooth, and a dead moth I found in my bedroom. [Watercolor, Bic white-out, pencil, micron on watercolor paper]

Self-portrait; trying to create some kind of emotion using line, color, and selective empasis and technique. A lot of feeling went into this piece, and I’m mostly satisfied with it for all it cost me. [Watercolor, pencil, Bic whiteout, and micron on watercolor paper]