WYSIWYG is a large-scale installation, which attacks the very support system of galleries by continually growing beyond what the traditional ideas of the gallery walls can support. It moves from community to community collecting new memories and materials based upon the community’s interaction with it.

Every community donates new materials and works directly with me in the installation process. The new elements become a part of the piece as it continues to the next stop. In this way the show mimics a B-Movie Blob, growing bigger and bigger with every stop. Eventually the show will be so big that it will completely disrespect the very structural supports of the gallery wall.  The dimensions are variable but always big and getting bigger.

The materials donated by the community come directly form their lives. They are materials, which directly interact with my ideas of art and universal psychology. As this show began as using cute as an allegory for painting, and cute is a universal element in every ones life, form when they where a child, the standard material collected is the once loved and used stuffed animal. Other materials relevant to the community are also collected. If it’s an art school for instance, old student work donated to become apart of the whole.

The communities then interact with me in a workshop, which creates new elements for the show, which become a part of the piece. These elements can involve collage, paint and sculpture, which ever will best reflect the community and architecture. Both permanent and non-permanent creations are added to the show at each stop. This guarantees both contextual significance to their community through the temporary elements as well as universal community in the pieces created to go forth to the next communities.  In Cincinnati, Art Academy Students, Kentucky University Students and Grade School students participated.

Questions of authorship, universality, community and what art can be are all questioned in this process.  The project directly address the fact that art fairs, contemporary galleries and museums are not where healthy art lives. I am to bringing the monster of the avant-garde back to the tradition of art making in a very literal way.  A healthy Monster is a healthy art environment.

What you See is What You Get.