This site is a work in progress ... some links are active, all are in development. "Galleries & Representation" has lots of images & info about me & my work, "The Open" covers a Milwaukee project, and that one to the right is my IG... >>>
Round & Round You Go, 2018
Five 12-oz. aluminum beer cans (Lone Star Light, Sol, Corona, Natural Light, Miller Lite), one 16-oz. ‘energy drink’ can (Rockstar Blackout), voice recordings, speaker, cork. ~3:00 duration
Knock Knock Joke Joke, 2018
24-oz. aluminum beer can (Schlitz “High Gravity”), 16-oz. aluminum beer can (Miller High Life), voice recordings, speakers, cork
Voice 1: Heyd Fontenot Voice 2: Amada Miller
~1:49 duration
Arguments
If these works gain your interest, download a PDF from the 2018 Sala Diaz show where they debuted to read the scripts & texts used for the voice recordings.
Forgive the wack camera work. You have to see this one from all angles to know what's up: the progression is Lone Starlight for the sun as a star, then Sol as our sun, then Corona for its effects, then Natural Light for how we perceive it here, then Lite for its artifical equivalents, then Blackout for its death, or ignorance. The base is a working refrigerator.
This one is voiced by artist Amada Miller, who is also my wife. The title is a play on the brand name, suggesting a star floating alone in the void of space, unable to reach any other star, forever alone.
Lone Starlight, 2018
16-oz. aluminum beer can (Lone Star Light), voice recording, speaker, cork
Voice: Amada Claire Miller ~1:49 duration
This is the first one I made, as circular a knock-knock joke as I could think up. Voiced expertly by Heyd Fontenot (High Gravity smasher) and Amada Miller (High Life smashee).
Annuit Coeptis (Favors), 2018
Four 16-oz. aluminum beer cans (Budweiser “America”, Lone Star “Come and Take It”, Budweiser “Liberty torch,” Imperial), voice recordings, speaker
Voices: Leticia Rocha Zivadinovic, Xavier Gilmore, Joe Harjo, Agusto Benavides
~5:00 duration
An argument quoting texts by Ursula LeGuin, Angela Davis on Frederick Douglass, Jonathan Lear, and Eduardo Galeano. The title refers to the Latin phrase decorating U.S. currency, which translates as "[providence] favors our undertakings" -- providence can also mean fate, particularly if one is on the other side of the favoring.