Shea Peterson – Featured Artist

My current stasis resides somewhere between the long road to nowhere, trudging further toward oblivion, and a much shorter verse of track and field, infinitely returning to itself, time and again. Both of which beg the functioning heel of salvation, asking independently, when will this silent behemoth voice silence? In the valleys of demons and supplanters, the beginning is always de-masticating the end, recovering the lonely relic that sits along the beaten path, unused, misunderstanding its purpose and place in time.

I am no angry prophet nor affiliate nor solemn defeatist. I am nothing nor nihilist nor god-abolitionist nor polytheist. We have arrived to the beginning of this traversal march. I am few nor special nor awakened. Nor you. Nor you. Nor you.

The right part in the voice that silently thwarts and screams at the limp flower, flutters in disgust in the mirror at the desert mirage of unacknowledged spirit. It is only a mirror. And see, here, this is no story—the longer more indefatigable theme—more the anti-story, devoid of real plot and character. I am simply fitting words in time, reporting back, fulfilling, emptying. Every story is limp. Every thought is mercurial. Every ounce of freedom is a lie. We are not living, we are sustaining, getting by, with more and more stories in stage of void and trepidation than anything else. Tell me otherwise… I’ll believe you. Or, tell me nothing, I’ll believe you equally. The formidable giant remains, overlooking the inner-workings of each world within, flooding the rooms; doors swinging like giant aphrodisiacs, poisoning the streets and cities with broken dreams of another man’s lie. His liturgy.

In the corner between entropy and inertia, I am dancing along the winds indefinable resting place. There is room for one more; do please, join me. I have entered your space, and there, here, sitting along the fray on the cool headstone of my broken cenotaph, rustling along the violin in autumn sadness, intoxicated by the breath of the sun, she appears… and approaches. I fall in love. The history of our love is dust, and when all’s concluded, is narrated in series of sneezes and blessings. It shall continue its retelling of itself, which is only that, a gem, for reunion. So, by all means, fall in love. Fall out. Fall in between. There is little else to live for. You are no prophet, nor angel nor demon nor beacon of premonition, for there is no such thing. Nor you. Nor you. Nor you.

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If I must be bound to the Plastic World, I will fully immerse myself into it.
This is how I shall understand it…

Inside, the blueprint medicine man with talking fingers.
I’ve seen him once before, that long turquoise nose obsessed with glue and freedom.
He’s been through this kind of thing already, skipping along the imperceptible forest road in a striped monochromic suit, banging violin notes on his head.
I’ve seen him this way all too often. Sloped. Droopy. Intoxicated—

It was I, the desert tarantula, weaving the doorknob of infinite combustion.
I have joyously avoided life by watching the furniture collect articles of invisible lobsters with incredibly long eyelashes. Etcetera, stockpiled on the condom, covering the love seat, wishing for the house guests to drown the silence back to the living.
 
That fucking clown keeps playing his instrument! and the rainbow creatures of the forest pretend to comfort themselves, applauding his amateur stroke.
“Touch it, yes, there… oooooh,” the apparition echoes in from the highlands.
Scene change…. How embarrassing:
A smile hangs from the moon.
Ice cream cones hors d’oeuvred for little herpetic lips.
Antarctic beach wear is distributed amongst the forest patrons for the premier of the silent film, Godscream!

I am the green powder that settles along the wet dirt.
I am the dead grass colonized in daffodil sweat—the willow that blew all the windows shut.
 
I noticed a tree in the mess of mind. I approached and began peeling its bark. I heard it scream. It was only me. I folded the leaves in half and built a house. I picked each one individually from its branch. I wrote on the sidewalk, close to where the tree stood. I thought to myself, “How did this get here?” Anywayyyyysssss…
 
Dear Future House & Forest Spectators,
 
Parsed sections dividing parts:
                                    One part bark
                                    One part leaf
                                    One part branch
                                    One part trunk
 
Each box was surrounded like Rings of Saturn.
The assumed center, the root, like a trunk.
It was to symbolize the encompassing life force.
I would de-earth it. Then, re-earth it.
 
As I tore up the tree and made appropriate piles, people gathered around to watch. Some sat cross-legged or like a potato. Some meditated. Others pretended to be spiritual or went about as if they knew what they were doing. They didn’t. The crowd was obviously confused. I’m not even entirely sure what it was I was doing or what the spectacle was. I was simply conducting on impulse. It could have been anything. Sure, to my applaud, I’ve done a good amount of that one particular thing, whatever that one particular thing may have been. I knew my way around, or at least I felt I did. But surely, they must have known this was fiction…

and it was supposed to change the world, for better or worse… wasn’t it?
 
A squirrel crossed my path. It paused and looked up at me. It then lifted its leg, exposing itself, and began to urinate. I’d never seen a squirrel pee. It wagged its little leg and scurried off. No one seemed to mind. That one weird little moment reminded me of everything. But nothing’s usually as wonderful as that.

I suppose, depending on how, what, and who:
We choose the reception of future self and the magnificence of predecessing thought as though watering a flower.
What that means, if anything…
 
My arm hurt and everything was now soaked.
My brain was filled with condensation.
I kept working the tree.

Sitting along the crescent moon, I made a wish that disrupted the Zagros…
it pointed to a digital map that pointed home.
I knew of such like the forest knew, making banana peel hammocks out of spider quill.
I have seen hair beside the roman queen, unshaved.
We’ve climbed the sacred bush in a miniature dalmation formation.
Dalmation Formation?—that can’t be right. I must’ve missed the premier of that.

“Ok, set scene” back to organized thought…. The Forest. The Living Room. The Theater. Over there, people dancing. Right here, music—“mmm, that couch is sexy and covered in plastic.”
“Cut-Cut-Cut! Reset scene, folks!”

We have arrived to the Neptune sun with hands like sea crests quoting Lambist operas with comb-overs like spunk from the violin’s ass.
The porcupine only dreams when his shadow has seen the music. Or, not seen it.
Welcoming guests with bows and shrunken barracuda heads, handing out stereoisomeric salutations, “Welcome to the palace, make a name for yourself.”
“The palace welcomes you, make yourself at home.”—I suppose, perhaps, diastereoisomeric, depending on who’s giving the lecture. We’ve been given gills to find this god character… between atoms, buried between atoms.
My heart, a sailors dock. Wood curling at the painter’s creased print.
His feet like miniature gorillas, falling in love.

I am sweating, and misinterpreted. I’d like to pull my bottom row of teeth around the sky’s umbilical and rip, from the trenches, all the motivational speakers and self-help paraphernalia jammed in the cracks, twisting the antebellums of tomorrow. Sure, why not, let’s write a screenplay of our own. We can call it, The Graveyard of Empires.

I don’t feel the empty space where bicentennial wrinkles rattle like shattering glass horns—blue indoor frost, hip to the scene.

We have bone teeth that are only bone, and teeth that remind me (not of eating, but) of everything else teeth are good for—occasions, formally, my occasions. You, my bakery of syncopated grease fires. I am walking amongst the tinniest with the heaviest of burdens, understanding the earth extremely well, yet, very and terribly unwell. Not I, but the burden above my crusted wet feathers, striped like an elegant nomad in a fruit dress.

I see your shadow, but you, nowhere in sight. Dipping backwards into the effortless breeze in which you came, with just a winding memory, reveling here, now, always.

“Take five—as you were! Assume your similarities from the realm of shadows”… lint like bangled giants chewing their fat wrists.

I am crawling through the mud, catered between sluggaphoric destitutes and seasick lucifers, looking for my third eye, with my third eye, to find where and who I have become.
And skipping back, this mudclown, this heathen, washed through the magnificent forest like a broken ship upended by the damnified giants of the narcoleptic underworld. Is there such a thing as something being, Eternally Bad For You. What a shit play that was. More spunk, now parading from the television’s ass.

Perhaps on his return back, we should discuss our collaborative work, Shipwrecked.
We can brush on other’s too: Violin or It Sounds Like Screaming Babies When I Dream or Car Wash Screwdrivers. All very antonymical and pertinent. Perhaps he will never make it back. Perhaps I’ll still be lying on the living room floor, dreaming, between the rope and the invisible man, running and rerunning short films on beauty and the collective mind and the constant obsession with the end of the humanity.

Perhaps, I need to shower and begin my day.

by LORIN DREXLER

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SHEA PETERSON

Shea’s work (sheapeterson.com) is a mix of techniques using acrylics, oil, oil pastels, markers, spraypaint, collage, foliage, and whatever else strikes his fancy at the current moment.

He is predominantly influenced by the modern European artists of the 20th century including Ernst, Klee, Miro, and of course Picasso. As well as pre-drip Pollock, Lam, and Matta. Drawing from Cubism, early Surrealists, Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism, and most importantly their Primitivism roots. Other sources of inspiration include: Radiohead, Jimi Hendrix, Thelonius Monk, Iain M Banks, Walt Whitman, Lao Tzu, Kashmir Shivaism, Phish, astro physics and Noel Fielding.

Shea was born and raised in Pueblo Colorado, hiking every summer in Alaska with his father, then spending much of his early adult years in New Mexico and Reno, then onto San Francisco, and moved to The Big Island of Hawaii in 2003. In 2011 he left his off-grid property in the rain forest of Hawaii built by his architect father (now deceased) to follow his heart to the inner west of Sydney. He found love and is now an Australian Resident. Don’t worry you’re not the first to say I hope she is worth it!

Shea has exhibited in Colorado, Hawaii, Vegas (what was shown in Vegas stays in Vegas), and is working on his first Australian show to open in March 2014 at the M2 Gallery in Surry Hills Sydney.

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What is Gen Society?

Gen Society is an art space blog for visual art and creative writing collaborations, and other randomizations. Hosted by writer and musician, Lorin Drexler, this online venue is an expressive experience for those interested in the world of the arts. It is a literary journey through the hearts and minds of contemporary artists in practice and a reflection of those that have long passed.

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