re/memory with steven westdahl

from Steven Westdahl’s private collection, "Bobo" by Scott Lawerence

Sitting here in my Portland-based home office/studio/shop/laboratory while remembering my many years in orbit around several incarnations of eyedrum, I'm struck off-kilter by the huge variety of memories and related roles I've played: patron, performer, producer, projectionist, party-goer. I DJed an hour of mashups during the musical marathon that is the Earball, broke one of my teeth with a vodka bottle onstage in front of an audience attending the Dead Flowers show, passed out while dressed as a clown and blowing up a balloon animal during Lawernce Ferlinghetti's Routines, shared an authorized bootleg of Zach Galifianakis's Visioneers, shot and shared video portraits of the city with Frequent Small Meals, so many shows... I think I may have moved into my old house in Cabbagetown partially because it meant I then lived within walking distance from eyedrum. It was a central hub for so much of my artistic life in Atlanta; the iris and retina of static and temporal expression for me and my peers. So it seems appropriate that sitting opposite of me right now, hanging on my office wall, is "Bobo" by Scott Lawerence. Dated 2004, the piece is a series of 12 photo reproductions of children beating a clown-shaped punching bag that has been mounted in a frame with an intentionally misaligned mat. The art is crooked and off-balance on purpose; the static work radiates momentum. Trying to photograph it now has proven frustrating, as it fails to capture my feelings for the time/place/movement that was/is eyedrum.