Big Pumpkin Series

“My sister was dating this very businesslike writer for the NY Times newspaper when I made these works, around that time.” – SMW.

“One of my favourite pictures is the one of you holding the shovel. It seems that you are claiming something-is that the case?” – AC. “There is this amazing picture of artist Hannah Wilke holding a broom in this fashion in her kitchen topless. I suppose I was trying to ape this image. I am not one for hard labor actually, I just want to be a big ball of energy kind of slip sliding around and thinking and feeling.” – SMW.

“As per your words – are you a flower or a pumpkin? Both, none?” – AC. “In those photos there is also a little stream. Clarice Lispector has that wonderful title, ‘The Stream of Life’/‘Agua Viva’. I feel most like a stream, very sketchy borders which are dependent on the area around where I find myself, with things determining the bottom of the stream, obstacles etc. and the water itself. I guess I am water. And like the sky, and thoughts are like clouds in the sky, floating along.” – SMW.

“… urinating is cleaner and easier, and it seemed a way to give back to the soil and the earth. Smoking in those images maybe even felt like a city gesture, and I was aware that I was a metropolitan person in a natural setting – it was all very intuitive and accidental as most of my work is…” – SMW.

“I guess looking back I had already seen the Hannah Wilke image some time before and I found it almost perverse because I feel I am such a weird kind of male person and then this gesture of labor seemed almost ironic or incongruous, but also people could mistake it for triumphant masculinity and if anything it’s triumphant because I managed to hold up a shovel above my head without falling. Maybe Hannah had a weird relationship with that broom and womanhood and I have/had a weird relationship with that shovel and manhood…” – SMW.