David Petersen Artworks

Guided by the light of the dying summer, a summer of distant and remote destiny, a destiny tinged with the bittersweetness of rotten pomegranates dumpster-dived after splitting a bottle of Old Crow with a foursome of 14-year olds outside a Southside art opening, I see the gross blunders that are my life in ‘the arts’ with such clarity now.

I should have been a bricklayer after all.

But wait: Does anyone love jewelry? Because do I have a deal for you! I got silver jewelry, bridal jewelry, jewelry for knitters, jewelry granulation, onyx jewelry, amber jewelry, Chicago jewelry, blue topaz jewelry all fresh off the spam boat that is the comment box for this very website. It is hip and it is happening and I had no idea that all of this amazingness was just a click away. Maybe I should become a jewelry salesman. Start small, hawking some flimsy flash down on Canal, work my way through the West Village with some of that shiny South Korean shine shine, and finally up to 47th St. where all the blingity-bling be walking in and outta the door. Dare to dream.

Actually, most of what I have learned about Art came from a jewelry salesman who laid a little brick on the side. You would think that those two professions would make for some strange bedfellows, or something, but he took it in stride. Drank grain alcohol too. Anyhow, this jewelry-selling-part-time-mason-full-time-alcoholic sat me down one afternoon - or was it 3 in the morning? - and said, ‘Doug, alpinism is the art of climbing mountains by confronting the greatest dangers with the greatest prudence. Art is used here to mean the accomplishment of knowledge in action. You cannot always stay on the summits. You have to come down again… So what’s the point? Only this: what is above knows what is below, what is below does not know what is above. While climbing, take note of all the difficulties along your path. During the descent, you will no longer see them, but you will know that they are there if you have observed carefully. There is an art to finding your way in the lower regions by the memory of what you have seen when you were higher up. When you can no longer see, you can at least still know.’

Who the hell is Doug?

So I have been making small pictures lately that are basically just color photocopies adhered to a box of wood, and I am so proud of these pictures that I have been riding my bicycle through Kenwood and Prospect Park just before dawn and smashing them through the windows of nice-looking cars, making sure they land neatly on the leather seats. Anybody get one yet? They look like bricks.

This is exactly the kind of anti-social behavior that I have been talking about. Instead of smashing real car windows with fake bricks that are real art except on the art market since they are, shall we say, Gratis, what I should be doing instead is selling real new windows to car owners who have had bricks, real or fake, smashed through their Audis and Volvos, for real money, since that is what the market likes, and just call it art. Duh. Now we are digging up.