B-Sides: SHAHEEN Modern and contemporary art, Cleveland, OH

B-side

FUCK EVERYBODY = I’M GOING TO BED, 2024

Nicotine, alcoholic cocktail and metallic gold silkscreen ink on canvas

14 X 18 inches

This outrageous declaration is from a letter my mother wrote to me from Ohio while I was living at a Y in New York City in the early 1990s. She’d been trying to reach me on a pay phone down the hall from my room and someone else was obviously using the phone. 

It’s no use Tom = I tried the number after I got security and it's still busy so they didn't do anything. = I GIVE UP = I AM FURIOUS = YOU PAY OVER $500 A MONTH AND I CAN’T EVEN CALL YOU ON THE PAY PHONE = FUCK EVERYBODY = I’M GOING TO BED!

The letter was many pages long. She was writing to me in real time over a two day period about a variety of struggles and disappointments. The pain and complex humor her letters frequently communicated was largely lost on me in those early years. Thankfully I saved them. Her letters remain the most living and real part of her I have left.  

Made in Painesville, OH and Brooklyn, NY.