I made this for the August show at the Colab Gallery in Raleigh. This Colab theme is unusual. They're calling it "Theme Roulette". Here's how it worked, local artists sent in a theme idea, the Colab shuffled the themes and everyone that sent in a theme got a randomly chosen theme to make art for the August Colab gallery show.

The theme I got is pretty interesting and basically about "Dreaming" (Dreamological Pathways: an exploration of how brains form pathways and invite us into the world of dreaming) Thankfully this is a very open ended theme and all the Colab people are also totally open. They said you can stick closely to the theme or you can do whatever you want!! I tried to do something abstract and ended up with a paint splattered road map with chicken wire on it so I gave up on trying to find my dream pathway for this project and I went political instead. The constant attempts to destroy democracy and crush the American Dream is all I can think about lately.

I tried to do something more with the "Dreaming" theme but I guess I had a hard time because I don't remember most of my dreams. I sometimes recall bits and pieces right after I wake up but as the day goes along the memory fades. When I was working on this project I thought maybe when I have a dream that I remember I should jot some notes about it. When I thought about doing this I remembered that most of my dreams are fragmented bits of bad brain junk that I probably don't wanna remember. I don't wanna be distracted by my nightmares. I only wanna remember the good brain junk dreams so maybe the next time I have one of those it will inspire me to do something that is bright and positive and a little easier on the eyes. It could happen. As the Tom Waits song goes, "You're innocent when you dream".