Galerie Dennis Cooper presents … Allan McCollum

‘After moving to New York from his hometown of Los Angeles in 1975, Allan McCollum devel­oped an artistic practice that integrated modern­ist painting, conceptual art, and legacies of the readymade as a means to interrogate the ontol­ogy of art. Applying the strategies of mass production to finely crafted handmade objects, McCollum carried modernist reductionism to its parodic extreme by determining and perform­ing the nominal means by which painting, photography, and sculpture are recognized as such. His multiple series of nearly identical paintings and sculptures, however, reveal that those conventions exist not only within the borders of the art objects themselves but also in the relationships and expectations generated by the objects and in the various contexts of art’s distribution and consumption.

‘McCollum began making his Surrogate Paintings in the late 1970s by gluing together wood and museum board to create objects that resembled matted and framed paintings. From these objects, he cast his Plaster Surrogates, now numbering in the hundreds, which are further distanced from painting by the reproductive process of casting and yet are each painted individually by hand. “I reduce all paintings,” McCollum explains, “to a single ‘kind,’ to a universal sign-for-painting.” What appear to be five small, variously sized rectangular black paintings with white mats and reddish frames in Collection of Five Plaster Surrogates (1982/1990) reveal themselves, on closer inspection, to be five solid objects painted with enamel to give the impression of having component parts. Singular and repeatable like a logo, surrogates signify as paintings by virtue of their generic attributes, their contexts, and the mechanisms of display, spectatorship, and sale. This particular Collection of Five Plaster Surrogates (though surrogates evidently disrupt discourses of particularity) appeared in Andrea Fraser’s 1991 performance May I Help You? at American Fine Arts, Co., in New York. Performers in the guise of gallery staff gave visitors a tour of an exhibition of McCollum’s Plaster Surrogates, expressing a variety of reactions, including exclamations of appreciation and distaste as well as incomprehension. Fraser crafted the script using statements about art by dealers and collec­tors as well as quotations from the subjects of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological study Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Fraser’s performance, like McCollum’s surro­gates, enlists the contexts of art—including the gallery space, viewer behavior, and critical discourses—as its primary subject, extending the deconstructive impulses enacted by the surro­gates to art’s institutional and economic frames.

‘McCollum has pursued a comparable mining of the mediums of photography and drawing. In 1982 he began his Perpetual Photo series by photographing his televi­sion screen whenever he spotted a framed picture within the diegetic space of the scene. He then photographically isolated and enlarged the overlooked picture, which had been distrib­uted instantaneously as light rays to millions of television sets, to produce a highly abstract photograph, reframed and hung on the wall. He also attached to the back of each framed piece the snapshot of the TV screen showing the framed picture on the wall, the source for the enlarged and cropped Perpetual Photo. The large-scale photographs of murky black-and-white patterns frustrate the physical claims of the photographic index through a simulacral process of transmission that traffics in light, distance, time, and the process of close looking.

‘McCollum began his Drawings project in 1989 by creating custom-designed stencils from a set of forty curves, which form the basic vocabulary of all the drawings. Using the stencils, he has produced by hand hundreds of different graphite drawings (ensuring that no two are the same), which he displays in groups numbering in multiples of thirty. A group of 120 was included in the exhibi­tion. Continually straddling the margins of singular/multiple, beautiful/banal, and deci­pherable/indecipherable, McCollum’s many series critically occupy the place of art in a world of mass industrial production.’ — Ruth Erickson

 

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Further

Allan McCollum Site
AM @ Petzel Gallery
AM @ Galerie Mitterrand
Book: ‘Allan McCollum
An Interview with Allan McCollum
Michelle Grabner on Allan McCollum
Allan McCollum wants the drama of quantities
Piece Piece: Interview with Allan McCollum
Harrell Fletcher by Allan McCollum
A Conversation with Allan McCollum: Mass-Producing Individual Works
Allan McCollum: The Book of Shapes
Allan McCollum: Early Works
Oral history interview with Allan McCollum, 2010 February 23-April 9
Art and Its Surrogates: Allan McCollum at Petzel Gallery

 

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Extras

Allan McCollum on Collectibles

Allan McCollum: “Over Ten Thousand Individual Works”

Artists at the Institute: Allan McCollum

 

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Interview

 

D.A. Robbins: The surrogates are clearly “fake paintings,” imitations of paintings. I’m curious as to whether you have contempt for painting.

Allan McCollum: Well, to begin with, I don’t think that it’s only my surrogates which, are imitations of paintings – paintings are imitations of paintings in some way, aren’t they? With each one reflecting every other one? No, I don’t think I have contempt for painting; that would be like having contempt for culture. Paintings are everywhere you look; they’re all over the place – like cars, or buildings.

There is some parody, I think, in the way I reduce all paintings to a single “kind,” to a universal sign-for-a- painting; the gesture can be read as an ironic mimicry of modernist reduction, for instance, or as some kind of reference to the relations between modern art and modern industrial production – people can make these associations. But my interests are much more centered on discovering what kind of an object a painting is in an emotional sense, without the patriarchal noise of aesthetics intruding into the relationship. What is it we want from art that our belief in “content” works to hide from us?

DR: When I visit a gallery or a museum, I am seeking out objects to meet a need. That need is fulfilled through a pseudo-event engaged in with a real, physical object. I believe the surrogates catch me in the act of seeking out this emotional connection with inanimate objects, and force it back onto me. They do not allow for the same kind of release that the conventional art object is made to transact.

AM: Well, that’s just what I’m trying to do, to frustrate the habitual mislocation of meaning within the objects, yes; and that’s why the paintings are so “reduced,” you see, that’s why I reduce them to simple tokens of exchange. The other day I read a remark by the psychoanalyst and pediatrician D. W. Winnicott which I thought was nicely put, in which he claims that there is no such thing as a “baby,” because “if you set out to describe a baby you will find you are describing a baby and someone.” It’s the same with the art object, of course, and I’m interested in locating the meaning of my work – and the emotional content of my work – somewhere within those transactions which occur between the various “someones” who are involved in the artwork’s circulation. To do this, I have to try to dislocate the object’s so-called content. When we speak of a content as residing somehow within the art object, we disregard the object’s meaning as an item of exchange in the real, social world, and replace this with all sorts of imaginary constructs.

DR: What do you think a person is really “looking for” when he or she walks over to look at a painting?

AM: Well, that’s a big question. My theory is that one approaches an artwork to displace some anxiety, or to achieve some feeling of safety and security – freedom from fear. Through artworks people for themselves an imaginary sense of freedom. But this feeling of freedom can be constructed in lots of different ways, of course. On the most conscious level, I guess, it can be evoked through illustrative devices, in an overt way: pictures of “nature,” nudity, leisure activity, travel, that sort of thing. Freedom from moral conflict may be suggested by images of innocent children, animals, happy peasants, righteous patriots, religious heroes, “artistic” eroticism, and so forth. We shouldn’t forget the moral purity of “pure form,” either, the ideal space of the “non-representational.” There are the expressionisms, too, which invite the viewer to identify with the spontaneity of the artist himself, his freedom from the strictures of tradition, his freedom to be creative, to express rage and passion, etc.

But I think these are all fairly obvious devices, and they don’t really accomplish too much by themselves – the cinema does most of this so much better than painting anyway. The real sense of imaginary freedom we seek out through art comes through our wishful identification with the forces of money and power which we associate as supporting it, or underwriting it. We identify with the art’s patronage; we find a feeling of safety and security by imagining that we belong to an elite group of some kind: a group whose tastes we share and who will protect us from harm. If one has money and power on one’s side, we believe we are free from all significant anxiety.

DR: So art in general represents a pleasurable suspension of conflict.

AM: Yes, I think so. But because art works to contain anxiety, it also comes to represent anxiety, to invoke it, to speak for it. An effective work of art can render out of us anxieties we never knew we had, and in turn, mediate the repression of these anxieties in an orderly, socially acceptable way.

It is the expectancy of this transformation that I’m trying to effect in a viewer, without offering its fulfillment. I’m trying to create a susceptibility, a vulnerability, to that sort of emotional deferral, but stopping short: trying to create the experience of subjectivity rather than creating subjective experience.

DR: How did this come to be the focus of your work?

AM: Well, I think this focus originally grew out of an interest in the idea of “defining” painting, the notion of reducing painting to a simple set of essential terms, and then “expressing yourself’ within those terms. This was what a lot of painters seemed to be thinking about in the late Sixties and early Seventies. I began to see this sort of thinking as really absurd, somehow. It seemed to me that every conceivable description of a painting that one might offer to define its “essence” or its “terms” could always be found to also define some other, similar object which was not a painting – except for one: a painting always has the identity of a painting; a painting is what it is because it is a convention. It exists precisely because the culture makes a place for it. As a definition, of course, this is a lot like saying, “a painting is something often found over a couch,” and yet it was exactly this sort of common sense definition which I felt was missing in all that other formalist debate. The “terms” of painting are the terms of the world-at- large! An artwork is related to every other object and event in the cultural system, and the meaning of an artwork resides in the role the artwork plays in the culture, before anything else.

DR: Art as a distinctly non-transcendent activity.

AM: This seemed like an important truth to keep in mind, and yet I found it difficult to think of a painting as simply a term within a whole set of other terms precisely because I couldn’t picture a painting that didn’t aspire to be a world-in- itself. Such paintings didn’t seem to exist. So I took it upon myself to create a model, a standard sign-for-a-painting which might represent nothing more than the identity of painting in the world of other objects.

DR: As if creating an advertisement for painting, or better still, art object.

AM: Yes, like an advertisement, or a logo. I wanted to install a useful image in my mind and in the minds of others. My first impulse was to make only one painting, and exhibit it over and over again, to create a sort of archival object – like the government’s Bureau of Standards maintains the standard “inch” in platinum. But this solution eliminated the possibility of exchange transactions – and how could a thing represent an art object if it couldn’t be bought and sold?

I ultimately decided to use a single but repeatable image, one which I could vary minimally in size and proportion, but which remained essentially the same: a frame, a mat, and a black center. I made many of these out of wood from 1978 until 1982, at which time I began to cast them in plaster from rubber molds. At this point I dropped the designation “painting” and began to call them “plaster surrogates.”

DR: So you’ve fabricated a sort of generic painting. Was your decision to use molds related to increasing the volume of your production?

AM: Sure, but also because plaster as a material carries with it the connotation of artificiality, and I needed this nuance to accelerate the theatricality of my installations. Without really anticipating it, you see, I was becoming something of an installation artist. After mounting a few exhibits, I learned quickly that the surrogates worked to their best effect when they came across as “props” – like stage props – which pointed to a much larger melodrama than could ever exist merely within the paintings themselves. The surrogates, via their reduced attributes and their relentless sameness, started working to render the gallery into a quasi- theatrical space which seemed to “stand for” a gallery; and by extension, this rendered me into a sort of caricature of an artist, and the viewers became performers, and so forth. In trying to objectify the conventions of art production, I theatricalized the whole situation without exactly intending to. But, even so, there it was.

At this point, I think, I let myself become the victim of my own thesis, so lo speak. The artificiality of the work functioned pretty well to displace content, as I intended, but it also gave me no outlet for the very real desperation that underlay my drive to make art in the first place. I think it was the nightmarishness of this no-exit situation that triggered the exaggerated and obsessional repetitiveness of my work as it exists now. By removing the possibility of catharsis through the work itself, I led myself into a kind of madness of production.

DR: Which, given the international nature of the art world’s structures, and the production demands made on artists to supply those structures with objects, seems a very appropriate “madness” to engage. You engaged your work over into psychoanalysis.

AM: Yes, I think so. Once I began to locate the content of my work as dispersed throughout that whole behavioral complex of exchanges and meanings that is the art world, I began to discover the powerful grip of all those emotions which go into making, showing, buying, selling, and looking at art. There’s a lot more at stake in these transactions than meets the eye, so to speak. You and I participate in a sect, a sect in which all the action pivots on this single token, the art object; but it’s the emotional politics surrounding this token which provide the meaning and the value. The artwork is always just a substitute, a surrogate.

DR: The fetishistic center of our attention.

AM: Yes, the artwork is a kind of fetish – a kind of substitute for real power, or maybe I mean a kind of sign representing imaginary power. Like I said, we look at art for security, security against loss or death. I’ve tried to design these surrogates to invite a fetishistic attachment, the kind of attachment one might develop towards a literal sign, like maybe the old Coca Cola sign, for instance. Remember how adolescent boys liked to steal public street signs and hang them in their bedrooms? Appropriating the signs which emanate from authority? I make my work smooth and shiny, with many coats of enamel, to humanize them. Their corners are slightly rounded, they’re small, they’re nice and solid. One can carry them around, one can put them in a purse, one can wash them…

DR: They’re user-friendly.

AM: Well, maybe. But anything designed to function as a fetish shouldn’t be trusted, I suspect. I think a fetish inevitably represents the fear of the absence it is meant to replace, and is therefore a kind of scary object. A fetish is a function of fear. It is in this area that I try to Draw parallels between the art object and the object produced for mass- consumption; both rely on fear for their circulation. Advertising works to make us insecure about what we lack, and then offers us the fetish-object designed to displace this anxiety: the product. All the while, the vast economic powers which underwrite the entire system of industrial production work to intimidate us from above, creating the insecurity and feelings of helplessness which make us susceptible to this kind of ploy in the first place. So the mass-produced consumer product, then, as a fetish, both threatens us and offers us freedom at the same time. We are seduced, of course; it’s just a cheap trick.

 

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Plaster Surrogates, 1982 – 1990

Two Hundred and Eighty-eight Plaster Surrogates

 

60 Plaster Surrogates (No. 3)

 

Fifteen Plaster Surrogates

 

Five Plaster Surrogates

 

One Plaster Surrogate

 

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Lost Objects, 1991
‘Lost Objects features 240 cast concrete bones replicated from the fossil collection of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. This sculpture links the contemporary artwork to the natural wonder, establishing a connection between the art institution and its eighteenth century predecessor, the cabinet of curiosities. These bygone exhibition spaces offered an eclectic assortment of oddities, such as dinosaur bones, alongside artworks. Central to McCollum’s work is this rub between artifact and artwork.’

 

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Visible Markers in Twelve Exciting Colors, 2000

 

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A Symphony for the Hearing Impaired in 1000 Each-unique Movements, 2019-2021

 

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Over Ten Thousand Individual Works, 1987/88
‘Over Ten Thousand Individual Works consists of over ten thousand hand-sized cast plaster (Hydrocal) shapes, each 2 inches in diameter and varying in length from 2 to 5 inches. The shapes were created from rubber molds the artist made from a few hundred found objects, such as bottle caps, toys, door pulls and other parts of mass-produced items. The parts were pieced together using an arithmetic system in such a way that no two would be alike. The works were hand cast and hand painted by dozens of helpers working for months in different small loft spaces in New York City. The specific width and depth of the table the objects rest upon is changed to suit each location, but the Individual Works are always placed in a dense, orderly array.’

 

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Lands of Shadow and Substance, 2014
‘Allan McCollum viewed the original Twilight Zone episodes from 1959 to 1964 on his laptop computer, capturing screenshots of scenes that included landscape paintings. Images of those paintings were digitally edited, printed, and custom framed to create the series entitled Lands of Shadow and Substance. Each of the 27 works in the series has been printed proportionally to its original televised incarnation.’

 

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The Shapes Project, 2005/06
‘In his Shapes Project, McCollum designed a system to produce and keep track of unique graphic emblems for every person on earth.’

 

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Perfect Vehicles, 1985 – 1990

 

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The Writer’s Daughter, 2021
‘A few years ago, I became hypnotized looking at a page on which a highly intelligent two-year-old named Minu Mansoor-McKee, the daughter of a writer friend and art historian Jaleh Mansoor, had attempted to write letters and words before she fully understood the concept of language and the way it can be written. As with all of us, Minu’s attempt to record meaning on paper took time and effort.

‘Jaleh let me have a page of Minu’s attempts at writing. I have spent years looking at it, feeling enchanted by the way the child searched for meaning and how I continue to try to understand my life. Each one of her 108 different attempts to construct little shapes of letters became symbols for me.

‘Without fully understanding what led me to do it, I started scanning the shapes, enlarging and tracing them onto papers with ink, and framing each one. Framing things invites greater meaning to be discovered in what finds itself inside the frame, and the meaning will evolve more over time.’

 

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The Dog From Pompei, 1990
Polymer – Modified Hydrocal

 

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The Shapes Project: Shapes Spinoffs, 2005-2014
Hand-lathed ash wood

 

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Double sided postcard, 1980

 

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An Ongoing Collection of Screengrabs with Reassuring Subtitles, 2015-ongoing

 

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THE EVENT: Petrified Lightning from Central Florida (With Supplemental Didactics), 2000
‘McCollum spent the summer of 1997 triggering lightning strikes by launching small rockets with hair-thin copper wires trailing behind them directly into storm clouds as they passed overhead. The triggered lightning bolts were directed down the wires into various containers prepared by the artist that were filled with Central Florida minerals donated by a local sand mining operation. The bolts instantly liquefied a column of sand with temperatures up to 50,000 degrees Fahrenheit. This immediately recongealed into a column of naturally created glass that exactly duplicated the path of the lightning bolt. These were then dug out by the artist in a manner similar to the way a paleontologist might remove a fragile fossil from its matrix. The result is the fulgurite, or what is sometimes referred to as petrified lightning.

‘Using a mixture of epoxy and zircon, 10,000 fulgurites were cast from a single mold. Through this process, McCollum specifically explored the creation of objects by lightning. In this way he also deconstructed commonly held ideas of instant production of objects, and popular metaphors that are often used to describe the processes of creativity, as with our fantasies of receiving “illumination” from above, being “struck” with an idea like a “bolt from the blue.”

‘As another element of the installation, he produced a series of 10,000 small booklets on fifty subjects related to fulgurites and lightning. This arrangement provided the equal balance between the visual and scientific content that was integral to the exhibition.’

 

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Perpetual Photos, 1982 -ongoing
‘When I see a picture frame that contains an indecipherable image in the background of a television scene, I take a snapshot of the TV screen. I then enlarge this indecipherable image photographically, and put it in a new, larger frame of my own. The source of the Perpetual Photo – the original snapshot taken from the TV screen – is pasted on the back of the frame, only to be viewed by removing the Perpetual Photo from the wall and turning it around. What I find poignant in the Perpetual Photos is that no matter how many times you enlarge the little blurs in the picture frames, you’re no closer to any answers to any questions. Part of the beauty the images have for me is the way they invite a futile impulse to use logic in an attempt to discover an emotional truth. And because these pictures are in a constant state of appearing and disappearing.’

 

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Shapes from Maine, 2009
‘Since 1995, Allan McCollum has designed a sequence of projects involving various regions of the world, exploring ways in which people construct and identify themselves and their communities with emblems and symbols, sometimes based on local traditions, regional history, and geological or geographic distinctions. 2005 Shapes Project — a system he created to produce (and keep track of) enough unique graphic emblems for every person on the planet, without repeating — he began to think about the Northeast of the United States, where he himself lives, and especially the state of Maine, which he has visited only once. He became attracted to the pride Maine’s inhabitants take in the traditions of homecraft, and decided to research artists and artisans of the state who offer custom creations to the public through maintaining their own websites, and who run small businesses out of their homes.

‘Without ever meeting in person, and after much back-and-forth email conversation, four of the home-based business owners expressed interest in working with him, and he ordered a selection of custom, hand-made “Shapes” objects for the present exhibition. The folks from Maine who helped McCollum produce the over 2200 one-of-a-kind works in this exhibit are:

‘Holly and Larry Little, founders of Aunt Holly’s Copper Cookie Cutters, in Trescott, Maine, designers and makers of copper cookie cutters; Horace and Noella Varnum, founders of Artasia, in Sedgwick, Maine, designers and makers of wooden ornaments using scrollsaw techniques; Wendy Wyman and Bill Welsh, founders of Repeat Impressions in Freeport, Maine, designers and makers of hand-crafted rubber stamps; and Ruth Monsell, founder of Artful Heirlooms, in Damariscotta, Maine, portrait artist and maker of hand-cut silhouettes.’

 

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Website, 2020

See it here

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Charalampos, Hi. Okay, I understand. Interesting. I kept a diary for a while when I was teenager, but I burned it because I found out my mom was snooping in my room and reading it secretly. Efteling is quite large in scale with a lot of great rides and attractions. It’s my favorite amusement park. You’d need at least a full day. The last time I went I stayed in the theme hotel and spend 1 1/2 days in the park, and that seemed about right. Thanks about ‘God Jr.’. Like I think I’ve said, the last section of that novel is my favorite thing I’ve ever written. ** Jack Skelley, Hey, J-j. Tokyo DisneySea is voted the greatest amusement park in the world every year when the theme park enthusiasts make their collective favourites list. I went there. It’s pretty fucking great. That big fake mountain the middle with rides hidden inside is really something. Yes, RIP Robbie Robertson. I think the first two Band albums are as great as rock has ever been. And the third one is very good. Not to mention ‘The Basement Tapes’. I think the second self-titled Band album is an absolutely perfect album, that rare thing. Yeah, let’s talk with Sabrina soon. When’s good? I’m available, and I presume she is as well. Love, me. ** _Black_Acrylic, I saw that UK coaster story, of course, relentless me. I like that new psychedelic kit even better. Stylin’. ** Mark, Hi, Mark. I just wrote back to you, email-wise. Yeah, there was an ambitious WoO park planned in the midwest that never got off the planning stage sadly. For one. A trip to Efteling where ‘Danse Macabre’ will be located is highly, highly recommended. Best theme park, for my money. Cool about Luna Luna. Wow, next year, you say? So, how is the fair and how was the opening? Damn, pain inside at missing that. ** Nick Toti, Oh, yeah, that Sigmund Snopek doc sounds so very interesting. Really best luck with the finishing. There are some effects in our film that we just can’t begin to do, even though I think they’re pretty simple to realise by movie effects standards. We’re hunting an effects person who’s good but very inexpensive. Prayers, etc. We need to get a viewable if un-finessed version of the film ready to submit to three festivals in late September -> October. To actually finish the film with adequate sound mix/design and pro color correction, we’re hoping to get one of the grants we’re applying for. The idea is the film would be absolutely finished by, oh, December, mid-December at the latest. That’s the plan/hope. Do you have a deadline for yours? ** Misanthrope, When it comes to you, I somehow have powers of prescience. Fun birthday? Yes, yes, say yes. Being right twice a day is actually pretty good, let’s face it. ** Dee Kilroy, Hi. I love roller coasters, but I totally get it. Don’t be afraid of dark rides. Or most of them. They barely effect your brain much your body. I’m like you are with coasters in movies but about the space station, space walks, etc. I literally have a mini-nervous breakdown when that stuff comes onscreen. ** Steve Erickson, Yes, that’s very true about Shiraishi’s take on the cosmic. Excellent eye-brain-combo, as usual. I suspect that taking LSD anywhere in mainland China would be a huge mistake for all kinds of reasons. Sinus infection, could be worse, I guess? My ear is … a little better. I really have to start putting my one earphone in the other ear. There are a few websites devoted to discovering and listing future theme parks and their attractions. I look at them occasionally, no surprise. So I found stuff there. And via some specific searches re: location, ride type, etc. ** Bill, Hi. Well, Zac and I hope/plan to go to Japan once the film is a real thing, so I’ll hit up all of the Japanese ones. And the two in France. The German one is shortish drive, so maybe that. And any within reach of LA, of course. I’ve never been to Cedar Point, insanely enough, so a trip to Ohio for that is guaranteed. You’re about to head off again. What’s that old, awful but applicable song … uh … oh, ‘Lord, I (or in this case you) Was Born a Traveling’ Man’. If you get your site online in time, do let me/us know please. ** Guy, Hi! Honore is in Zac’s and my film ‘Like Cattle Towards Glow’. Not for long, but he’s there. I don’t know if you’ve seen it. He’s in the snow/Krampus scene. No, ‘Room Temperature’ is in English. Gosh, thank you, pal. I hear you about the bureaucracy, I’ve needed to get a certain kind of visa for ages, but I keep procrastinating. French bureaucracy is famously especially dense and torturous. Go to the rave. Or I hope you did. I’d go to a rave if there was one. Nice. I’m gonna work and then Zac and I are being interviewed about ‘Room Temperature’ for a magazine. That’s my immediate future. xo. ** Darbz 🐦, Hi. The reception from your planet to mine seems pretty sterling. NYC in the 80s was complicated. AIDS killed a lot of friends, and that was beyond horrifying. The city itself, or parts of it, was fun, wild, still kind of raw. ‘Intense’ is a good word for it. I guess ‘really fucked’ is too. Fuck those losers with a ten foot pole. Make it a hundred foot pole, although I guess ten would be sufficient. And, yes, now you’re here. Or you were yesterday. I’m okay, things are bit fucked, but I’m ok. I’m just working on the film and still trying to see if I can fix up enough stray short fiction pieces to make a little book of them. I obviously hope you finish the all but finished draft. But drawing is good too. Duh. See you, see you, see you! ** Okay. I’m very fond of Allan McCollum’s work, so I gave him a show in my little galerie without even asking him. That’s it. See you tomorrow.