The Last Freezing Months of Spring

The beginnings of Spring in New York City are often felt like the last great gasp of winter’s icy expanse, and its overwhelming spread of bone chilling grey cold that can only come from the likes of an addict trying to gobble up all of their mind numbing wants for the fear that they are disappearing. Winter in March is a tyrant of frigid dictatorship. It comes without warning when a few warm days in February or even the beginning of March delude us into thinking that dressing a little less armored is the way to go. It comes like a great breath of immobility, and while it has moments of pain, it re-awakes us the reality that we must strive to survive and be awake to life before we are awarded the perfect beauty of the fertile spring in its warm breezes and tingling temperateness. We need these months to prepare us for the fact that we have stay moving, and they also give us serious gratitude for that moment when spring finally gently puts its hand on winter’s cold shoulder and tells it it’s all going to be alright. That winter can take a knee, and everyone will quietly be excited for its brisk and inspiring return next year.

Assemblage work in progress, untitled, 5’x7’, mixed media, 2023

Before I had returned to New York to embrace this last throw of Winter’s bones, or it’s final fucking sigh of exhaustion, I was in Winchester VA for a residency at the Peter Bullough Foundation . The work I made was steeped in ideas of transition and creating spaces that try to articulate points on the timelines of life that have melded together in a moment of visualized shift. Some portraits of my mom in her memory care home, some abstract works that are the process of building upon representational imagery from old WWII photos of my grandfather, to Queer porn and erotica, to images from classic supernatural films, to landscapes, dance movement abstractions, to just pure atmospheric painting and spacial processing. I experienced both warmth and cold, closeness and isolation, beauty and strangely deranged chaos, deep moments of acceptance and empowerment in community and moments of fear and ignorance in perception. It was a whole world of vibes. I feel like the work that came out is a good chunk of moments in a journey forward with my practice and life, awarding, a sense of bookmarking in a process toward work that I am moving towards. Art in the full catalogue of one’s life, one’s contribution to the grand we of the art gods, to the fabric of society’s creative energy and perception, is a life long process. I have learned this more and more as I have aged, as looking at works that clearly had no sense of my own perception of duration or continuity, as well as those that flowed from a place of the spirit and the longevity of artistic purpose, have all showed me that the birth of art happens in waves and in long slow periods of development towards those days where we suddenly see the thing we have hoped for, whether we knew it or not, materialize after we have both consciously and unconsciously pushed toward it for unforeseen periods of time. This was one of those experiences where I felt that. Where what was created was thus a part of this longer process and not me as an artist trying to show that I know I am creating the work that I shall be matched with in moments of history, and yet maybe I will, it’s yet to be seen. The impermanence and the liminalness of it all it is quite comforting sometimes.

What’s Lays in the Distance, 24”x18”, painting on linen, 2023

Transfixation, 15”x11”, painting on paper, 2023

Back in NYC, working my way through the cold last gasps of winter, there is much to do in the studio, there are some very major new pieces of news to share, and there is a time now to hone in some things I am very excited to work on. While I give winter a bad rap here, I actually love Winter so very much. I love it’s affirmation of life in the absence of warmth. I love the deep cold breathes in the morning that open the senses and the energy deep inside of me, connecting me to the cosmos and also, as I have found in time, to my own ancestors in Norse and Celtic mythologies. I make it a duty now in winter, since thinking about this over the last few years, to love that icy breath of Odin and the hidden Green Man that continues to walk alive through the snow slowly bringing shift. I look at the failed notions of my ancestors in their shaping of the world, at the resentments and misguided energies they perhaps harnessed, as well as the beautiful and deeply spiritual aspects, and I continue to try and reimagine myth and possibility moving forward in my work and life.

I have some humor on deck for another day, but I guess I’ll leave this all here as I hear cars drive by on Graham Ave. imagining everyone walking by staring at their phones wrapped in entire arctic cold suits on the weird frigid loins of spring.

New York City, A Time Keeper's Notebook

What is the air here. What is the powerful air of wholeness, to some a frenetic frantic blanket of distraction, to some a laser powered focussed source of pure energy, to others a constant reliable system of movement where the dedication to the lifestyle yields what the foot steps produce. The nights walking back down Montrose avenue from the station are majestic even in this melting pot of the new and old and the everything in between neighborhood. Even with its trash strewn streets and its sense of layered populations all streaming around cutting pathways through time it is majestic. In New York City majestic does not have to be the house on the hill, it does not have to be the top floor apartment with the elevator that opens up to it. It can be something as simple as a well built window overlooking the street, cracked to let the cold air of the empire of movement in to balance the steam from the radiator in its glowing hot inner fire. Bikers from historic clubs and store owners serving Boars Head Meats are as majestic as wall street mercenaries and museum curators. The footsteps hear become the soundtrack, the horns their own section, the conversations like an ambient synth of blurred information all reaching light years out through technology into the cosmos for far away cultures to consider and deconstruct for centuries in their own majestic metropolises however they may look. The neon signs of noodle bowls and 99 cent ATM placards that sway in the wind hold their positions in their offering of direction and possibility to anyone from any walk of life. The streets continue to swarm with their own magnetism as the currents of energy that course through them shuttle ideas and innovation, broken dreams and successful visions along their path like a giant river of time vibrating in fullness for anyone with a desire for motion to step foot in.



The Summer, The Green, The Work, The Cacophony

A lot has rolled by this summer, even more has blossomed inward. May 19th seems to be the last moment I had the frame of mind to post to the world much of whats going on. Save from a few instagram posts, and a lot of “stories” it has been a full marathon through life, both in art and the growth we all have to both endure and be so lucky to experience, in the service of being realized.

To first notate one of the more important things that happened this summer, the work at the Nasher Museum of Art with Michelle Dorrance and Byron Tittle commissioned by Duke Arts/Performances, and produced in partnership with American Dance Festival and Cassilhaus was incredible. It was a life changing experience and I am grateful in a way I cannot express in words.

Of course there is a lot of work being processed right now, photos, video, audio recordings, writing, all of it for both a future exhibition about movement and the languages of dance (also as a through line to discussions of history and systems of our world) and for cataloguing and to be offered for critical review. The work was nothing short of ethereal, it shook up history and carved a new tapestry of language into old pieces of time’s stubborn body. It felt like a collective moment of possibility where layers of generations of dance born of resistance and community met a body of those who responded en mass ascending as a whole into the rafters of the Nasher Museum in a cacophony of worship to some sort of gods of abundant possibility rather than scarcity. The effect left everyone I spoke to in a daze, a wordless feeling of weightlessness and heightened being.

On an art historical level, the amount of interwoven narratives colliding to create a new form of drawing come conceptual art is something I and my colleagues need to sit down and continue to dove deeper and deeper into. There is writing on my site in the Experimental Works section, but there is more in the works. The idea of drawing as a document of both language and history born of a discipline that was never intended to leave static traces of its temporal nature is something I am extremely excited to push further. And when that idea of drawing comes into view with writing, video and audio in different pairings it opens even more doors to ways we can perceive motion, motion that can even hold us to question our own directions, motives, pathways of daily life and longer term modalities. I have been reading more Smithson accompanied by Merton, two very different minds, and both very seemingly far from this work. Yet both correlate with a lot of core concepts within this, a sense of void in finding the ridiculousness of the system, and a sense of exploring ways to go beyond our notion of what both art and space can be, in how we engage them and to what end we open ourselves to seeing and being.

The Nasher’s great hall saw 300+ people fill its space to witness the creation the three of us embarked on. I spent two weeks sourcing the wood and building the piece of art that acted as the stage for this new work. Wood came from Byron' Tittle’s neighborhood in the Bronx, from Chapel Hill and Orange County where Michelle Dorrance hails from and from Durham where I myself was born and raised. Some of the pieces came from 150 year old barn structures that were falling down to time in the edge of Durham county, some from houses being torn down in the Bronx to make way for new developments, others from piles of beam board and flooring from houses in Chapel Hill Every piece was representative of generations of lived experience in all three places. All brought their own tones and sounds, their own aesthetics to be transformed by the abrasive reality of tap dance, and all brought their stories from times both loving and tumultuous packed in. The transformation of the very essence of these materials, the very energy within them and the very materiality of them was paramount to the idea of transformation which the work invited. That transformation is at its core a vital component to the history of Tap and visual art, thus the entire work created a new form of shift across dimensionality and intersectionality.

Next up. Nature!

The environment in my home state is utterly amazing. The lushness of the greenery is four steps from tropical, yet four steps from piney winter forest. It sits in the middle of crispness and swampy, the pine trees standing majestic in the winter, the kudzu and vines and weeping willows lurching and swaying in the wet summer heaviness. This is a photo of a friends land he bought decades ago in Chatam county. Way out near Pittsboro. A highly contested between racist confederate traditionalist and progressive academics and hippies fighting for equity for all people and fighting for the land. All of it while large development companies are still slowly trying to roll in and clear cut this beautiful ancient growth. Some will some will never go. It’s a bizarre capsule of history, almost timeless in a way, the constant struggle of good and evil, of those who would oppress next to those who would free others from oppression, all in the face of the big wheel that has always wanted to master nature. Nature stands and rules here, it is guarded and protected by many, and it has its songs, it has its scent, it has its physical form. It is a sort of encompassing hot surrounding entity that lets you know it is mighty and glorious, and you are so lucky to enjoy its beauty.

This is a good stopping place. Sometimes I have to let it out in waves, one day this will all be compiled into sections of books wherein the tangents of thoughts leapfrog off of each other for your mental pleasure.

More to come.

New Work with Byron Tittle and Michelle Dorrance, commissioned by Duke University coming to the Nasher Museum June 22nd.

One of the largest undertakings of my life as an artist is on the horizon. This is a preliminary announcement that a project I have been quietly working on for over two years is finally coming to light at the Nasher Museum. At the very beginning of 2020, after a year or so of thinking about it this project idea, I created a piece with Michelle Dorrance of Dorrance Dance. It is a collaborative multi disciplinary intersection of sculpture, movement research/dance, and experimental drawing, with deep rooted philosophical, historical, and even spiritual contextual elements. The new work at the Nasher Museum, which is commissioned and supported by Duke University’s Duke Arts, with a co-sponsorship with ADF, and supported by Cassilhaus with whom I will be in residence this summer, will be in fact created live with a performance by Byron Tittle and Michelle Dorrance on a new art object that I will be constructing out of found materials from both North Carolina and New York City. The geographies of the materials coincide with the geographies of all three collaborators, as well as speak to the (so often misunderstood) history of tap dance, thus creating a large and layered contextual conversation with history, space, and the energies therein. It will happen on June 22nd at the Nasher, and I will be posting more in depth links and information about it next week. A full statement and consideration will be release as the performance nears, regarding the piece itself, the collaborators, its place in history, its intention, and context about the involvement of each entity that has come together to help make it happen.

Photo by Mark Murphy for Dorrance Dance

Michelle Dorrance, Byron Tittle, John Felix Arnold, in New York City.

Shifting Energy, collaborative work by John Felix Arnold, Michelle Dorrance, and Byron Tittle, dance movements on reclaimed wood assemblage panel, 2021

The series, titled Echos, has now seen the creation of 3 pieces thus far, one with, one with both fellow Dorrance Dance dancer Byron Tittle and Michelle, and then one with Carol Parker formerly of Pilobolus Dance Company and the White Oak Dance Project. Here is the statement regarding the larger series.

Echos is an evolving body of work that visualizes the temporal languages of dancers’ movements through experimental modes of drawing. At the core of these movements, dancers channel their personal narratives with the lineages and histories of their disciplines, remaining in conversation with the materials they move upon and the spaces they move within. As a visual artist whose foundation is the language of drawing and whose practice exists in context to a lineage and history of drawing, Echos honors and communicates the relationship between visual art and dance. The work offers an enshrined representation of dancers’ energies, movements, and lifetimes in indelibly visualized moments connected to the larger histories from which they have evolved. It is a conversation honoring genres of dance through new, hybrid forms of image making, incorporating live performance and multidisciplinary works which share the process and intimate reality therein. Echos seeks to honor and offer space to the interwoven threads imbued in the work for current and future generations to experience in a way active performance alone cannot. The work exists as a space for the essence and energy of bodies in motion which transcend our two- and three-dimensional perspectives into a fourth dimension of resonance. Echos is foundationally connected to Duke, ADF, and the history of arts and culture.

I am beyond words that this is all happening, and I am so grateful to everyone that has given this project the love, care, energy, and support needed to see it come to life. More info coming soon! Contact me directly for information or press inquiries. Thank you!

-John Felix Arnold

May 19th, 2022


Gateways of Trauma and Transformation

First and foremost it needs to be said that my relationship with my mother is one of the brighter aspects of my life. It always has been. I was a child of divorce at the age of 2, and throughout a transitory and very non traditional, often traumatic life, my mother and I have always had an unbreakable bond which is rooted in empathy and a sense of nurturing love. A creative energy with a relentless need to work, and a sometimes damaging need for control, I definitely see aspects of myself in my mother. Both of us have suffered and lived with the disease of addiction in our personal lives and as a result of family and friends in our circumferences. When it became an irrefutable reality that she was deep in the grips of Dementia and then Alzheimer’s disease my world changed, fast, hard, and without mercy . Yet while enduring and moving through these changes aspects of my survival mechanisms and my own person were not able to process the voracious appetite of her disease, and I found myself simply in a constant path of keeping up, with moments of absolute insanity and unexplainable confusion. All of this is to bring us to the point of the artworks which are the substance, or rather the gateway of this article.

Anitya 28”x36”x25”, Burnt branches inside of tin roofing panel, 2021

In the early Spring of 2020 I was in residence at Duke University as part of Duke’s Rubenstein Arts Center’s Artist in Residency Program. I guess in it was technically the end of Winter, but all that seems to be irrelevant now as the emergence of the Covid-19 Global Pandemic has seemingly dissolved any concept of seasons, or at least overshadowed the importance of seasons in that initial onslaught of the disease in the USA. The important marker for me is that I will always remember an extra layer of shift in that moment, as the frantic and chaotic journey of finally hitting that climactic point when my step father and I had no choice left but to put her in a memory care had come but weeks before that global lockdown. In the weeks spent between finally accepting and moving forward in the process of relocating her away from society and us and the shutdown, I found myself in on of the most transformational shifts of my life while in the Residency. The work here marks that absolutely cataclysmic internal shift just before the cataclysmic global shift, and then after a year and a half the re-entry, in 2021, to that art space as the final half of my residency was able to occur this past October. It was throughout that year and then recently into space again that I found I had been transformed completely, lighter, with a deeper sense of foundation found within a sense of the almighty, or simply a fluidity of being, as its seems my mother had as well.

On Awakening (Finding Meaning in Chaos) 40”x30”, mixed media on wood panel, 2020

This work is if anything a representation of time, connection, of transformation, movement, and awakening. A narrative expression of the experience of my mother’s journey through Alzheimer’s as channeled through my experience of being interwoven with her, of being her son, and all of the deep reservoirs of existence that run dry only to find deeper connections of beingness within the evolving internal landscape that carries us through if we let it. A place often refuted by hardcore capitalists and outright denied overtime through colonialism into the modern age by many. The works are obviously about my experience, yet at the same time it cannot be denied that my mother’s experience and energies are as much channeled into this as relationships are an interweaving of connection wherein another’s essence journeys through us in the process that unfolds. Here we reach a place where the artwork transcends any notions of 2-D or 3-D and exists in the 4th dimension where the true essence of every tangential and circulating part of the process of transformation has come to live within the artworks that are the result my output during this time.

Burnt branches in a Ritual Fire Cleansing in relation to my mother’s suffering, passed down from our Celtic and Norse heritage. The sticks are then used to create the work that conveys this process of transformation and homage.

Psychic Landscape, 30”x40”, mixed media on wood panel, 2021. Drawn at the return to the Duke Residency, full circle to where and how the work began in 2020.

And honestly what is this work but a contemplation of mortality. An act of reckoning with the fragile albeit honest existence of the human ego, of the human fears and their opposites, solutions that lead to being free and awake. If we exist in a universe of energies and magnetics, of matter, form, anti matter and formlessness, then how and why are we humans so led by something such the opposite of pure energy. I mean we are incapable of not being so but for intense and lfe long work, but the question is worth asking. Why does our notion of mortality lead us to such harrowing and painful corridors of experience. Why does so often a gateway to either crumble at the thought of security fleeing, or lead us to an embrace of the realization that security is always a constant for we exist, and we do not know what that existence is other than we wake, we sleep, and eventually we are put back into some other cycle, wherein the understanding that security is simply a set of fleeting ideals gives us the view that we are in fact always secure, or that security does not actually exist but for our emotional and ego based existence. Easier said than lived on a consistent basis, we are emotional ego based beings, so while we become awake to certain aspects of our being others will continue to create that tension, which is obviously as vital to life as any other part. but the impetus is there once its been reached at least once. Once we face the void to find out we are more free and powerful in our acceptance of something deeper that is beyond our explanation. And what of “stuff”, of systems of human creation that very much pull us further and further away from this space of possibility, of security in not needing to control our security. I don’t know, but the process of facing and moving through my mother’s journey with Alzheimers to the days where she would fight and scream and run into the wall (metaphorically) to the time after she finally found peace in a facility was the stuff that reminded me of my fragile humanness. And the result of empowerment also re-enforced the beauty of my fragile humanness. It opened me up like an empty vessel who thought itself whole, and showed me the frailties in what I clung to for my idea of self, of being ok, of having a foundation and a place, and showed me that there is a deeper power, there is a place where all of that exists perpetually regardless. It took me to a place where I also found the active connection with art making and a sort of alchemy of change that created documents of her chaos and solace, that gave myself to the illustration of her metaphysical journey as it channeled through me. And then of my own digestion of it and thus to ways of conveying balance and contemplation. The work is almost like spell casting, or a psychic automatic outpouring of my connection to an unseen place. It embraces fundamental aspects of human possibility and spaces that we find ourselves in through the most truly transformational experiences.

Grateful Mortality, 20”x16”, Hand smeared homemade charcoal and collage on wood panel, 2021

Observance (photo of Ritual), burnt bundles, 2021

Anitya 28”x36”x25”, Burnt branches inside of tin roofing panel, 2021

The process of losing my mother as I have always known her, losing those parts of her that had some connection to the reality that I see everyday, to basic societal actions like driving, going to work, being home for dinner, was cataclysmic. Alzheimer’s is a fundamental chaos agent, a re-arranger of the structures of belief that we as humans in a society have become fixed to. It does not care what we think is real, how we have been doing things forever, what relationships are, it does not care. Alzheimer’s degenerates the person with it to a space where a completely different set of realities morphing into and out of one another at an unexplainable, unfixed, ever shifting rate becomes their reality. All of these so called realities seem to become a huge multiverse that shifts constantly depending on how the mind is slowly dying, in essence waking up parts of the mind perhaps that have not been able to have influence or agency. It is honestly incredible in a certain way of seeing. My mother went from constantly trying to make sense of chaos and senselessness in her mind, trying to tether herself to something she “knew”, to letting herself just be in a shifting fazing spread of completely different and perceived realities all at once and finally knows her world to be real to the point where there is no question. She is not crazy, she is sane within the realm of her perspective, in her world we are the crazy ones if we can’t keep up with her vision. We see it as crazy yet make ourselves crazy trying to get her to see things our way, which is impossible and futile and honestly ignorant and a bit disrespectful. All of this leads to the truth that her spirit has transcended something so immense, it has pushed and broken through so many layers of demons, of acceptance, of fear, and of limitation that it finally after all these years is full again as her the barriers of her mind are breaking into nothingness slowly. Her spirit is something beyond that of which I have seen in the last 20 years. She is finally free in a place that is free of anyone’s force of logic on her being. This work at its rawest is about that journey, and about my own journey of becoming a newly realized being as a result of accepting her experience and our transitory yet vibrant bond. We human’s no little of existence beyond our idea of safety until that safety is shattered and we are forced be filled with something much bigger. This work is also in part a ritual process of coming to that place. It honors home and the ability of that concept to become bigger as we evolve. It honors love, it honors spirit, and it honors life as well as the opposite. Buddhist monks have explained the journey toward nothingness, which is in fact a sort of wholeness, it is everything, yet is empty and nothing. It is within that emptiness that exists wholeness for they are the same. I feel that this is where my mother is going in her disease, and this work is a visceral visualization of the process as we experience it in connection.

Visual Time Study, 12’x9”, ball point pen on found paper in found frame, 2020

Observance, video, 2021

Observance/ Re-Imagining Cerberus, installation detail

Fantastic Dimensions of Myth, 5’6”x6’, work on paper, 2021 in progress at Duke University.

Post Show Blue Jays

Time as a Sanctuary ended on August 15th. We had an amazing artist talk moderated by William Paul Thomas, where we we able to just have a conversation in front of the audience who had gathered for the last day of the show. The talk ended up weaving all over the place, expanding into wonderful tangential spaces, and circling back to the core thematic elements of the exhibition. Will is a tremendous artist and writer and thinker, a helluva human being, and it was an honor to get to speak with him in front of the an audience. Those who made it out for the talk also had what felt like a limitless cache of questions which really challenged and inspired as well. It really was the best program I have ever been a part of as per the best show I have ever had. I will be putting a video of the talk up soon once I can get the editing and sound cued properly.

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Also in the last few days a wonderful article by one of my favorite peers and interviewers in North Carolina came out with The Microscopic Giant. MSG and I go way back, as founder and director Tracy Jones and I are long long time friends reaching back to my earlier days in the Bay Area, and have worked together on art and writing events, shows, apparel, and even have connected in Japan when he lived there for a number of years. I am a long time fan of the website and it was a real joy to be able to be interviewed by Olivia Huntley for Tracy’s long running publication. The interview goes very deep and I am really proud of it. Here is a link. That’s it for this installment. More press coming soon, and a critical review of the show as well. Crazy times we are living in, glad I can keep focussing on making art and connecting with people and ideas that keep the conversation of existence and how we might continue to move through it all together.

Coming up in the Middle of what Has Happened. Time as a Sanctuary at Anchorlight.

Over a month ago I opened one of the best, if not the best, solo exhibition I have created to date at the amazing Anchorlight Gallery in Raleigh, NC. I made sure I took some time after the opening to recalibrate, and then I have been back in NYC for the past month, getting back into the grind and getting ready for things to come next. I have take a while to come back here to share some photos and writing with you, and that being said am working on some essays and thought pieces that are inspired by the work for the show, as well as the experience of creating it. That being said, this initial post in a series leading up to the closing contains the official show statement and a series of exhibition photos shot by amazing photographer, Sally Van Gorder. Lastly before I go into the material, Anchorlight’s director and lead curator Shelley Smith has been absolutely wonderful to work with, bring a fresh and brilliant perspective to every part of the project. Shelley and I worked on the statement for the show, bringing it to a place I couldn’t have realized without her great editing skills and writing powers. Enjoy.

Reimagining Cerberus, Sculptural Installation

Reimagining Cerberus, Sculptural Installation

Time As A Sanctuary is a collection of works curated from multiple series, which address ways we can comprehend and convey the experience of time during a period of immensely formative change and growth. This exhibition investigates societal and personal issues directly connected to the human psyche and its (dis)connections to a grander sense of being. The collection of work explores the artist’s shifting journey of perception through a period that has seen our collective concept of time create echoes of change.

detail from Reimagining Cerberus

detail from Reimagining Cerberus

detail from Reimagining Cerberus

detail from Reimagining Cerberus

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Thematically some works are visualizations of the processing of these issues, others are purely contemplations on the movement of time itself. Arnold’s language moves from realism and symbolism in drawing, to moments of deeply felt abstraction and expression.The artist is working through intense spiritual and psychological shifts that play and move from moments of patient contemplation and meditation, to urgent realization and action.

Arnold was drawn back to his roots in Durham, NC in 2018 due to his mother’s struggle with Alzheimer’s disease. As he watched her deteriorate, core notions of time, security, and home shifted abruptly. Toys and stories he once sought comfort in became cause for reflection regarding the inherent biases, violence, ideologies, and mythologies they embodied. Considering his own psyche and ancestral history in relation to these issues, he began a contemplation and deconstruction of the “knight in shining armor” myth, realizing the prevalent and toxic nature of the concept of Armor as it evolved through the history of western society. These tropes led to the exploration of not just his own upbringing, but the cumulative effect of the dominant culture on upholding patriarchal white supremacy.

Reimagining Cerberus

Reimagining Cerberus

detail from Reimagining Cerberus

detail from Reimagining Cerberus

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In the context of the human timeline these same tropes also lay at the center of our contemporary reckoning with the existential crisis of climate change. The sculptural installation is a tangible comment on a potential and probable future, intersecting with the fantastical, where mythological components challenge the problematic western hero myth in an effort to carry forward and nurture life. Such a world will demand deep fundamental psychic shifts in those of us left to adapt and accept our place in it, and this work is meant to act as a catalyst to ponder that reality.

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Observance

Observance

Drawings

Drawings

Time is the connective tissue in all of Arnold's work; his research stretches back to pre-Roman history, contemplating on our present day intersections, while also projecting into a future. His experience in recovery from alcoholism and addiction has infused his practice with a sense of patience and acceptance in process. The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has further developed his understanding of time as something to inhabit rather than attempt to control. All of this has resulted in a slowing down that has allowed for new ways to consider existence. It is for the artist a visualization of the Sanctuary of Time, in which we find answers as well as questions, in which we have solace and a sense of place.

The Untangling assemblage

The Untangling assemblage

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Durham, drawing on paper

Durham, drawing on paper

Untitled, mixed media on paper

Untitled, mixed media on paper

Whose America, mixed media on paper

Whose America, mixed media on paper

A Vision of King Lear, mixed media on paper

A Vision of King Lear, mixed media on paper

Reimagining Cerberus

Reimagining Cerberus

The exhibition is up for ten more days. I am really happy with how everything has come to light. We will be doing an artist talk moderated by fellow artist, peer, and friend William Paul Thomas on August 15th, 2pm, at Anchorlight. The gallery is located at 1407 S. Bloodworth St., in Raleigh, NC. There will also be a virtual visit coming up with Paradice Palace on IG Live on August 12th at 1pm. More posts coming soon. Thanks to everyone for your support.

Reimagining Cerberus

Reimagining Cerberus

Time as a Sanctuary

My solo show, Time as a Sanctuary, is open, reception is tomorrow night! I am so excited and so grateful to Anchorlight Gallery for their support. I will post an in depth series about the creation of it and the show itself once the dust has settled. But for now here is a flyer and a link. I hope that the arts community in the Durham/Chapel Hill/Raleigh enjoys this exhibition that has been two years in the making. Really proud of this one.

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