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.

It's (Not That) Cold Outside

A prayer for the spaces in time that haven’t yet been able to comprehend a moment free of friction.

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.

Around Us

Getting Back into the Studio

Thinking about power structures, the truths that have always existed underneath the white washing of society, symbols in action of uprising, burning away the armor that has corroded society. Thinking about the complexity of the spirit, the inner workings of the levels of vitalization that have gone on for centuries against the structure, to let an air of creative honesty and an ability to turn the lens anywhere but the center of fear and power, sometimes usurped and manipulate, but always with a deeper energy shining deeper and darker and more powerfully through the attempts at washing the veneer. Thinking of the foundations rupturing back up to tear away the unwelcome armor that tries to hold itself above, it is just a layer of time to be disintegrated. Beyond poetics, I have been in the studio touching some things vital, letting the past months start to bubble out and out and onto the page. Paint ink wax pencil charcoal spray paint all dancing and having intense conversations. Alchemists and warlocks touching the very real and tangible moments of the present.

The Century Old Man Who Will Not Get Out of His Own Way, Work In Progress, 30”x22”, 2020

Let It Burn, Work In Progress, Sum Ink on Paper, 30”x22”, 2020

Helm Studies, Work In Progress, 30”x22”, 2020

Living in a Sci-Fi Movie or When The Earth Said "Stop."

What times these are. I don’t have words right now. A great emptiness has made much of the world whole, and a great disruption has spun some out into anxiety and fear, and yet others into a state of calm reflection regardless of their socio economic status. We all sit and wait as nature decides what it wants to do rather than we deciding what we want it to do. It is all everything, we are that which destroys us, and at the same time, we are part of that which created us. Here are some photos of I shot in my neighborhood in Oakland after the shelter in place guidance was issued, only a few days after I flew back to California in the midst of this absolute shift in the narrative of the human world. I love you all, I love life itself, I love living and being, and I am excited to see what sort of new aspects of society can come from all this. It might get worse before it gets better, it might just all keep moving forward in a weird harmony, the good and the bad, the positive and negative, as it always does. Today I choose to again be in the light, and I give thanks.

steady mobbin

I’ll get be back wit more posts about the I Magnin commission soon, but I have had some poem ideas circulating in my head. I feel like no time better than the present to take action.

Steady Mobbin.

It’s this unrest,

Like the jackals nipping at your heels,

When all they want, short of tearing you from limb from limb from limb

Is a chance to turn you into one of them.

It’s this feeling of panic

In the morning with a bottle of seltzer water,

(I know I am killing the ocean, killing myself)

I ask for some grace,

And the Jackals find a steady pace.

It’s this walk to the door,

I think I’ll pile on another to do,

On a list of undones.

But I keep trying.

-Byron Slomotion IV

Untitled October 4th 2018

There is a lot to be done on this evolving website. A lot of new changes to be made and projects to be reshot and new visions to be posted. A lot is on the horizon including a show in Durham, North Carolina in two weeks titled Anime Mixtape at Runaway. Here is some artwork that is in the show… we’ll catch up soon you and I. -Felix

Traveling the Inseam of California

Winding through the outpost of the corporate empires. Fueled by the batteries of human machine flesh rubber heat gravel tar amoebic bio morphs. Loved by all who ramble down it's soft rolling spaghetti western landscape. Truckers take part in breaths of the pure spirit. Cowboys sit down on the hot road to become monks in the blazing sun. The clouds create empires and civilizations in the blink of an eye lost by the hawk's wing swells. Turn an eye to time here, as it it stands still yet the traffic moves through the dimensions at hand.

A few photos from our recent trip down the 5 to LA, and a studio shot of a work in progress.

The Destination of Clarity

All the worlds a stage, A giant hot dog stand yelling forward to come get a deal, A 24 Hour Target milked to gills with red and white hallways of product juice,

All the world knows that our fundamental flaw is our own obsession with self destruction,

All the world also knows that we are creatures of emotion who's evolution has not caught up with our ignorance. 

I like to focus on the clarity of the journey and admit my moments of blind ambition,

It's a power when ambition and right sized attitudes can keep creating things that don't fuck us up anymore than we already are. It's a deeper power when those things lead us through a life that works to elevate to a level of clarity that stimulates fulfillment.

Print Release, Monday 03/19/2018, Noon, Light Power

I am releasing two prints with House of Roulx today at noon (eastern standard time). Two of my favorite works from my catalogue, Goddess and Grow Forward. There are 10 Hand Embellished Variants of Goddess, signed and numbered, 12 Standard Signed and Numbered prints of Grow Forward, and 3 more Hand Embellished Variants of Grow Forward also signed and numbered. These two pieces were both breakthrough works, and this print release is no different. I look forward to doing more and more of these as my work continues to grow. If you enjoy my work and are able, please do grab these prints as they are very limited and full of life and new energy.

The link to purchase at noon, 03/19/2018, est is ...

https://www.houseofroulx.com/collections/john-felix-arnold-iii

Photo of Day 11/20/2017

SFO Beginnings, Journeys and Expansions

The light of the universe that is always streaming through everything is something that we sometimes have the good fortune of noticing. I am sitting here in SFO right now, as I have many times. I am sitting here in SFO right now, listening to an AA speaker tape, getting grounded, watching all the people talk, and get settled into their seats with their books and devices. I am sitting here in SFO enjoying the reality that I am surrounded by people from all walks of life and culture and backgrounds all co-habitating a space where there is no time, where no one is (despite buying power for seat class) better than one another, where babies cry, where kids laugh, where lovers kiss, where hungry people hope to find something healthy or satisfying to eat, where people in transit are forced to be in a moment of respite and await the next traveling appendage. 

I have spent a lot of time in airports throughout my life. My father and mother are both professional dancers and I was hoisted up in the air often as a child. We flew to distant lands in the west and the east. I was given the gift of a certain brand of patience on Singapore Airlines when I was 7, as I was locked into a 14 hour flight as a rambunctious child.  Throughout my life, all of these airport memories have created a beautiful narrative of safety, exploration, serenity, inspiration, and the excitement of new experience as well as experience of coming home to the many places where the word "home" has meaning. When I was coming to terms with my alcoholism and was in early recovery when relapse was a chronic, near death issue I experienced the fear of what would happen in airports.  The reality of detoxing in airports, being kicked out for my inability to stop drinking, the pain and agony of craving and not being allowed to drink on flights, helped me truly drive home the reality that I am an alcoholic and begin to accept this fact. And since I was given the gift of sobriety, every time I have been in an airport has been filled with the gratitude of being able to be a part of the world, being on the broad highway of the universe, being able to be sober and full of awareness and be so ready to embark on the expansion of this life I get to live.   Again here in SFO, I am getting ready to find myself with a group of artists in the LA area working on a massive 8 story mural. Then to "home" in North Carolina to celebrate the continuing life of my amazing Grandmother.  I am ready to watch the sunset on the Atlantic ocean, connect with family, and smell the fresh North Carolina air.  Then to NYC to connect with deep old friends and find new platforms for creation and collaboration. Then overseas to destinations to soon be disclosed.

I have learned that there is not one moment or place or experience that sets life for the rest of it. I have learned that it is about constant progress, constant reflection, maintenance, and innovation in life, about doing what is healthy and right sized, about making mistakes on the way and accepting and being grateful for them and the lessons we learn. Every time I am in this airport or any airport, I feel the web of inter-connectedness of all things and beings as we move in our paths in and out of and through and with each others narratives and streams of life. The convergence that happens in the airport to me, always reminds me that I am just a human amongst humans, that my problems and successes are no different than others. Here I can just be at peace knowing who I am amongst this beautiful melee of shifting trajectories. Here I can have a moment to find direction in my mind and assess what needs to happen in a very clear state upon arrival.

So I am sitting here in SFO, being reminded of all of these moments in my life that I have found this point. The last couple months of painting, and drawing, and networking, and client work, and meetings and learning have led to this launch. I haven't been posting very much about what is coming up. I have been focussing on some personal things, clearing out some cobwebs of the soul, finding where the direction I am best suited for and hope for will take me. I have been putting forth the work to connect without exhausting myself as I have done in the past. In short there are projects coming up in NC, NYC, and even some possible painting and  excitement in Thailand after this summer has ended. There is some talk going on in Chicago and possibly St. Louis. But my eyes and my being are embracing new directions that are helping me expand my abilities and vision beyond galleries and the fine art world, but yet enriching my ability and purpose within those realms as well.  I am in a rebirth of a certain kind, my practice has grown and as I sit here in SFO I cannot wait to give it to you all in the world and continue to be a part of the conversation we all are involved in together.