And away we go...

So it is official, and true, and in stone, and on the timeline and etched into the universe, I am moving back to NYC.  It has been something that has been in different stages of reality ever since I moved to California eight years ago.  I moved from NYC back to NC then to Oakland in 2006, and now I will be completing this circle by literally doing the same thing in reverse this year of 2014 into 2015.  Life is full of cycles and growth, eight years of growing and understanding and learning about myself has finally brought me to realize its time to reinvestigate where I am from with new eyes, intentions, and love.  I have one more solo show before I leave, at FFDG in San Francisco's Mission district on October 3rd. Then two more months left in Killa Cali and I am headed back east just in time for the horrible weather of winter, which I honestly so dearly miss.  I hope everyone can make it out to "No Destination" at FFDG on October 3rd.  And also I am incredibly happy to announce I have a show booked with Joseph Gross and ArtNowNY for October of 2015, the gallery in Chelsea I cofounded and help launch with a killer roster of East and West Coast talent back in 2012!  I am excited and nervous and totally invigorated by life right now.  It's time for some changes and a new chapter in the mythology of this young artist.  See you guys in Chinatown eating Excellent Pork Chop House in a few! -JFA III 09/07/2014

Breaking Out of the Cycle of Brick Wall

So we all get stuck in what feels like a cycle of never ending repetition with minimal growth from time to time.  I think that as an artist this sort of cycle and the moments when the mundane are actually a positive and  a reflective moment to learn, I sometimes become fearful of change not happening fast enough, or change not being AMAZING again.  I think it comes back to issues I have dealt with throughout my life that stem from childhood scars that I have worked through, but still do exist.  I mean sometimes if things were wrought with constant flux, and trauma, and change, and movement for us as children, we grow to fear or not understand a life that is simply, all good.  All good.  Content.  Just right.  Most people would love to hear these phrases whispered about their lives.  I have my moments, all good is one I do like, but honestly as an artist and someone that is constantly feeling the universes's energy ebbing and flowing and who feels compelled to strive forward constantly with new shit, these ideas can be sort of debilitating. Anyway, what the hell is he ranting about you are asking?  This is what I am ranting about...

...movement.  Basically a few months ago when I finished the Shooting Gallery show, and I had a moment to breathe, I became gripped with this fear, this anxiety of the climax of that feeling of the crest of the wave not building back up again.  It's crazy to feel this way because history, even my own short life history is a constant cycle of this happening.  But nonetheless I did become gripped with this fear of "is that it"?  "Did I say it all, did I say it well enough?"  "Is this just going to be the repetitive cycle of things, and eventually will it be so 'normal' that everything will just be content?"  I met with my sponsor and dove very heavily and healthily back into my 12 step work and into some serious meditation and self work.  Suddenly there I was again, breathing, totally in sync with every moment, in complete acceptance of reality, of the here and now, feeling purpose, relief, wholeness, and complete in the understanding that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.  Suddenly the true vision for my next endeavor started to come to light (as it had been marinating for quite sometime below the surface, growing like that wave I was speaking of) and I remembered something priceless, something so true to existence at its core.  The guides, the signs, and the ability to reinvent ourselves and our voices are always there.  Building on a solid foundation but evolving is what life and art is all about.  Acceptance of the fact that change and how we make even the most repetitious spans of time evolve and become fulfilling or lead to a new path, is a truth and a miraculous event that is constant.  I accepted that no one thing will ever inform or complete everything, as I have multiple times in the past, and a beautiful sense of calm and comfort washed over me, and suddenly I found myself drawing again.  It wasn't immediate. It took a couple months from "Pilgrimage" but it began to happen.  I remembered that to trust in relationships with the guides and forces, with myself and my place in the universe and "the path" is where the anxiety leaves and the action begins.

So therein, having been in the job, eat, sleep, watch, over analyze, job eat, sleep, watch, over analyze, and then falling into some old bad habits (that fortunately pale in comparison to drinking or drug use, thank you sobriety) all of a sudden, it hit me.  The vision to reach into my unconscious and conscious states of being and nostalgia in the past couple years and chart the miraculous journey I have been on in a non literal way (for the most part) and the amazing connection I have made with these forces and energies and informations that are so beyond this world, yet with us here all the time, suddenly became my goal.  A body of work that would have to embrace repetition of self care and seeking, embrace a work schedule again, but would allow me to explore some seriously new ideas ways of doing things and even colors and process. Once again my fear of contentment, of my idea of the mundane, brought me back to the reality that life has been and will never have to be as such for me, for anyone that truly seeks and wishes to be on a path of evolution.  So word, I get to invite the audience to experience it with me through signifiers, colors, sounds, onomatopoeia, textures, tones, and a lot more.

I kicked it with Skinner the other day, and we definitely talked about this exact, sort of hard to define set of experiences, feelings, moments, mental states, and more.  It was a fucking awesome chill session and we really talked about some heavy philosophical, as well as looking at rad figures and talking about Jack Kirby and stuff.  I have to say, to all the people who totally relate to what I am saying here, this is our task.  We are here to work and thrive through all of this intensity and create and seek and put forth the universe for everyone to see further.  If you don't quite relate to it I am very happy for you because you may know a type of peace that I never will, a certain ability to be content and enjoy it in a way that really does not bring anxiety and make it feel like a magnetic hurricane of the universe is swirling inside of you sometimes.  But to everyone out there reading this, I thank you for doing so, I thank you for engaging in this conversation with me and I am very very happy to bring you a new, truly personal, truly explorative, honest, and different, I guess evolved body of work and experience.  My experiences with the collective unconscious, dream and meditative states through the lens of Unstoppable Tomorrow is coming this October to Fecal Face!  No Destination , for me it has become a way of life.  Every moment is important, and there is always more and a new step forward.  Let's Party People!  Whose bringing the whole pig to roast?  I love it all.  Also there will be Prints, and Zines, and Ice Cream, and Yummy stuff, and maybe I will put liquid acid in your beverage, just maybe...

Ahhhhhhhh, Friday.

Ahhhhhhh Friday.  As an artist that does in fact work for a non profit org as well (fighting the good fight for the future of our drinking water no doubt), Friday's still do hold a special place in my heart.  I love Friday.  Tonight I even have rather wonderful plans after work and I think it is going to be a late night.  What can I say, life is good.  So as I have been working on pieces for my Fecal Face solo show in the studio, my commission piece for an awesome collector of mine, planning my east coast journey in the winter and much much more, I found myself thinking back to some nostalgic moments in the past few years and wanting to look at some things that I hold dear memories of.  I have always thought phrases like "throwback Thursdays" and "Flashback Friday" were corny, but nonetheless I am kind of having a flashback Friday.  Here are some photos of some great moments in the past few years. Thanks to everyone out there for all the support, those that have brought negativity which made me grow stronger, and to those who work hard and make the world a better place to be.  Thank you all. -JFA III 07/25/2014

Street Conversations

UPDATE TIME!!!! Cool, so life keeps winding on and getting more and more awesome.  I would like to thank everyone at Superchief, everyone at BRIC Arts, everyone at Littlefield, everyone at Shooting Gallery/White Walls, everyone at Fecal Face, and everyone at LeQuivive for what will, by the end of it, have been a seriously accomplished year of art making and growing.  So first things first, this Thursday, Superchief NYC is having a massive group show, seriously, massive!  I can't be there, I wish I could, but if you are in NYC and you can be there then you better be there.  Nuff said, here is the flyer and info!

Yeah it opens this Thursday night and is going to be wild.

So in other news, I have begun making new work rather diligently.  A lot of the experiences I had in Okonuin Graveyard on Koyasan Mountain in Japan, the meditations I experienced in Kyoto, Nara, here in the Bay, visions I have had, are coming up in my practice and it feels amazing.  The premise of the exhibition is that the people in the Pilgrimage from my Shooting Gallery show, the tribe of Unstoppable Tomorrow that is seeking a new positive future, wake up one day on their journey to find they have all shared a collective dream.  A dream of universal truths, a dream of visionary colors, textures, nostalgic imagery, future past visions of places and paths, sounds, images of rebirth of cyclical destruction into creation, of signs, guides, the past into the future.

The first major meditation I had in Kyoto last year was proof to me that collective spiritual resonance exists and that anyone who had meditated and crossed the dimensional threshold in the temple of Tenryu-ji has seen a universal sort of vision or imagery there.  An intense materialization in the mind and spirit and body of forms and movement, of the essence and basics of the flow of energy and its way of weaving our human forms from this physical "reality" through levels and landscapes encompassing pure energy and beyond.  So what more fitting way to explore Unstoppable Tomorrow further than through a state that is beyond logic and this physical world.  The saga has been concerned with actions and lives in the here and now, not with the ethereal or specifically illustrating the spiritual, the visionary, the guided world of the unconscious and the visualizations that collectively lead it.

The work has an air of nostalgic tranquility, explosive aurally representational flow, entering a calm and almost magically blanketed future past.  It will feature rough drawings on paper, diamond like found wood deconstructionist abstractions, paintings focusing on the figurative and organic abstraction, another round of even more explorative strangely shaped pieces, on bringing color back into the equation, on the erotic (blatant and subtle), on creation, on reuse and respect, on lovemaking, evoking guidance through minimalism and pure color and the way in which it carries tracers and trajectories through life, and much much more.  I spent hours in the studio yesterday working with found pieces that I have had for a while, creating this gateway back to my experience in Japan, back to the dream like memories of my childhood in Durham and New York City, back to a place that wraps me in almost hallucinatory vision of spirits, and points in time, and shape and color, and moving textures and patterns.  While exploring these nostalgic moments in the present through my process I found myself realizing that this is also carrying me into the future, as if to say "you will go back to Okonuin, you will see Southeast Asia, you will find places in New York and LA where these environments that you are reliving will embrace you like a cool moss blanket and give you love and inspiration."  The show will be at Fecal Face this coming October.  It will narrate this collective dream in a lot of different media and will at the same time give insight to the journey which my inner workings have developed through over time, specifically in the last year and a half.  Not all of it will be explainable even for me, but it will all make sense as an experience.  This comes at a time that I am really reaching inward to know my path as begin to transition back to the East Coast for a while.

This show is as much a step in Unstoppable Tomorrow as it is in a continued exploration of process and just letting go of my idea of a "willed plan" and letting the magic happen in the studio as I go about fleshing out the original ideas.  It is a celebration of my unconscious guiding my conscious hand and feeling, intuitively coming to solutions that once cause chaos in my mind, and explorations of these images, sounds, visions, dreamscapes that I have locked in my psyche.  It is as much therapeutic in practice as it is thoughtful.  Street Conversations, talking with my surroundings, letting the effect of my being in its natural state, knowing that I am a part of all things and not simply one thing apart from it all.  It's about me with the world not against it, always and forever. Knowing that each action and each movement needs to be felt and needs to be streamlined with my path, and if it isn't that is okay, as long as I can stop and pay attention to my guides my gut and the way which the universe needs me to move.  The tribe of the Pilgrimage wakes up from this dream, this conversation with the streets and paths and plants and trees and sounds and breeze and rain and everything and knows that they are on their path, that the path is the way and the way is life.  That it is not the outcome but the process that makes each next step in the evolution, in the present and in hindsight, so amazing. I will be having street conversations until the day I die.

Sitting in LAX

I am on my way back to Oakland form yet another awesome trip to New York City.  The amazing people at Littlefield showing me love once more that they contracted me to fly out there and paint a massive 13'x12' three panel commissioned piece in there venue.  We had been discussing this for sometime, and then boom, it happened.  So excited to be in NYC more often this year... and before I get into the real news and the stories and photos and philosophical wanderings and such, I will leave you with this photo of the piece and yours truly as I get ready to board the last leg of my trip back to the Bay Area on this Virgin American Party Plane.  57, Peace to Ben Robey all day.  Be back soon Brooklyn.

The Last Week of "Pilgrimage" at Shooting Gallery SF! Closes June 7th, 2014.

Hello hello!  First off : "Pilgrimage" is up for ONE MORE WEEK!  Until this Saturday June 7th!  So if you haven't seen it go check it out.  I have been so wrapped up in life since the show opened that I haven't had a chance to sit down and be in touch with you all, my apologies.  I went to LA this past weekend to begin connecting and to see some old NYC friends that I work with and have known for some time, that are doing great things.  The future is shaping up nicely!  I am grateful for this life of mine for sure, and LA and I have some things to look forward to.

So about three weeks ago we saw the opening of my solo show "Pilgrimage" at San Francisco's famous Shooting Gallery on Geary street.  The opening was a success, and we have been fortunate enough to get some amazing press from it all!  Press including my friend and awesome writer Goldmine Sachs over at Impose Magazine did a really fun interview with me, as did one of my favorite people Tracy Jones at the Microscopic Giant, the awesome and uber talented Lale' Shafaghi at Juxtapoz Magazine gave a great preview piece, Zach Tutor and his widely loved Supersonic Electronic blog gave us some support a Fecal Face round table interview will be coming out this week, and lastly Kimberly Chun from 96 Hours did a really awesome interview with me that came out in print as well as online in 96 Hours.

The response has been unbelievable, the opening was awesome, and I have been getting tons of inquiries and new conversations have blossomed out of it.  Really proud of this one!  I still have some photos to process and get from Shooting Gallery of some of the work but the majority of it is viewable in the PILGRIMAGE Section of the Portfolio on this site, as well as on the Shooting Gallery SF site (Where you can also find information on sales and purchasing).

So amidst all of the things that life brings, amidst the non stop flow of energy and thoughts and experiences, I am very very happy that this show was realized with Shooting Gallery.  The space was simply perfect for it, the people there were a pleasure to work with, and this exhibition truly did embody a "Pilgrimage" for myself.  The events that took place in its initial conceptualization, the journey I went through with life, love, pain, joy, progress, and time during its execution, and the final result have all brought me to a new place within myself and my relationship with all things around me.

A true sense of balance, fulfillment, acceptance and the yearning to continue seeking, to strive on and continue moving forward, has really overcome me.  I am having really beautiful visions in my meditations, I happened upon a Koyasan temple at random in LA (Buddhist Twilight Zone Sounds haha), and my eyes are very open as is my being. I am excited to embark on everything from here on out.  The past four years of making art in the Bay Area have really helped to shape my path and to bring me to center with an open mind and a watchful eye to see where my next guide may be.  Fecal Face Gallery solo is in the Fall, and then who knows, who knows where I will go.  Maybe LA, maybe back to NC, maybe NYC for a reunion with my home.  But the one thing I can take away from this experience is this, I am doing exactly what I was put on this earth and in this universe in this form to do, and I am overwhelmingly grateful for the path I am on.  John Felix Arnold III 06/02/2014

Saturday, May 10th, Pilgrimage @ Shooting Gallery SF

I am beside my self.  It has been about a years worth of a journey.  Hot off of the heels of the "Excorrigia : The Scourge" Solo show at Superchief in NYC I just had with Superchief, I present to you the other side.  The opposite side of existence and the journey forward.  I present "Pilgrimage" at the uber famous San Francisco staple, Shooting Gallery!  I have partnered with Paxton Gate on this amazing show.

They have supplied me with bones, skulls, and really awesome news, they have officially procured a taxidermy warthog that will be part of the central sculptural installation piece of the show! We are already getting all sorts of press for the show, including an awesome interview piece from Sjimon Gompers at Impose Magazine, Tracy Jones at The Microscopic Giant, and the show is in print as part of the hot picks of the week in the SFWeekly as well as on their website.

The opening is going to be killer, there are other openings in the White Walls/Shooting Gallery complex the same night that are all going to be incredible.  Here are some images of work to look forward to seeing in person in the show.  I am in the home stretch and tomorrow will see the final realization of a lot of hard work and love for what I do.

Pilgrimage, May 10, 2014

It is Officially On! Thursday, April 3rd, The Scourge hits Superchief NYC

Yes the moment has come and the time is nigh.  Come lose your mind with us at the opening of my newest solo exhibition... "Excorrigia / The Scourge" premiering at Superchief Gallery (@Culturefix, 9 Clinton Street at Houston, in New York City's Lower East Side). The opening, hosted by myself, Carolyn LeBourgeois (who made the cross country trek with me) the whole crew from Sueprchief, Ed Zipco, Billy, and Tricky Yooth aka Patrick, as well as the owners of Culturefix and their rad gallery manager Josh Allen, will commence at 6pm and go until 10pm, Thursday, April 3rd 2014. The work is hung and I am so proud of this one.  The works themselves are ready to be experienced as a full on visual narrative following The Scourge in the world of Unstoppable Tomorrow, individually to be felt and walked around inside of with the eyes and minds of the audience, and they are very ready to find homes here in NYC and beyond.   Also Joel St. Julien, one of my family from the Bay Area, has helped me co produce a sound piece of intensely demonic and frightening soundscapes and textures that will no doubt bring the whole thing together, finished by a (human) sacrificial altar piece installation in the 2nd floor street window of the gallery space.  Needless to say, I feel really good about this one and cannot wait to see what kind of response we get!  See you there!  

Look Back to BRIC "Art Into Music"

So I just realized as I am getting ready for the show at Superchief show that I never put up the final images from the BRIC Arts Media House show I created an Installation for in February... there is some great press coverage on it from Fecal Face and Juxtapoz from the show and the opening.  Many thanks to the trio at BRIC of Jenny Gerow, Elizabeth Ferrer, and Eric Araujo for making it all happen, and Space Meow for performing live inside the piece at the opening.  The Juggs Band with Kareem Bunton will be performing at the close on April 27th.  Here are pics of the final product and the opening.

The Journey of The Scourge...

So Carolyn Lebourgeois and I packed up the car a week ago and hit the road.  Destination NYC... We drove a straight haul from California to El Paso, through Arizona and New Mexico in 20 or so hours and then crashed.  Ate steak, then crashed again... then it was onward to Austin for BBQ with Terry Addison at Rudy's, to Houston to hang out with Bob MaCready and go to the Screwed Up Records store, to New Orleans to hang with amazing Chef Nathanial Zimet who started Boucherie for the most amazing meal of all time, through East Texas, to Mississippi for slammin fried chicken, through Alabama, through Northern Florida, through Georgia, to South Carolina and South of the Border, through my home state of North Carolina for Bullocks BBQ, up through Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and finally to NYC from where I type this for you!!! Here are a few images.  There will be more in depth images and stories in the weeks to come but the show is dropping this coming Thursday so all roads lead to Excorrigia I The Scourge!!!

TONIGHT! Feb 19th "Art Into Music" @ BRIC in Brooklyn, New York City

So tonight I am in a group show at an AMAZZZZIINNGGGG art institution called BRIC Arts Media House on Fulton Street in Brooklyn's Fort Greene (my favorite place in the world) neighborhood.  I am so honored and feel so blessed to be a part of this show and to be given the opportunity to come back to NYC to give back to the city that raised me after a long journey of transformation and change.  The piece I created is in fact called "Gratitude and Transformation(s)", fittingly enough as I have been hoping and praying for an opportunity to give back to this place, especially this area of Brooklyn where I spent so many important years, for a long time.  Many thanks to Elizabeth Ferrer and Jenny Gerow at BRIC, and huge thanks to Eric Araujo, whom I have known through this art life struggle since 2006, for getting the ball rolling and getting me into this historic event at BRIC.  I am one lucky cat and I went Hard.  As they say in the Bay Area, I WENT HELLA HARD! Hahahahha. The piece took about a week to create.  It is made with mostly reclaimed and repurposed materials from Brooklyn and Queens and truly is a living act of gratitude to this place.

Also a special performance by my friends Space Meow will occur on the stage built into the installation.  I have been looking forward to working with Space Meow for some time now and it is going to be EPIC!   They go on at 9pm.   At the end of the show my good friend Kareem Bunton's awesome blues rock band The Juggs will also perform and they always throw down!

The Opening is tonight, Wednesday Feb. 19th, from 7-9:30 pm.  BRIC is at 647 Fulton Street and will be awesome.  We will be heading to Frank's Lounge afterward for an intimate after party with the artists and friends and such!  Gonna be awesome so swing by.  The show will run through April 27th so make sure to check it out if you are in the area.   Here are some photos of the production of my site specific installation, I can't wait to drop the images with the Space Meow set up on the stage...also the press release is attached at the end of this blog post.

Also I got the chance to hang out with Ken South Rock's Ken Minami and Adam Amram last week as well as Matt Reilly from Japanther.  Here are some photos of their forest cave in Bushwick with treehouses, mini ramp, silk screen set up, and all...It's been an amazing trip.  I'll be back in a few days with a NYC wrap up!

BRIC ART INTO MUSIC PR 021414_FINAL

Thanks for tuning in!- JFAIII