September Art Show

Opening night is Friday, September 18th at the Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson, Wisconsin. (www.thephipps.org). 6:30 – 8:30pm. Several of my UFO paintings will be on display along with a large series of “Clouds in Bamboo” paintings.

This particular series of clouds moving through the bamboo forrest started at the end of grad school and was based on a very obscure paranormal folk tale. It all started in the 1825 edition of “The Terrific Register, or Records of Crimes, Judgements, Providence and Calamities.” An account in the book details the night of 10/29/1757 when a large black cloud that was changing colors finally caught fire and attached boats that were harbored on the island nation of Malta. Another related story comes from Lt. Ernest Bentley of the U.S. Military who was hiking in the mountains of Western China near the village of Wa Chi in 1945 when he encountered locals fleeing from a smokey, translucent column of smoke. A similar incident took place in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1904. Of course these ideas were finally made famous in J.J. Abrams’ TV series: “Lost,” when a large black “smoke monster,” terrorized a group of airplane crash survivors on a deserted island somewhere in the South Pacific.