Raccoon Shirt, 1990/ Raccoon Shirt, 2007
C-print with digital print
11" x 20"
Raccoon Shirt, 1990/ Raccoon Shirt, 2007
C-print with digital print
11" x 20"
On Saturday, October 6, I had dinner with a close friend in Potrero Hill. Somehow the topic of portraiture came up in conversation and I happened to mention a picture of myself as a boy wearing a raccoon t-shirt. A few hours later, a difficult thing happened with my friend that caused me to question my level of engagement with my own life.
In the morning I drove to Pacifica to go surfing, which was at the time probably my greatest fear, to clear my mind of the previous night’s events. When I got to the beach I saw an old man wearing exactly the same raccoon shirt I had mentioned the previous night.
An hour later, as I went into the water, the hillside surrounding the beach caught fire. Airplanes circled and dropped flame retardant red dust as little yellow men watched. The smoke was still rising as I left.
I drove straight home and parked in front of my apartment building. As I stepped to the curb I noticed someone speeding toward me at about 70mph in a white sedan, revving the engine and blowing through stop signs. The window was smashed out and, as he passed me, I saw that the driver’s face was totally covered with blood. He looked over his shoulder in horror and quickly tore around the corner and out of sight. Then everything was silent.
I discovered later that the man was a parolee who had fled from police and was shot, presumably in the face, at the corner of 23rd Avenue and Pacheco Street. After driving through the Outer Sunset, he abandoned his car on the 100 block of Caine Street and escaped on foot.
In trying to make sense of these events I’ve revisited the sites involved and made a number of drawings, recreations, and interpretations. I feel that it’s important for me to become an active participant in not just collecting these experiences but in processing them and using them to find other patterns and synchronicities in my life. In the absence of any palpable underlying meaning, simply responding to these places and experiences is the best way I could find to apply a personal and conscious structure to the uncontrollable.