Not Much Room For Guests

Not Much Room For Guests - collage by douglas brent smith, 29 May 1989

"Why don't you make bigger works of art?"

" Do mean, by size?"

"Yes. Yours all seem to fit in a notebook."

"That's the point. Large is hard to store, and I've moved around so much -- proof of the difficulty is that the larger works of art I did do have disappeared."

"Gone?"

"Yep. Some mysteriously, and some in a brutal purge after my last move."

"After your move? So you paid to have them move and then got rid of them?"

"Yes. I didn't even take pictures of them. They no longer pleased me. They no longer represented me. They were mostly paintings from my first stay in Chicago. They were fun to make. I remember episodes of The Match Game playing in the background and soap operas -- or listening to WXRT on my humble stereo. I really should have had a job, but instead, painted. I really should have made collages -- and sometimes did -- but mostly painted. Dreck."

"So no really big collages?"

"Unless you count some room-sized installation type movies that I made in the early 1970's. Recorded for posterity on 8mm movie reels -- also probably all gone."

"Like a legend."

"Or more like drafts not worth saving."

- dbS -

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