1. I met John H. Schneider the weekend of Saint Patrick’s Day, he sat next to me in the bus. A 65 year-old man with sunglasses and a ponytail carrying a black backpack, he was complaining that he couldn't drink or smoke weed, he had 2 months left on probation, he spent 4 years in jail for smuggling drugs. He was just wasting time on the bus, he had nowhere to be or nothing to do, so spending time in the bus talking to strangers was his way of entertainment. He started smuggling drugs when he was about 17, he said it was super easy around that time to cross borders with a truck or a little plane filled with weed and cocaine, most of the stuff he had came from Jamaica or Alaska, “who the fuck would suspect from a plane coming from Alaska, no one”. His best time was in the 80s carrying a bunch of cocaine in his pockets at night in the clubs and sharing it with all the girls. Then he got caught, he spent 4 years in jail, and now he is on probation. Instead of playing cards or lifting weights like most inmates he spent most of his time drawing, he had always liked art but while in jail he really had the time to fully dedicate to it. He showed me some prints of his drawings, landscapes with hidden figures, faces, animals and a lot of skulls. I decided to buy one of his prints for $7 dollars, I still don't know if I like the print or if it was just the history behind it that really interested me. John kind of reminded me of a B movie version of Johnny Depp in the movie Blow and his drawing made me think of a piece from Mike Kelley's “Pay for you pleasure,” where he shows a painting made by John Wayne Gacy.
2. Fragments of the Articulated Wall that are made by the shadow game that the sun creates (from both sculptures, Mexico city and Denver).
3-4. I really like how from the distance the sculpture looks in perfect shape but when you get close you can really appreciate a kind of state of decay, so the paint not only functions as color but also as a physical material too, pealing apart or kind of with stains and layers of paint.
5-7. In Ciudad Juarez in Mexico due to the lack of budget, several statues and sculptures were cleaned with Valentina sauce. It is not just the weirdness of this story and the aspect that the Valentina sauce works for cleaning sculptures, but what really caught my attention was the photos of the Valetina sauce dripping from the sculptures. It looked like they were bleeding and besides, Ciudad Juarez is one of the most violent places in Mexico. So this idea of a monument or a sculpture bleeding really came into my work and the valentina sauce too.