along with the sound installation, sculpture, and drawings related to the vowel structure of john glenn’s first transmission in space in novemeber of 1960, i also created three paintings, related to glenn’s text, its vowel structure, and working with it in relation to rimbaud’s vowel/color equivalence. these, medium scale paintings were shown in the fresno museum show, as well as at nicole klagsbrun gallery in 2005 – as part of a larger show cobbled together from bits of the transmissions body of work, as well as the seamarks work – also from 2005 – that was shown at the mcbean gallery at the san francisco art institute.
in hindsight, the paintings were made to pull away from each other, treating the same material in different languages and thrusts… thus, transmissions 1 feels related to some of the pennsylvania dutch motifs seen in hex signs and decorative motifs; transmissions 2 seems connected to space ships and comic book imagery; and transmissions 3 seems to be pushing up against early abstract languages such as vorticism and futurism. of course, all of these are a pretty big stretch, but, again, in hindsight, they seem to acknowledge the vastness of my interests without hierarchy.