My Dad is a Jazz freak and an audiophile. So growing up we had a fancy Marantz stereo with equalizers, huge speakers and a Sony reel to reel player. He liked to play it loud so the music enveloped you. It reverberated in your chest. On occasions he’d dim the lights of the living room, lie on a fluffy carpet and listen to music. Sometimes I tagged along.
Strange Fruit was the chill moment between Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong. It was a welcome downer, a breather. I grew to love the music and the voice of Billie Holiday way before I paid attention to the lyrics. Years passed before I learned the lyrics were inspired by a poem born of a horrific act captured by a photograph. I’d seen the picture as a child in some book or museum. It tore out a huge hole in my childhood innocence but I never associated the song with the photo.
I don’t remember exactly when one of my fondest memories, a special feel-good warm and fuzzy time in my life became somehow entangled with this horrible dark event.
When I thought of one the other came immediately to mind and that would trigger a line of emotional incongruences of things like old cartoons and God and belief systems.
I guess Strange Cosmic Fruit is my attempt at reconciling those two opposites.
ARTWORK
ART INSTALLATION
Augmented / Mixed Reality Overlay
Work in progress
