All of Our Guns, Part 1

I am a painfully shy person and I hate to speak up for myself or blow my own horn but I have spent too much effort, too much money, too much, time, too much thought and I feel too deeply that my work is important and should be seen that I feel compelled to should say something about my work and share an image.

In order to encourage others who are also struggling to have their work seen and heard I want to say that although there have been very many times that I have been censored, ignored, passed over or stood up or been insulted on behalf of my work that I have also had so many wonderful, brave, incredible people in my life stand up to support my work and I am eternally grateful to the people who have done so. It means everything to me but not just to me;

We are seeing results from our artistic efforts to raise awareness about the stray animals in Oak Cliff. Our efforts are a pittance but we are proud to have been a part of the symphony of voices that have greased the rusty gears of bureaucracy that are only now beginning to turn and we couldn’t have done what we did without you.

The problem isn’t solved, not by a long shot. Still, if you read the news you might have noticed that they have begun to ramp-up efforts to patrol certain areas in Dallas for stray dogs. They are finally stepping up, thanks to you and I hope that the community continues to be vigilant in seeking a solution.

Thank you so much to everyone that helped us when we were censored by the people in Bishop Arts who compelled the owners not to allow us to paint the mural to raise awareness about the stray pet problem in Dallas. Thank you to the people at Petropolitan who gave us another location and thank you to everyone who came out and helped us to paint. Thank you to Home Depot and to Sherwin-Williams for donating supplies. Thank you to everyone who supported us in any way.

I’m a full-time artist living in Dallas. I earned my second degree in Spain, at the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Spain, a school that may sound extremely foreign at first but will sound less so when I will mention that the sculptor and architect Santiago Calatrava graduated from there as well. You should be familiar with his work as he was the architect behind the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge here in Dallas, a bridge that struck me as extremely plain as I have lived with his dramatic City of Arts and Sciences complex of buildings in Valencia.

My several hundred page MFA thesis there was inspired by the suicide of my best friend and concerned itself with a study of the causes of violence and of the depictions of violence in art and what it might indicate about human nature. The visual portion of my MFA evolved into almost a decade of work. I spent the greater part of my 20’s looking into these issues and creating a series of deeply and intentionally symbolic drawings and paintings.

Here is one of them, a mixed media work that specifically deals with spree shootings. I cannot upload a photo here so I have to give a link. The image is available about halfway down on the page of this interview.

http://www.thrwd.com/2015/03/09/the-ten-joachim-west/

so much bellyache about guns, guns are cool. if you don’t want that .38 i’ll take it. i’m going to go buy gun stuff right now.

Almost forgot
Homer J. Simpson, Makeup Gun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tslIaxLPTEY

ps. keep yer gun – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3Zol75upPA