Amazing Stories

When I was a kid, I had a picture book of cover art from science fiction pulp magazines that I used to pour over constantly. Those paintings had me rapt and though I've since lost the book somewhere, I still sometimes think about how cool that stuff was, so when I found some via stumble upon, I naturally had to hold them in a post here at PROOF.

Amazing Stories was an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Before Amazing, science fiction stories had made regular appearances in other magazines, including some published by Gernsback, but Amazing helped define and launch a new genre of pulp fiction.

Time Enough At Last

Everybody knows this Twilight Zone episode with Burgess Meredith as the anti-social bookworm who finally gets his wish, but it's still one of my favorite bits of television. It got me thinking, when I was a kid, about what I'd do if I were the last person left on earth. I still daydream about that often...
and my glasses are made of plastic.

A Scene from the Past 1986

Al’s Coffee Shop and the Chit Chat Lounge used to stand near the intersection of 6th Street and Rampart in Los Angeles along with the Big 6 Market, Queen Taco and the very car wash where they filmed the movie Car Wash! I spent an awful lot of time here as an art student at Otis/Parsons. Oh my, getting misty…

Mary from that Book

This is something I grew up with; a plate from a book of very fine imagined portraits of characters from the Bible. Despite all the other art there is out there, this is still how I picture the Mother of Christ.

Camping with Dan 1987

After a disastrous poetry reading event for Twentythree Press and 50 Bucks, Dan and I just had to get the fuck out of LA. We stopped at Swaziland for a bag of weed and Ralph's for some beans and a gallon of wine and headed out in that car he got in a trade with Floy Andrews for a painting. We had no clue where we were going but we ended up in a place called Switzer Falls, parked, plopped down and proceeded to - I don't know - not be in LA. During our 2 or 3 days out there, we both got pretty sick and cold and weren't able to accomplish anything of much relevance or even relax. But it has to be said it was a bonding experience for us both, so no regrets. I miss you, Dan, wherever you are.

Beuys Piano 1988

Yes, it's a grand piano covered in felt. Joseph Beuys is one of my all-time favorites so when I spotted this at Pompidou in '88, I took a shot. I guess in France they let you take pictures in museums. Love those French and thank you Lynn Stadum.

Paris 1988

One from and one of the Eiffel Tower.

The Photostatic Twentythree 1987

See, before we all had computers, people had to do their graphic design with prestype and photocopiers, drawing with scissors and scotch tape. Or at least I did. Ed found a copier once in someone's trash and called me. We took it to a service shop to see if we could get it going again. My sister, Harriet, staked me the two-hundred-and-some-odd dollars it took to fix the drum and replace the corona wire and in a week I had a photocopier of my own which, in that day, was a very big deal. Someone dubbed it the Sugar Turbine and I got to work printing books for the Twentythree Press (yes - no hyphen) and whatever else I wanted. Happy times.

Sighting 1988/2009

I know. It's too easy. What this really is is a picture I took from the car while driving on the Autobahn through an expansive East German countryside (back when there was an East Germany). It's one of a few hundred negatives that sat for years. Then I scanned everything from this trip I took with my friend, Ted, and posted them all in a folder on Picasa for a certain, few, old friends to enjoy. Everything from the series is just as I shot it except for this one frame where I decided to add a flying saucer just to see if anyone would notice. No one did.

Für Elise 1993

I met a girl right after moving to San Francisco, a girl named Elise with whom I fell tragically, unrequitedly in love. I made this for her, just before I let my heart get broken, as a Christmas gift and it became the first of the many object collage works that followed. Für Elise is now part of the collection of Ms. Tammy Derrigan of St. Louis and consists of an antique photograph, a cherry stem tied in a knot by the tongue of the object of my misplaced affection, nails pulled from the back of a very old frame, Prestype on antique paper reading, "In Other Words", one birth-control pill marked with the number 23, a bit of rice paper, a nail upon which hang two locks of hair (Elise's and mine) molded with hair gel into interlocking rings and a small piece of paper with a date on it - the date I met Elise.

23 No.1 1989

Wish I could describe just how and why I'm so drawn to the number 23 and one day I'll try. For now, here's a page from the Sentimental Sourcebook which I made as a personal reference to take with me to Budapest back in the Gasoline Days of 1989.

Artifacts from Budapest ca.1989

Headache Train 2008/2012

Walking a long, long way from a party on the southside to home downtown... by the time I made it to this train passing, I was pretty ragged and not happydrunk anymore. The sun was crazy bright, the sound of the rails were earsplitting, and I had to keep going. Would you have had the presence of mind to record the moment?

The Heartpiece Collages 1991

The Heartpiece series was an extension of the Paper Series of collage/paintings. I took the name from a Heinrich Boll play and went to work on a lot of these, maybe fifty, and sold them cheap or gave them out as gifts before, unfortunately, photographing them. These are the only images that remain.

Le Poisson d'Avril

The second morning I woke in Paris it was April the First. Ted and I, that afternoon, went over to Pompidou to check out the good modern art they have there but, in the plaza outside the museum, there were some sort of festivities going on. After looking on a spell, somewhat confused, Ted noticed I had a paper fish taped to my butt. Evidently the French have some sort of an April Fool's tradition that involves children sticking fish to passersby unawares. Bizarre, yes, and beyond that I cannot tell you more but here is the fish Ted found on my ass, preserved all these years (since 4/1/88).

Population One 2000

When my friends in Cobalt Blue were recording their first (and only) record, I was hoping I might be able to design the cover. I had it in mind, at one point, to use this photograph I shot from the car on a trip from St. Louis to Denver and call the album, "Population One," which was one of their songs. Turned out Sean, the guitar player, had other plans and this image finally turned up in the Six Comforts CD package with type in large blue letters that read, "We are all living on borrowed space."

Bar Bar 2000

This image reminds me of a place in Los Angeles that David Bornstien used to like to take me. The place didn't seem to have a name per se so he just called it Bar Bar. I think he even wrote "Welcome to Bar Bar" in the bathroom there.

Now, this picture was taken in Denver three or so years after David died and so has nothing to do with his Bar Bar, but the sort of generic nature of this shot-signs that indicate what it is and what they have but under no particular flag- stimulated that memory for me.

Ted Fisher in Paris 1988

I Always did love this one of Ted.

This guy and I have been friends since we were 15 but it wasn't until April of '88 that we got the chance to travel through Europe together, from Paris to Budapest. So here Ted is on maybe our fourth day in Paris at a flea market, perhaps, or at The Basilica of the Sacred Heart or somewhere.

Love you, Ted! Hope your continuing travels find you well.

The Blessed Virgin 2000

Actually, this is Maddie Eldridge shot unawares when she was just a teenager at Giovanna's baby shower. Always loved this image for its supernal grace and innocence and always meant to use it in something but never found a way. Some images are just too potent to be components of something else and must stand alone, I guess.