Progress…
I am making progress on the “Do I Know You?” series. I completed the first stage of a piece named Pass the Bottle last night. And, while I can’t share it until closer to the July 4th show opening (at The Balcony Gallery at The Emporium Center in Knoxville, TN), I can show you one of my inspirations.
Meet Darryl
6 months
March 1949
He was a beautiful child, and as an adult he became the ever-popular sideshow exhibit known as Uncle Darryl. He was a wonderfully and wildly-inappropriate adult influence on me by most measures, and absentee parent to his only child. I thought the world was a much better place with him in it. He helped me successfully make a huge decision at age 13 that probably saved my life.
He physically survived a tour in Vietnam and mentally endured the aftermath of physical injury, PTSD & chemical contaminants with the only tools at his disposal—-a doting mother & many a liquor bottle.
In April of 2006, a heart attack ended the suffering he endured from a decade-long battle with cirrhosis of the liver. He was 56 years old. He betrayed his body after his brain betrayed him. I love & miss him. I SO wish he were here to be a questionable influence on MY child.
The “Do I Know You?” series will feature an image saluting his battle with cirrhosis as well as an image in tribute his struggle with PTSD & the aftermath of Agent Orange.