“Canadian Circuitry”, Around The World Series, No. 95

I found the house out in Athens, GA while out in Chicago. It was through a Facebook page my sister was on, in where the girl was leaving for Summer break and needed someone to rent it out. I was quite nervous, because in my head I had created Athens as nothing more than a small southern town with small southern minds.. which is just not the case (but my fear and the past had manifested itself in such strange and imaginary ways that I could not even begin to process it).

When Dani and I had first talked on the phone I was incredibly wary until she told me she was from Vancouver.

“Oh Jesus you are from Canada. Thank god”, I said.

The house was off of Easy Street in an area called Normaltown. Dani and her husband Thor were so incredibly cool. While they were only here for a few weeks (before they left the entire house to myself) my time with them was incredible. There are memories of us late at night underneath the candlelight of their screened-in porch laughing and playing music with their friends…. and one memory in particular was the massive showering rainstorm that shot down through the southern sky into our town. Dani and I ran out in the rain screaming and laughing while the sorority beginner house across the street looked at us like we were insane.

I was fascinated with them, so much that my already budding curiosity of Canada, spread like wild kudzu across my brain. Dani and Thor talked about Vancouver with me as much as they could.. and when they left I began to study Canada for weeks. In that old white house, on the screened-in porch, I painted alone for weeks. What once held the laughter and music from my housemates was now replaced with the soft night wind intermixed with the distilled humming of a discordant orchestra of crickets and cicadas.

I silently navigated myself socially through Athens in the daytime that summer, often through working the AM shifts at The Last Resort Grill. In the evenings I would spend time with my sister and her husband in their cool modern style home that resembled a romance between Franklin Lloyd Wright and Tennessee Williams. In the evenings however, when I’d take off my backpack and change out of my soiled waiter clothes… I’d sit there on the porch alone and paint my dreams of Canada.

This piece is called “Canadian Circuitry”, and without the help of Dani and Thor, this conception would never exist. In this painting, I have created a home for each city in each province. Each city describes a certain portion of the area and its surroundings. There are green avenues which relate to the parks and forests that are near each area. In Mickey’s face are the other cities that held a high population, as well as the territories of Canada.

This is the last of the “Around the World” Collection and resides as No. 95 in the series of 100 for TENxTENxTEN.