“The Show That Wasn’t There” is the name of the gallery exhibit that never took place. The artwork is only the webpage: the pictures, the blurb, this essay you’re reading now.

The only way to explain the show is to explain how it happened.

I wanted to do a show that contained only empty picture frames. Next to each empty frame would be an artist’s statement about the piece. Some would be good, some would be unintelligible, some would be a short work of fiction that didn’t seem to have much to do with anything. And that was the idea of the show, “The Show That Wasn’t There”.

But the reality was that at the time I conceived on the show, I was a single mom. Right before the opening of a previous exhibit I curated, it came to light that my son may have some developmental issues. That was almost two years ago and I shut down as an artist. I had always made art in spite of everything, but for that time, I had to fold. Outside of jotting down notes and a little writing, I created no art. It never stopped being painful.

I realized, with all irony, that I couldn’t even do “The Show That Wasn’t There.” So in the meantime, I worked to best document my previous gallery show, so that on some level it would “count”. To Someone. Somewhere. Some day. I put the pictures into nice web pages and loaded it onto my site. It made me question where the value of the show itself ended and the value of the exhibit documentation and Web presence began.

I mean, what if there was no show? What if you documented a show that never existed? So this piece, this site, this mockumentation, is homage to that hard time. It’s a nod to the Sol Lewitt and those who practiced that idea the concept of art is more important than the art itself. During hard times when I can’t practice my craft, the idea of art, the fantasy and ideas of future art projects carry me through and give me the creative fix I crave.

Obviously, I’m satirizing something. And for what it’s worth, I hate artist statements. Correction, I have no problem with the documentation that surrounds the work, I just think that documentation should be part of the artwork itself. The object + the acrylic mounted paper = the artwork. If you need the documentation to help some dope “understand” or “be educated” about the work, then you need that document as much as a canvas needs the paint to convey the idea. It’s my belief that sometimes good curators bail out bad artists by making sense of something that might not have any value at all. Their contribution of documentation can be so vital, it seems absurd that the work could exist without it.

At the end of the day, if I’m making fun of anyone, I’m satirizing my own self-promotion. Everything I do, everything that goes on in my head, is fair game for my art content. As I working more seriously on the business side of art, its inevitably going to impact my artwork, and this Web-based piece, along with the art cheater cards, are two examples of self-satire of my own ambition. I feel like the new mixed media artists is one who makes art, curates, markets their work and published critiques. The next “mix” in mixed-media is no longer paint + video + decoupage. It’s art + business. It’s conflict of interest, it’s sales. It’s letting the cat out of the bag and admitting you want fame and money.

That said, I point no fingers. This text serves as statement that pokes fun at other people’s statements. As the voiceover says in Platoon, “We did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves. And the enemy is within us.”