Adam LeBow
Hello
I work through books as my primary lens for seeing the world. I grew my perspective and learning with the book artifact. As a child they surrounded me as the building blocks of the home, and outside world. Book fairs, book shelves, book attics, book people. Reading is my true art but to express this I must write, paint, or make music as secondary arts. The book to me is ideas, an art object itself, and background music for thought. The art of books are small ideas had when sitting reading anything somewhere and ideas comes together. They come together as collage not from magazines but from idea scraps.
Scraps of conversation and imagery of food become an earth red Indian sauce as paint in the background of two women discussing where to eat. Their clothes match their prospective food selection's color. The rhythm of their words imitates the pulse of the radio in their restaurant choice. My pieces here come from plein air, drawing in the pocket, or painting at a party. They become different sections in the final piece. They are the layers of attempts that become textures and new images between 2d and 3d. They become sketches of concepts and designs. They become video game level design that indicates a solution of how to move in a spacial puzzle, and urban planning in a city exclusively for blind people.
I like to create questions for myself to answer as a way to start my art. This investigation allows extensive experimentation. For example, how do we visualize music? Do we picture the 1980's scrolling number text of the tracker era? Can we imagine these scrolling letter number combos translated to free jazz? Do we think of marginalia when reading? Can we imagine medieval era knights jovially jousting snails in a New York School Poetry context? I prefer not to answer the question, but to see where it can take me. How do you fantasize what you do? I read everything as if it was a book. Reading is turning words into images, then sound, then feeling and, taste. Deep reading is deep dreaming. Disassociation encouraged.
