HONORING JOHN CAGE
I met John Cage in Los Angeles in 1961 and his work and thinking have had a great influence on me and my work. In 2012, during the centennial of his birth, I made two series in his honor: EARS AND QUESTION DISCS.
In addition I created and organized the second performance of OPEN CAGE with 75 participants. It was held at EYEBEAM in Manhattan as a part of the CHELSEA MUSIC FESTIVAL. My first performance of OPEN CAGE was done with 35 participants in the Slovak Philharmony Hall in Bratislava, Slovakia in 1992, in collaboration with Jozef Cseres.
EARS
I drew 100 ears with inks and graphite and along the bottom edgeand up the right side of the page I hand copied a text from his book SILENCE published by the Wesleyan Press in 1961. Sizes are variable: watercolor and rice papers, smallest: 4 x 6 inches / 10.5 x 14.85 cm, largest: 33 x 47 inches / 84 x 119 cm. Three have been done with gold leaf.
DISCS
On thin laser cut balsa wood discs handpainted with orange Japanese calligraphers' ink, I hand drew with graphite, short questions from SILENCE. They were used as pseudo-mushrooms in an installtion at the Arkansas Art Center in Little Rock, Arkansas where with the Ears and Discs I participated in an International Drawing Invitational curated by Charlotta Kotik in 2012.
