My first dog liked to chase her tail. She'd spin in very determined circles, focused on her quarry. An unstoppable vortex that would attempt to gobble up any counter attempt. She learned, too, that hitting a wall or other object could giver her an advantageous bit of reach wherein she could finally attain her elusive quarry. She became quite adept at catching her tail. Trouble was she knew exactly what to do when she caught it… chew the hell out of it. I'm sure it made sense to her… chase tail, catch tail, chew tail. At that time in my life, I was too young to understand dog breeds, or behavioral anomalies and neurosis in canines. If you asked me why my white dog had a black head and a pink tail, I would have told you she chases her tail and the black is a kind of camouflage. Her tail is pink because she's good at catching it and she chews it until it bleeds. Long before she developed this behavior, I named her "Tippy". She's still a fond memory. I'm very fortunate to have had a dog which provided me the opportunity to make empirical assessments at an early stage in my artistic life. Sometimes the creative process is just a series of urges. It can be similar to watching a dog chase it's tail. The evening the photo above was taken, I set out on an uncharted course along Northern CO's grasslands. Setting off without a physical or ideological destination at the beginning of an art making excursion is a valid endeavor, but can lead to the sort of behavior for which artists notorious. Somewhere in the flat land, I got the idea that there was so much rain the rivers were taking back the roads. And true the rain was making a very concerted effort to keep me bogged int he mud, so I ventured back to the dull paved lanes and eventually headed west toward home. Taking the long way and effectively making a bigger loop around my tail, I came upon this scene as I rounded the bend, skidded to a halt, and began to close the loop with a series of u-turns and head-spins. But to make the final catch on my quarry required abandoning commonsense and ignoring physical and legal threats to my person. Thankfully, an F350 brought a moment of clarity and sanity to the evening, and I walked out of the middle of the road. Did, I find something meaningful and succeed in making it an artful moment? Thankfully, that's something for the audience to discuss. I can only commit that I did, in fact, catch my tail that particular evening, and I am currently chewing the hell out of it for an, as yet, undisclosed reason.
(several other images from this evening can be seen in my Flickr Photostream, enjoy)
