I should say at this point that I was working in a studio that was a vocational school at the time, and my studio at the time was loaded down with all these huge chalkboards. And to work on one wall I [would] have to work from one side of the room to the other, and I'd move these chalkboards. At the time, I was doing all this other process work, like the filings and that, and through conversation with some relatives who were from overseas, we were discussing kinds of histories and how histories were formed, how you get to understand them. And for me, it's become clear that in American educational systems you weren't really getting a very broad-based understanding of history; it was [a] very directed kind of way of understanding American history. And this cousin of mine [who] was [living] overseas was...[learning] European [history], women's history, people of color, things like that, and I thought this was very interesting that we weren't getting that in my public school...So I thought, "Well, how am I going to import this idea of this personal kind of understanding of education into the work?" and so I was looking for a kind of loaded object, and the chalkboard, which I was moving back and forth around the room, became the kind of obvious object for me. It sort of just hit me like a club on the head one day. So I started these chalkboard pieces, which I think were probably [derived from] Ad Reinhardt's black-on-black paintings and some of Franz Kline's paintings and things like that. I was really drawn into black-on-black surface, some Rothko's and things like that. So in this piece, I took an actual chalkboard and cut it up into this paragraph which created these assumed word forms. They were kind of inspired by government letters and things like that, where things are censored; so I thought: "What an interesting way to throw a read onto education."

Private Schoolroom

I moved to California and was working out there and still sort of dragged with me this idea of minimalism --this kind of threads its way through my work to this day--and to continue on this track of education I thought, taking the idea of the grid that Sol Le Witt and artists like that, Andre, people like that that were dealing with the grid and placement and this kind of infinite sort of structure and surface that continues, a kind of continuum. I thought I'd try to present these little podiums that were children-sized, and it's called, Private Schoolroom. I liked the idea of the notion of the private, and a selected few, and importing that into this idea of the grid. So the numbers like "9" and "6" constantly pop up in my work, for that very reason.

Erasure Chair

This piece is probably one of the most important early pieces that has affected my work, still. This is the Erasure Chair, where I took a schoolroom desk from a classroom and covered it with hundreds of chalkboard erasers. At this time, I was really getting close to some of the ideas of Beuys and talking, literally visually, to artists that way. So the work really kind of responded and springboarded off of ours that way. But I really liked the way that this chair, looking at it, created a kind of nostalgia for your childhood and your education. And so it was important for me to kind of create the kind of dip, if you will, in the seat, which kind of presented itself as [if] somebody had sat there and left [his or her] impression... So it was [the] absence of the student [and]...was...the first piece that was about [the] absence of the body. It was much stronger to imply the body rather than include it. It also took me out of the picture and didn't [present] it as just an isolated experience. The viewers...could kind of place themselves in their...childhood.

What I wanted to do here was construct a room [where] all of your senses were completely saturated. Visually you were really hit by these really beautiful azaleas, white and red, and this boxwood, which is a kind of topiary hedge that sort of forms the structure. So the image there is the crest of the Ku Klux Klan. ...The temperature was lowered to something like 50 degrees, so it was very cold as you walked in. So initially you were faced with that kind of frigid room and then you were hit with this kind of really strong…the lighting was really high key, so that the lights would really bounce off the flowers and really draw your eye in. And then the floor was sort of covered with this wood chip material and these park benches. I really was trying to imply a kind of town hall/center/post office/front of a school house, that was kind of an "Anytown, USA" sort of idea. A lot of the work never gets specific in its location, and by doing that it opens up a way for everybody to access their own experience through that location--or dislocation, if you want to call it that.

This is another piece that came out of this idea of shoes. I was thinking at the time about how in urban culture your sneakers are your status symbol. The more expensive that they are and the newer that they are, the more status applied to them. [In other words] a Michael Jordan sneaker or a Penny Hardaway [sneaker] would..[give you a] higher status than, say, a Converse sneaker on the street. So I started to connect this idea…also, I should [add] that kids were getting shot for their sneakers and that created a two-fold to the status of the shoe. It's a sort of seek-and-destroy kind of idea...[to find] somebody with your shoe size and then gun them down, mug them, or whatever for their shoes, and you would gain even more status for that act. So I thought that this idea of display was a way of sending up this notion of the sneakers as [a status symbol], as well as connecting them to the idea of [the] "trophy" and children's bronze shoes--[the sneakers] are gold-plated.

The First Erasure Drawing

I'd been working on...projects with a friend that was a filmmaker, and we got together...to do a film on child education. I thought that the most interesting thing to attack would be cartoons, because cartoons were...images where stereotypes were implanted--where...an animal, like a crow or a frog..would imply or stand in place of a black figure. (Or a lazy mouse would stand in place of a Mexican figure.) ...[Having] conversations with other people..--talking about the film Dumbo--I realized that, for me, the most memorable [characters] of the cartoon were these crows that sort of taught Dumbo to fly. I realized that most people didn't remember the crows at all, and that was interesting to me, because [they were]...the only [representations of] black figures at the time--they were these kind of step-and-fetch-it crows... People didn't remember them until they were shown an image [of them]. So I thought that was interesting, that these images were remembered [only] by people of color...So I thought, "How can I put this [form of stereotyping in my work]?" and I started doing these drawings on the chalkboard surface...and then starting to erase them--trying to smudge or erase the kind of stereotype that was being presented there. So, this is the first wall drawing that I did in Los Angeles, and it's probably about 25 feet long and 10 feet tall...

In the galleries

[Pollock] was one of the first artists that I started to look at as almost a performance artist. Pollock's paintings, especially the drip paintings, were much more about a kind of evidence of performance. I see myself as very different from Pollock, but at the same time, the same...Pollock was about cramming information into his frame,...[whereas my work is] about taking away information from a frame. I always thought that his work was much more about drawing in the way that the mistakes are all there, that he uses the mistakes.

Usually when a painter works with a brush, it's a very specific mark... [a] kind of intention...that's put down onto the canvas. And for Pollock, it was much more about the kind of evidence of his performance at the time, and that related to the way that we think about drawing…to kind of find your image, what you're constructing, in the frame. For me, that was the strongest part about this work…that this is the myth of the artist as performative artist... because you look at these paintings and obviously there's this whole Abstract Expressionist kind of myth to them…But for me they're much more about the way Pollock could construct emotion…because each one of these paintings...are almost about [the] emotion of the moment, whether it be the very linear sketchiness to the paint, or this kind of very determined dropping of the paint. And you can almost feel a kind of anger within the paintings, or drawings, if you want to call them that, in the same way that you would arrive at a kind of performance. Pollock used the same colors on two different days; the paintings are completely different because his emotion was what was controlling the way that he controlled his paint. And I always thought that was the way I felt most connected to any of the Abstract Expressionists, because if I did the same image on two different days, there was no way that image is going to feel the same way, because my emotions are completely different. I always thought that that was the most interesting kind of painting for me, his action painting, because it was really more about a kind of evidence that was left behind. I think that's what makes these paintings so incredible is that, this is the kind of conceptual souvenir that we connect to Pollock's studio. So the myth of the studio has kind of stepped up another level.

It's also very interesting the way that Pollock went about titling his work...[when] I was in [the gallery taking] a few notes... a young student asked me..."What is the significance of these titles?" And I thought...[this was an interesting question] because a lot of times, somebody searches for...meaning and intention...through the title, as a source, and a lot of times that's a way for an artist to just reference his own personal project, whether it be a kind of numeric way of conducting paintings, or maybe he's referencing some personal part of his life that we have absolutely no access to. Again, we're sort of asked to project a meaning or significance of what that title is [onto] his work, so you're always flipping back and forth between your space and real time and what Pollock was working on at the time of this kind of performance piece. And I always felt closest to Pollock in that way, because my titles work in a similar way. [The title is a way] of tempting or teasing [the viewer]...a kind of reference point...it has a...personal significance to it, which is one that nobody has access to in the same way, [like the] performance of...[creating] these paintings...So you're sitting here struggling, trying to figure out, "How did he construct this frame?" And I think that's the real power of...Pollock's work...I've always thought of him more as somebody who really draws with paint rather than a kind of "selective" painter, an intentional painter...

...Whether you're reading something that's written about that artist, or even the artist's [own] words..[when looking at a] work like this, you do project and there is that space that you're allowed. For me, that's the difference between looking at paintings and looking at movies, because there's room for me to play, for me mentally to operate in; it's not all given to me in the same way...And that's powerful for me.

The way that Pollock...painted is an additive [process]; whereas I usually start with an image and then start to erase it away...[They're] opposite ways of working, but in the end there's a similarity because they're both evidence of a performance that you don't see, and that's the connection that I'm trying to draw between the two ways of working...

If you look at a Barnett Newman, or even a Clifford Still, or some of the earlier Jackson Pollocks, where somebody uses the brush. I think there's a kind of intention--not intention, that's not really the right word--it's like a specific mark that you're making with a brush...You don't know what mark is intentional here [in Pollock's work] and what isn't. He plays with that...it's almost like the difference between constructing a drawing and scribbling on a pad next to your telephone [while] talking on the phone. You kind of play with things and kind of work out images and build and construct and leave the mistakes in. And I've always been more drawn to that because there's an honesty to that, in a way, a naïve way of building out an image instead of specifically trying to draw a car or a shoe or a hat or something.

Contrived--that's the word I was looking for. I think brush painting is a little more contrived--[as] in the Barnett Newman painting--because I think it's a far more cerebral way of working.

...[Yet] I don't think that Pollock is an accidental artist. I think that a lot of his work...is much more conceptual, the way he approached it. I thought it was a very thought out way, the way that he started to think about his relationship to his materials and to his work, the way he was going to leave this trace, a trace of his [movement]. I mean, you can...imagine his canvas on the floor in front of you and [picture him] moving about the room dripping this thing. But I don't think that it's accidental at all; I think it's actually much more planned, [and yet] the effect is far more like a drawing. Because if he sort of chucked that over here, then that's OK, because he can sort of build the canvas over here. I mean, there's a constructed way, a building process.

I think painting is probably the hardest thing to do right now...I started doing paintings, and, for me, it doesn't work out the same way as drawing... Because [painting] becomes much more contrived…I start becoming really aware of [the] image [I'm creating] and how it's affecting the edge of the canvas and the sides of the canvas, and I think that that's me projecting a whole lot of painting baggage into the work, and when you approach it each mark is very contrived. Whereas...when I start drawing, [the process is similar to Pollock's]...if I don't like something I just erase it, or leave it there, or whatever, and I allow for those things to happen. If the image isn't quite in the frame then that's OK too, because it's more about this erasing of the image…

I like the idea of the trace…the information that blurs in and out--"Is it there?; Is it not?"--it's like a ghost...kind of there, sometimes not.