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Episode 1 looks at a key originating moment of this form, the creation of my Pictionary of the New Practical Standard Dictionary Lexikon of the New World Dictionary, Based on the Labours of the Most Eminent Lexicographers from 2001-2002. I transformed a small collection of illustrated dictionaries into a tidy volume, packed with that anonymous art.

Episode 2 looks at the Revised Revised New Testament (2003), which takes the illumination of Biblical text to a new level, hence hyper-illumination. How does the ancient Bible, from the years that invented A.D., get pictured or seen in the Golden era of book illustration (19th-20th centuries)? Oddly. Evenly. Wonderfully. In any case, doubly revised.

Episode 3 looks at an early work called I Wonder Why to Buy an Elephant. The merest trifle of a throwaway book from 1963 gets reconsidered by jocular American capitalism and the caustic reality check of an anarchist dreamer, Edward Abbey.

Episode 4 looks at my occupation of a book of paintings of the iconic American artist, Andrew Wyeth. I bring in the characters of the Italian form of improvised comedy, which became the basis of modern clowning and comedy, with figures such as Arlecchino (Harlequin), Pulcinella (Punch), and Pantalone. These sharp black and white drawings from the 16th to the 19th century complement Wyeth’s soft earth tones, and Wyeth moderates their raucous pleasure.

Episode 5 looks at the rightly famous volume of photographs by Walker Evans, Many Are Called, first published in 1938. The copy I use is an edition from 1966, with an introduction by a famous man I praise, James Agee. Candid photographs of people on the New York subway here meet images I lanced from a volume of celebrity photos that appeared in People magazine. I underscore the abrupt crossover from candid to celeb with quotations from Andy Warhol, who allegedly said: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." 

Episode 6 looks at a book that celebrates outer space travel with particular attention to the exploration of the Moon. The photographic art transcends gravity in these pictures, and I felt that they demanded a response from the art that explores the limits and possibilities of gravity on the human body: dance. I used imagery from a dozen different books on the range of dance forms, and thus added to the realm of what we call celestial bodies.

Episode 7 looks at a maximalist portfolio of maximalist photographs by Max Vadukul, pictures of VIPs for high-end magazines. This gigantic book intrigued me from the moment I spotted it at a used book sale, but it took a couple of years for me to figure out how to address it. In the process, I discovered that I needed orchids, masks, fascist sculptures created for Mussolini’s Italy, and diagrams of head and neck surgery to respond in a way that seemed to fit–or to stretch. This project required bibliomaxxing.

Episode 8 looks at a book that brings together various photographers’s images of Mono Lake, the place Mark Twain called "The Dead Sea of California" and "the loneliest spot on earth." John Muir described it as "frost and fire working together in the making of beauty." I’ve been there and seen that no adequate reference point to its strange, huge formations can be found. It’s unearthly. Then, I found the Japanese art of netsukes, miniature carvings that somehow have always known this place in its every rupture and belch. So, I put them there and then, as it turned out, I put them there again. A curious story of what happens when art meets the nature of time, twice.

Episode 9 looks at a book I would not have bought except for the purpose of making such a contrary statement. Kennedy Center is an institution I entered many times by a side door, with a key, in the 1980s–something to do with the performing arts, American National Theater, if only. President Trump wants to batter open the front door with the ram of his name, only to demolish. So I had to buy a copy (used) of his book Our Journey Together to do the work. What art would have flourished at the Kennedy Center under his leadership? Kitsch is the sellable art of fascism, the state of totalitarian art. The only “fit” quantity of that would be “too much Trump,” which here I endeavored to supply, an excess of Brand X = Y?

Episode 10 looks at Apocalypse, a fourteenth-century illuminated manuscript, which is at the Cloisters, the medieval collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum issued a facsimile of that book, together with a translation and scholarly discussion. Something told me that this biblical representation of end times would speak to the photographic vision of Diane Arbus, specifically the famous Aperture monograph that came out in 1972, a year following her death by suicide. She had an eye for the way human beings sometimes misalign with the conventional assumptions about life. So does God.

My one-act play: "Les Mots Justes, or Hold Your Tongue" in Alone,Together anthology

This 6+ hour festival of Zoom plague-inspired theater took place on June 6, 2020, sponsored by UCSB's play development program LAUNCHPAD--39 plays, 24 playwrights.

And I was among them with this 10-minute play "Les Mots Justes, or Hold Your Tongue"

Now an anthology of all these plays has been published by Dramatic Publishing Company, and I was happy to be the editor of this book since it gave me the opportunity to work with a great group of professional playwrights.

Here is UCSB's press release on the publication:

https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2020/020002/lasting-encore

The wonderful performance of my play can no longer be seen on the internet because all these plays are now licensed for others to produce, but contact me if you'd like to read my script. Here is a link to the festival website:

https://www.theaterdance.ucsb.edu/news/event/817

Here is the Dramatic Publishing Company's page on the book, which is not available except electronically now but will soon be in print:

https://www.dramaticpublishing.com/alone-together