A MEMORIAL DAY PARADE AND THE MAKING OF ART 5/29/16

Waiting for the Parade, pastels/cutout canvas 66x106in., 1989

My special relationship with Memorial Day began in Freehold NJ, a working-class town, famous for being Bruce Springsteen’s birthplace, where for over a decade in the 1980s, camera slung around my neck, I documented the annual parade, photographing children,  parents, the old and the young - some of whom were aware that this holiday honored those who died in the carnage of past wars, though most were oblivious to history, excitedly exulting in the moment of pageantry. On Memorial Day, I was able to slide in and out of crowds unnoticed; given a mantle of invisibility by the sheer number of people, allowing me to record a diversity of on-lookers responding candidly to the spectacle, thereby acquiring a vast amount of “source material” for a year’s worth of large pastels on canvas drawings.

Crowds pushed up against the storefronts, flushed bodies meeting the coolness of glass; soda pop, ice cream, and ketchup beginning to trickle down the shirts of spectators. The parade itself was endless - caravans of “floats,”  many with young school children gracefully posing, experiencing for one brief moment what it feels like to have the public spotlight of admiration shining upon them. I loved photographing those wonderful lapses of posturing when recognition of a parent or friend in the packed-filled sidewalks initiated a loss of composure and a squall of wildly waving hands.  

Two hours later,  I had already used up rolls of black and white film, as I wove through the bystanders capturing their expressions and gestures -  information that would be poured over in the darkroom, and eventually transformed into artwork. Backs of heads, and profiles, varying in scale from close-ups to the impressionistic blur of the far away, are seized by my eye, including the singular individual picked out for special scrutiny because of a human moment unnoticed by all but my camera.