Modfellows - WeHo Presents: "Ancestor Worship," Scott Zieher

I make collages with scissors, blades, spray paint and fixative on antique paper. My sources range from mid-20th century advertising, illustration, and modern art history. I write poems with a pencil and a Strathmore 25% cotton on a clipboard. They are type-written on an industrial green Royal Quiet De luxe (circa 1957) I found in a trash can on the northwest corner of Washington Square in the spring of 1992. My substrate is vintage letterhead which I've been collecting for a long time. While my images don't directly correspond to my words, they both come from the selfsame wellspring of nostalgia, anachronism, and memory. My paternal grandfather was a mechanic in the Nekoosa paper mill at Port Edwards, Wisconsin, so paper is apart of my spiritual archeology. Due in part to this connection, I fell in naturally with both poetry and art at a lucky young age. I had some good teachers and a loving family, who cared. My grandfather gave me a box of typing paper in 1972 and I used every slice. I used it until my final thesis as an undergraduate in 1991. My mom was secretary to the principal of my junior high school and her desk sat in front of an enormous vault full of school supplies. She bought me Keats at rummage sales and sent me to Minneapolis for a weekend with my best friend to broaden my horizons. She wanted me to see the world. I saw an Andy Warhol from the 1950's on that trip. It was for sale for $1200 in an art gallery (we didn't have those in my hometown) and I see now that was a spark to my becoming an art dealer. Around 1984 she grew tired of a terribly plain prairie-scape from Kmart which hung above our couch, and she turned it around from the frame, displaying instead an empty, faded, cream-colored expanse of nothingness in $3.00 worth of faraway aluminum. My mother was a saint. She was also an unwitting minimalist genius one hit wonder. She taught me everything I know to be true and made me an artist and a poet, despite not really wanting me to be a poet because it isn't a career. What more perfectly accurate and honest reasoning for a young poet to completely ignore? Nothing could make heaven happier than to prove her wrong after all these years.

Host or Publisher Richard Modica