K-OODI Magazine March 2016, Issue 4 | Page 112

JASON WRIGHT - featured artwork "David Bowie Reference Song Painting" "I remember a time in the late 90's I went to this community college to talk to a counselor about class options. He was an older Gandalf looking man that was amazingly kind and easy to talk to. He was so loved by the students that they gave him all kinds of photos of themselves and little postcards from all over the planet. He had a giant cork board filled up with them. He was particularly proud of this one photo of a female student with a red Liberty spike Mohawk. And he was proudly pointing at all the photos and looking back fondly with his wistful Gandalf eyes. Looking over this massive collage I was suddenly electrified by a black and white postcard of Bowie. He was in a black trench coat, and the odd thing that only someone like him can pull off, was he had a belt over top of the coat with a bright silver buckle that had a silver star on it. He looked amazing, and i don't ever remember any time a single phone had effected me in such a way. Like the feeling you might get when you're sitting at some cafe, minding your own business, and you look up and some beautiful person is staring intently right into your eyes. I both wanted to jump into that postcard and wanted to be just like him at the same time. Cut to a few weeks later during Goth Night at the Metro where I had a thrift store trench coat with an awful cheap belt over it, proudly trouncing around looking like a dusty dollar store version of him. Oh, the cringes I feel these days over my attempt to impersonate a God. I would not advice doing that. I think about how just a photo of him could direct me in such a way. And so it is in the same way his very life has crept into mine in a lot of things I do, particularly in my art and music, and even my disposition to the art and music of others. I could never sum up my experience of him throughout my whole life, but I can say he has, and will always be a permanent major ornament glowing on the tree of my life." www.jason.gallery www.instagram.com/jasondotgallery