For my 600th episode, the great artist Joe Coleman joins the show to celebrate his phenomenal new career-spanning retrospective book, A DOORWAY TO JOE: The Art of Joe Coleman (Fantagraphics). We talk about art, mortality, mythography, history, the corruption of the flesh, the nature of evil, his Odditorium & the power of relics, Dr. Mombooze-o's send-off for his dead parents, playing Whac-A-Mole with T-cell lymphoma, getting arrested for being an Infernal Machine, taxi-driving in NYC's Travis Bickle era, the inspiration of the Hubble telescope, the pagan Celtic roots in Irish Catholicism, what it's like to work on one square-inch of a painting for 8 hours at a time, our respective appearances on the Uncle Floyd Show, playing in the Steel Tips with Patrick McDonnell & Karen O'Connell, and how he found his love and muse in Whitney Ward. (Also, this one's got an interminable intro, so jump to the 15:45 mark to start the conversation.) Follow Joe on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal and via our e-newsletter
The Virtual Memories Show
Episode 600 - Joe Coleman
(upbeat music) - Welcome to The Virtual Memories Show. I'm your host, Gil Roth, and we're here to preserve and promote culture one weekly conversation at a time. You can subscribe to The Virtual Memories Show through iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, Google Play, and a whole bunch of other venues. Just visit our sites, chimeraobscura.com/vm, or vmspod.com to find more information, along with our RSS feed. And follow the show on Twitter and Instagram @vmspod. Wow, 600 episodes. I know I made a big deal out of number 500 back in 2022 when I got like a hundred past guests to give tribute to the show and/or bust my balls about wasting my life doing this. But now we have rolled up on another big round number. It's been a weird two years since that number 500, but there have been some life changing and fantastic episodes in that span. And just like with that one, I thought of trying to come up with a theme for number 600. But once the schedule started to come together this summer, and I, well, once I realized I could sit down with an artist, the stature of this week's guest, I thought, yeah, my work here is done. That guest is Joe Coleman, who is the subject of a phenomenal new retrospective collection from Fantagraphics, a doorway to Joe, the art of Joe Coleman. And this book, this coffee table book, this giant hardcover brings together a ton of Joe's paintings and other artwork, along with essays about his career from all sorts of people, critics, tattoo artists, other artists and luminaries, as well as an intro by Tom Waits and commentary from Joe about some of the paintings themselves. And along with all that, there's a career chronology at the end, and there's actually thumbnails of every single one of his finished paintings. It's also set up chronologically. Yeah, it's all encompassing. And the reproductions are fantastic. There's even these fold out parts that'll give you this idea of the scope of some of Joe's work. And seeing Joe Coleman's artwork up close, and getting to see the detail sections that are there, they're the close ups of some of the paintings, it brings you face to face with the incredible amount of information. Signal art, I guess, that he brings to all these pieces. And you can see the vivid detail of the portraits that are usually at the center of these pieces of murderers and scoundrels and movie stars and other American outlaw heroes. And this whole sideshow of Fantasmagoria of image and stories and text and other elements that he brings to just every inch of the surface of this stuff, it's almost fractal. It's like if you kept going deeper, more world to be revealed in his work. I don't know how to tell you, man. It's like we talk about it a little, it's like this asynchronous universe that's kind of laid out before you as a viewer, where color and form and words and mimesis, it all coheres in this frozen instant for us that represents a lifetime for him. I don't know, maybe pause this and go to jocoman.com and look around, get an idea of what the art looks like. It's J-O-E-C-O-L-E-M-A-N. come back. I'll wait a second. Okay. All I could tell you is this book brings you up close to Joe's world or worlds. The painting, his performance art, the obsession with fireworks and blowing himself up, the biographical subjects, like the murderer Carl Panzrem and the elephant man in Freud and Ed Gein and the pirate Albert Hicks who I never heard of before this book, Jane Mansfield and Johnny Eck, the guy was born with no torso or nothing below the torso, that guy from Freaks by Todd Browning, Hunter Thompson and Hank Williams Jr. and ever present in the last 30 years or so of Joe's work, his wife, Whitney Ward. Well, anyway, we'll talk about it. Joe makes these paintings. See, that's what I'm trying to get at. He he he describes it. He takes this jeweler's hyper vision goggles that sort of shade you put on your forehead has got the other goggles or the lenses in front of you and he gets up close to the surface with a single bristle brush and he makes these incredible works and they're they're enormous. Some of them are more self-contained and we talk about that and and how the art and the material dictate what's going to be there. But now is when I tell you, I never got to see one of Joe's pieces in person until we met to record. I first saw his stuff in a comic book and in taboo this anthology back in 1992 when I was in college and I'd heard his name over the years and I'd seen some of his work and the transgressive world he belonged to. But until I, Whitney, his wife met me at the door and and she directed me into this drawing room where I set up my mic so we could record with me and Joe and I looked up and I saw a doorway to Whitney, this like seven foot tall companion painting to a doorway to Joe, which is the painting that this book is named after. That was on the wall. It's just looking down at us or at me and I just, after I finished setting up, I just went over there and started looking, just looking at all these details and I was and I thought about this in advance. Ruing that I wore my contact lenses, I couldn't have done this long drive to an undisclosed location upstate New York in my glasses but I was bummed that I had my contact lenses in because it meant I couldn't get closer to the painting and actually see what's there. So what I'm saying is if you ever get an opportunity to see Joe's paintings in an exhibition or in someone's private collection, go and and go go take in the whole thing and then because there's going to be one supplied somewhere, go pick up a magnifying glass and start exploring because the the art never stops and it never stops being about Joe no matter what the subject is. So I'm rattling on anybody who's a fan of Joe's who's never listened to the show is just going to be more and more irate that this thing goes on forever. I apologize but to get back to things, a doorway to Joe came out recently from Fantagraphics and our mutual friends Patrick McDonald, the cartoonist behind Muts who's been on the show a few times now and Karen O'Connell told me they were dying to get me and Joe together to record. They knew each other, they all knew each other since the 70s when they were in a band called The Steel Tips which we'll we'll talk about and they made a call and Joe and Whitney were on board and I drove to aforementioned undisclosed location in upstate New York on a Saturday and entered another world. See when they lived in New York City for the longest time they moved to New York upstate a few years ago and their home back in the city was known as the auditorium like ODD instead of AUD and it was filled with artifacts and relics of our darker history, all sorts of infamous events and figures that are memorialized in Joe and Whitney's collection and the book goes into that too. There's chapters on every aspect of Joe's life including the auditorium but it was weird to see those pieces around me right alongside Joe's paintings that I was finally getting exposed to for the first time and I don't really have the the vocabulary the emotional or or cognitive access to convey to you guys what it was like to be in their home and to talk with Joe and Whitney and and and to see this world around them that they've built it was like uh it's like being in another world like I said and not a private world of of the two of theirs you know like we know people who just kind of their homes become this kind of shell like their their snails or hermit crabs or something but that's not what this was this was like an unfolding into a higher or lower plane you know like between the the art and and the reliquary as he describes it in our talk and the core which I haven't even gone into there's so much emanating from every every corner of this place that I felt like I was overwhelmed and as you can tell I might still be and after we finished Joe took me up to his studio showed me the the new painting that he's making which I was nervous I didn't know if I should ask but but he did and there were more of the the oddities and and objects and I realized that they felt less like a collection and more like more like an accretion disk if you know anything about astronomy more like the the things that collect around a body from gravity like like the um like the gravity of Joe's art all these years has brought these things to him to them because he credits Whitney as his muse and and the two of them I'd by having seen the paintings now I understand the partnership that these two have I don't know I'm still there in in some ways and I've talked with other guests and I've got them on about this and in all these interminable introductions to the shows about that that intertwining of life and art that living of one's art and I don't think there's a better example of it than than Joe and Whitney. Yesterday I was talking to a friend in New York at his place and and we were catching up I was recording an upcoming episode at my friend's apartment and when I tried to talk about my personal life it was all just these these fitful stabs of gibberish I was I got lucky because he asked me about work and I pivoted on a dime and talked about all that stuff with total clarity and coherence and and explained all of this all of this stuff that I do by day that allows me to do this stuff for 600 episodes now but I don't know how much of my scrambledness when I was trying to talk about things derives from my 50 plus years of repression and anxiety versus the the experience of visiting Joe and Whitney a couple of weekends ago and just kind of not just stepping into another world but but that realization and acceptance of this world has been out there the whole time I also really want to tell you about the new painting Joe's working on but I'm going to keep that treasure to myself I don't think Joe would mind if I talked about it but I want to keep it I want to keep the memory of it it is a Coleman but the subject matter and the palette seem different than what came before I really hope I get to see the final piece Christ I can go on there is more than enough in our conversation to get you going so go get a doorway to Joe the art of Joe Coleman it's out now from fan of graphics it is a big hard cover with this transparent cover cover plastic transparent covers shows the portrait doorway to Joe portrait for the the main image itself it's it's a it's a marvel and thanks again to Patrick McDonald and Karen O'Connell for making this happen and 600 episodes in thanks to all of you who have also helped make this show happen as I said to any of you who are newbies I apologize you had to put up with this this whole time those caveats go there's a freight train running nearby every so often you'll hear that I was a little bit of static on both of our lines I zapped most of that and Joe also wears um wears jewelry and he's got a lot of little things attached to his his vest of his three-piece suit so there's some some clacking here is Joe Coleman's bio from the book Joe Coleman is a world-renowned painter writer and performer who has exhibited for five decades in major museums throughout the world including one man exhibitions at the Pellet de Tokyo in Paris the Kunstvark Institute Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin the Barbican Center in London and Tilton Gallery and Dickinson Gallery in New York his collectors have included Iggy Pop, Jim Jarmusch, Anthony Bourdain, Leonardo DiCaprio, and H.R. Giger or Geiger or Giger I always forget how that's pronounced he was a subject of an award-winning feature-length documentary rest in pieces a portrait of Joe Coleman from 1997 and lives with his wife Whitney Ward in Brooklyn and upstate New York and now the virtual memories conversation with Joe Coleman How involved were you in putting together a doorway to Joe? Well I was pretty fortunate with this book that I pretty much was hands-on with it since the beginning it started out as a smaller book that was in conjunction with the show that I was having at the Baker Bitch Gallery in Fullerton, California and I started to realize that they weren't capable of doing the kind of massive book that I wanted to do that you so richly deserve well thank you for saying that but that's what I really want it and so I eventually took it over and then kept adding to it and kept building on what had been started you know then and that was in I'm sometimes terrible at dates but it's 2017 the interest of 2017 was the exhibition okay yeah yeah that's when it started yeah but you know after that I continued to work on it and expand it you know and get more people involved because there's some really great you know like so many of the essays are by the you know the people that I admire in those different fields and so I kept adding on more and more and you know I need it to I need to find a publisher because even though I was doing yeah putting together a book yeah now I don't have a publisher because originally I had a publisher when we started but now I had to find the publisher and my book agent who's wonderful Mark Gottlieb started shopping it around and oddly enough what seemed the most appropriate and the perfect place and perfect fit for the book was Fantagraphics and I guess the reason why I say that is because you know Fantagraphics did the first book of my paintings called Cosmic Retribution and they did it in conjunction with Feral House which you know was started by my dear friend Adam Parfrey and the book is dedicated to Adam Parfrey so it did you know it found it found the perfect home and I worked with Eric Reynolds and who's great you know I'd worked with him before and you know he allowed me to really control you know what you know what details how many details you know I said I wanted some fold-outs and you know I said sure we can we can do that he was you know totally behind me and sometimes I was a pain in the ass to make sure you know that the because I would you know complain that this image is not right let me see if I can get a better one and then I'd have to sometimes reshoot pieces that I didn't think the quality of the reproduction would hold up to that kind of detail you know and some of my collectors helped me like cause Brian Dump yeah okay and um he you know he shot uh woefully for me you know because he has a lot of my work and he you know he was very generous in helping me get you know new high yeah I wondered about the direction because so much of your work at the very end it shows like all the collections they're in and I'm like yeah that getting scans of all that or getting photos of all that had to be good yeah a lot of organizing you know Whitney and I did work hard throughout the years to get you know the best images like in the but even before I was with Whitney in the early days I used to have my work shot on these big eight by ten chromes you know transparencies and you can't even find us yeah it's going to stay to the art once upon a time yeah um so but you know all that stuff had to be drum scanned in order to be useful you know for this for this book and most of those were pretty good the drum scans were pretty good but um some of the stuff just wasn't good enough we all you know Whitney helped me get this other photographer many years ago to photograph my work Eileen Trevelle and she she works for the Met so she you know you know shoots you know old masters works so she knows the quality that I want you know for the for the photographs to be proper you know properly reproduced and she's been great and she's done you know she's taken care of you know having the best shots of my more recent works so most of that stuff was pretty easy to to get but the older ones sometimes was a bit of a job what was it like looking back ah the process both of of looking back at the individual works and and organizing this book and seeing the progression you you understand yeah yeah you learn you know you learn a lot about yourself especially because mine are you know autobiographical you know even one there you know based on a historical subject or you know or someone from the you know from the past who I admired I still approach it like a self-portrait anyway I guess the reason why I say that is because you know it's my interpretation and I use things in my life that I can identify and relate to in order to you know kind of resurrect a spirit and you know that's the only way I can I can understand you know and empathize and get inside of my subject you know and they're not like a normal portrait painter's work because they involve you know heavily text you know and vignettes and you know a dense narrative that it that exists on the surface all at once and I wondered about that that sense that it's almost I don't want to say a comic we know what comics mean yeah there's like an everything everywhere all at once comic where the entire canvas is sure I mean you could but you could also say that about you know like a film that's all at once or like a you know or a book that's all at once you don't turn the page all the pages are right in front of you and and whatever area that you want to start you know well actually reveal the story in different ways yeah too so you know each journey is different you know for the individual and also the relooking and at a work it changes do you remember when that mode started for you because I mean I was going into going through the chronological paintings at the back of the book thinking it was going to be the tableau and then a shift into the self-portraits into as you're describing them and that's not the case no so my entire thesis is thrown out yeah do you remember or or is there no it's something that that happens slowly you know and even you know almost imperceptive imperceptive to to me like I didn't you know I had to maybe you know years into it realize you know that that what you were doing yeah yeah because you know I don't even sketch anything out I am you know working on a like a square inch or smaller for eight hours and then I just keep adding another one and another one and I allow the story to reveal itself to me that way you know and you know I'm as I'm doing that you know like if I'm doing a historical subject or a biography yeah I might be doing research and even if I'm doing a self-portrait I'm sometimes doing research by interviewing my friends you know or you know and getting you know stuff from them but as as I do the process of research you know it comes out directly onto the surface of the painting without any you know preparation preparation so it's a learned thing do you write notes at all yeah occasionally I write notes and sometimes I write them directly on the surface of the painting even though I might paint over them you know I do sometimes tell my I mean but I'll even write notes like if somebody called me out just get me their number and then I write the number on the painting but I'm eventually going to paint over it anyway future archaeologists will be doing their whole rest race scanning and we don't know what these numbers mean but for some reason they're gonna think it's some like capitalistic yeah yeah exactly some mystical that's just a combination of numbers that you know it struck me because I did an episode with Keith Herring's Biographer earlier this year and very very different artists but the same there's no preparation there's no visual preparation right for both of you was this is the canvas we're gonna work it now in his case you know you'd knock it out a mural in 12 hours and be done right and you like you say it's a square inch taking you eight hours to yeah work through yeah and the you know then the you know the structure you know which is sometimes you know has this geometric form then you know kind of reveals itself to me too and I'll sometimes I'll react I'll see something you know I'll be painting here for a long time then I'll jump over here and paint something and then I'll jump over there and then they kind of figure out how they come together and form you know this symmetry that's you know that's inside you know and and that's exciting for me because then you know I'm learning as I'm painting how often do you step back um you should know you do these paintings with with those yeah yeah I don't I don't step back that often you know I'll step back you know it you know when I'm through you know of a day you know but I don't that I don't step back that often when I'm in there because I'm inside this tiny bit of the universe you know but for me that's it seems like that's what you know living things are you know this endless you know world within world within world within world and all of it you know living and vibrant and you know and crazy and scary and I was gonna say this beautiful that sounds like a description of my my somewhat psychotic breakdown after 9/11 from you know that whole oh good the world is just going going deeper and deeper into itself yeah so I'm glad you're able to make art out of it where I just got paralyzed by anxiety and everything else for well let's I guess a way to work your way out of the madness um it raises the bizarre and probably really obvious question when do you know something's finished well well the the only way that that I know that I'm finished is when I run out of room yeah I kind of figure that was okay but you know that's not necessarily the end of the piece because then um a lot of them have frames you know and the frames or uh you know sometimes painted frames but sometimes the uh the frames contain fetish objects related to the the subject we're which we're surrounded by right objects yeah of various kinds yeah can you talk a little about the conceptually the significance of of fetishes and totems and how they yeah yeah because you know that significance I guess uh well you know they because in a way you know the the narrative you know is in the paint you know and the and one of the ways to to kind of you know really connect with the subject is to have some of the subject's DNA or you know even if it's um not DNA even if it's some kind of magical um connection the object though does bring you know uh another element you know of the the soul you know of the subject you know that I'm searching for because you know that's you know I'm trying to connect you know and trying to I don't know maybe like uh you know uh the Ouija board yeah yeah so I put my hands down like trying to conjure yeah conjure yeah yeah that's a I thought about it in relation to coming up here to sit down with you I the things that I collect I joke that there is a root out of the house if it's ever on fire or flooding as we now have to deal with of things to grab in addition to the couple of hard drives that have all the audio files I've ever recorded there's a couple of books that are irreplaceable not because they're great first editions etc but it was you know this advanced copy given to me by Clive James or this book by Brian Nessum a reproduction of a sketchbook things that are unique and I realized you know in thinking about you know the auditorium and everything you've put together in the the resonances I realized my life is relatively you know constrained by the book thing it's it's really tied to that that sense of you know what matters to me I suppose yeah well I you know I certainly have a great you know love affection you know for books you know and actual you know the smell of them you know the way the paper feels and the cover stock and you know the dust jacket and you know all these things you know have these tactile almost you know like condiments and an experience you know that adds to you know what you're reading there's just little two seconds of walking with my dog when I take him around the corner there's this one little spot you can count it for a second or two that you have the mildewy kind of smell of 1960s comic books that are going to enter that smell and it's just that instant every time I pass I just had that moment of oh that's like the comics my father used to bring back from the ham radio festivals that were already starting to turn and you know eat themselves but yeah absolutely it's as opposed to I mean I'm looking over here you've got the the t-shirt a man was executed in yeah yeah Elmo Elmo Patrick Seignay yeah who was portrayed by Sean Penn in Dead End Walking yeah and that's a drawing that he did on yeah he mentioned in the book the panther that he drew the things you have have I would say they're more varied in terms of of what they are and the resonance is in historicity as opposed to Gil got to meet you know person X and person Y and came back with some books so I appreciate it and admire it but those those are important to me too like the ones that are more simple and you know and connected to my parents or you know Whitney or you know various loved ones had you always had that sort of I say attachment to objects or that recognition of yeah yeah yeah absolutely yeah yeah from childhood you know it's but you know I was also brought up you know catholic I you know Irish Catholic I like to just say Irish Catholic because I always think there's some kind of pagan Celtic you know twist on everything that has to be qualifying the Catholicism and Catholicism has plenty of paganism throughout but yeah the the regional is yeah and you know there you know there was something you know there's so there's something even though I don't believe in a lot of the the rhetoric of the catholic church and I feel there's a certain you know insidiousness about the formal you know catholic church there is something about though the the drama and and ritual you know in in Catholicism that I was fascinated by since childhood you know my mother brought me to St. Mary's church and you know the masses were in Latin at that time and there's something I guess they reminded me also of like you know watching you know Vincent Price you know move like some kind of like weird you know witchcraft the source source yeah sorcery going on and you know and the drama of the you know there's this you know this amazing you know church with the stained glass and the architecture you know is designed to make you feel you know and you know intimidated and the beautiful stained glass you know like you know being so preciously you know made the details are also precious you know I've never lost that love for churches and I like to visit them whenever you know I travel especially in in in Europe but there's many churches in the United States that are that are great you know New York City has some St. Patrick's Cathedral many but there was also this thing that the Catholics you know obsessed about that I had a strong connection to which was the idea of the reliquary you know and you know there would be you know the these reliquaries that would house you know the clothing or sometimes you know body parts you know of a holy saint you know in you know in order to you know make us feel more connected you know to you know to something holy you know and there was something really compelling about that that gets that gets under my skin literally you know the book mentions you've got a there's a Saint Agnes yeah yeah with an actual bone inside and also her teeth and hair I also have this weird reliquary that's supposedly a piece of Jesus you know which I was going to say the pieces of the cross are the things that are you know but Jesus was supposed to have risen you know and I don't know maybe that's a piece that dropped off you know you shed a skin yeah but but nevertheless that you know there's something that's you know of course if you put to get all the shards of the cross you know you got a forest yeah the Empire State Building but there's something also about that even if it's you know if it's a hoax you know that it was worshipped as such we invest the meaning in it yeah yeah so all of a sudden it doesn't matter anymore because it's the you know the devotion that makes it holy you believe in evil I used to think that that you know that there was such a thing as evil you know and I was trying to figure it out um a lot of your subjects yeah that borderline evil yeah or or pretty far into evil yeah or yeah what you could yeah what would we know is evil yeah but um I tend to think now that there that there isn't really any such yeah it's just you know humanity you know and humanity in you know in all of its facets you know is pretty fascinating and you know there is something you know that was missing in Catholicism for me which you know we were supposed to all you know worship this all good you know god you know it was just one god you know and there was something missing about that I mean even like in pagan and and Greek and Hindu religions there's all these gods many gods you know and bodying all kinds of things that you know that involve what humanity really is and so there was for me there was something missing you know in the you know the saints represent the martyr you know of an atrocity but the the perpetrator of the atrocity is also you know involved in that you know part of humanity and one would not exist without the other's presence and you know think about the you know the suffering of the perpetrator as well you know it's a part it's a you know a very important part of of humanity and for me I came to think that it's in the you know in the pathology that makes us you know brothers and sisters you know because we are all born you know with death inside of us you know with disease you know and the thing that eventually is going to take us out is with us all you know at the moment you know of earth and it's that you know the corruption of the flesh the spirit that actually makes us all want you know and it and it is holy as well Judas hangs himself right yeah yeah he doesn't have no crucifixions go off well I'm perfectly fine now I've got you know he's yeah talk about someone to uh to feel for you know yeah so let's talk about mortality and illness a little you've had health issues over the years and we before we started recording talk about my dumb leukemia thing um how did that how has health and mortality I guess affected your art or affected the way you're seeing life I think I think it it has for a pretty long time you know looking at you know back at earlier paintings the the painting I did the waiting room yeah um which is you know uh it was after my parents died um you know both my parents had cancer too and and I you know my father had skin cancer and my mother had lymphoma and then she eventually developed cancer of the pancreas in the spleen and you know her suffering you know was you know had an effect on me you know that uh that continued you know in my work and the the cancer of my father affected me as well he eventually died um of a massive heart attack he um but there was something uh you know that that drew me to uh to it and um to paint it too and uh as a as a way to deal with it and um it was also you know uh sometimes because I was so angry you know at god you know and you know and at life you know itself and I wanted to you know give it back as if you could ever make you know yeah yeah god's always going to get the last laughter or life or whatever fate you can you never win but that doesn't mean you don't do it yeah I mean maybe there's more reason to do it the loser you know element of it was you know important to me too even if you lose you still at least you fought back you know and um you know and then later you know more recently I developed T cell lymphoma and I thought that was almost like fate messes with me as well because uh it's you know it's this you know combination of uh the two things that you know that affected me so much in my parents that I was haunted by and then it actually claims me you know as well I was haunted by you too just like you were haunted by me and yeah and uh yeah so then you know T cell lymphoma appears which is you know the lymphoma you know from my mother's side and the cancer from my father's side like the mommy daddy painting where they're merged together it's exactly what I was thinking of yeah yeah and so I see my work telling me these stories you know and in looking back you asked me that before I see that when I look back you know at these works you know and when I first got T cell lymphoma II there was uh there was not uh it was not that well known you know so it was pretty mysterious at the time but uh I had this wonderful doctor at MSK Christina Quairfield and um you know they were they were talking about it you know like at that time they're doing these radical like radiation things where I could lose my sense of smell and taste and uh um and she said no I don't want to do that I want to experiment with um with steroid injections directly into the lesion and so she did that and um you know they you know uh at first it just went away a little bit and then it came back it was on it was here it started but they they've been all over my head but uh first one started here and uh when they first started uh it went away a little bit but then it came back and um but then she experimented with uh the dosage of the steroid and um eventually she got it to like disappear but it would you know it would come back you know but she thought look we can handle it this way you know but it's like a game of whack-a-mole you know it's just thinking you're trying to yeah there's another one and that's okay with me I'm I'm fine with that that's better than the more radical treatments for it so when she left to MSK this other doctor how I think was jealous of her because she went on to do these experiment you know research in LA and so she's doing great so this other one you know took over you know the same position and she told me no we're going to do radiation that that steroid thing that's not the right way to treat this that's not the traditional way we do this and I was like fuck you it's working I'm gonna keep doing this in two months you know physician is me you know yeah I mean I want to get as much information as I can but it's my body you know and she's like using like you know threat tactics and trying to scare me into using it I'm like forget it and then uh you know I reached out to Quarrelfeld and she found uh you know someone who would do the you know her treatments it's locally so I can have it done and so yeah I mean knock on there's wood here someone there we go yeah so I don't mind a game of whack them all I always like that in the carnival yeah so many aspects of your painting seem to predict aspects of your life or at least correlate with them I mean the mutants the very first thing I ever saw of yours as far as I know back when I was in college I was getting taboo that anthology was pretty sure that's the first Coleman piece I ever saw which again mutant people lesions on the face and everything else that I'm not saying you brought this on yourself through your art or anything but it's it's I mean you could read it both ways I mean you could read it as you know a vision of something to come you know but it one that was you know connected even in the earliest work to my parents which is you know if you believe you know the you know the genetic predisposition then you know it was it was there you know how did the work change after they were gone did it did you this is something I come up with with a lot of guests was there any I don't want to say permission thing but was there any sort of artistic liberation when they were um both dead well I mean I you were already doing your thing yeah and I mean I specifically did a you know a funeral ritual performance you know for them which got me arrested so I mean I literally you know did do a whole you know public ritual in funeral my own style for both of them you know at the film and video arts foundation in Boston and you were arrested as an infernal machine yeah yeah and so yeah and the mice were that they call mommy and daddy and uh because I I you know I had this antagonistic relationship with my father I I bit daddy's head off and spat it into the audience but mommy's head I swirled so I could you know incorporate her but then she you know she being good catholic girl when she married my father she was you know a priest told her she was gonna burn in hell for eternity and that made me really angry and uh so I started lighting fires and theater look lit myself on fire blew myself up and had this mannequin of me on fire and the uh firearms went off and you know the Boston bomb squad and fire department came it's when they charged me with possession of an infernal machine which no one had been arrested for for a hundred years yeah my my lawyer said you know this you know the aspect of criminal code nobody looked at for a long time yeah yeah we haven't seen that one in years and but did you see and I asked well what's the infernal machine and he's you're the me but did you see things change in your art after or would that have been not coincidental but you had so many other aspects I of life I don't know if you can separate that I yeah I didn't actually I mean maybe somebody else you could have a lot of essays yeah yeah yeah put your work in different ways in the book yeah I mean I I didn't necessarily see it uh I mean it did change um because I was changing but it didn't seem like any kind of radical break in break in the in the what what I was you know pursuing because the you know the the pursuit you know of pushing myself to these boundaries of you know sanity even and you know I was trying you know before that and continued for a little bit of time after that too and you know the you know I see the work change a little bit more significantly when Whitney came in to my life you know because I was uh you know even though I thought I was in love before I had never experienced that kind of love that I have for Whitney before and so to me I could see more that I could see an aspect of change there more dramatically than than I could after the the death of my parents I do have the note infernal machine marries a mermaid which I thought was a combination all right I'll ask in relation to change then you mentioned in the book that you have painted her more than any other subject yeah have you seen change in the way you've rendered her over time it's been about 30 years since you've met from that I'm going oh I get detective from the other timeline that's in the book so I'm trusting that stuff um yeah yeah I think I think it's changed um I can show you the most recent painting I'm doing later if you wasn't sure if you're you're really uh stickler about that stuff or not I was gonna ask but yeah I can show it to you and she's prominent uh and she's looking down on us here from yeah she's right in this room right now yeah um yeah she continues you know to be like a major um aspect of my work you know she has you know for quite a few years now um so it was uh my friend Harold Schechter he was a true crime writer I did a portrait of him in here uh called me up uh after seeing the painting that I'm working on right now and uh he said that my life kind of uh echoes um you know Dante's descent you know and that Whitney is like Beatrice and yeah yeah yeah and that's what that's what he was saying which was interesting I thought but so he was seeing you know these changes yeah that said I wonder when you and I wasn't sure how involved you were so I'm glad to find out that you were integral in making the book that sense of retrospections that you know you've had gallery shows you've appeared you've had we'll say retrospectives of sorts but for you to look back and on yourself over this time which again is sort of a Dante moment to when he's head to Paradiso yeah she hasn't looked down on the world again and everything he's traveled through before yeah um yeah this is so I'm really fascinated by that that notion of of you getting to see in progress you're not 70 yet you've still got a lot of years ahead of you of work so yeah well I'm yeah I'll uh I'll be 69 at in November and then so the next year though I will be 70 yeah so it's it's calling it's saying you're but but we don't have to push we're going to say mid-career retrospective I've gone with with many more years ahead you know I hope yeah yeah um we hear that sense of yeah again not what um that that sense of change and that sense of of what you find you know I'm wondering you know in relation to say COVID in the last few years while you're working on the book you're also making new art you know what directions did you find yourself going in recent years um the yeah I guess the post-COVID um aspects did appear um interesting I mean I hadn't thought about it that much but I started to incorporate um you know the the Hubble um uh camera that's you know recording these amazing images you know of what's beyond this planet and and all of a sudden that's become uh you'll see it in the Sorcerer's Mirror painting in here and it's continued with the one that I'm working on right now but that didn't really happen until COVID happened and so that's been an aspect that you know is definitely you know new to my work and just came about from I don't know I just it just it it uh it captured me you know I guess I'm getting close to the other side and um I always thought that um like like we don't have uh kids but you know but we have a lot of nieces and nephews so I've experienced these children coming into the world you know from like babies and I've seen them all you know get married and have babies of of their own and uh I always think when I see like the baby um it has knowledge of you know life before life you know of uh what that is you know which I don't know and I don't think any living being you know really needs to know that even though we all ask the question I don't think any thing living needs to know what that is but I think if any living thing does have knowledge it's the ones that are so close to it yeah and uh and so I just feel like the universe you know those are like those Hubble um photographs are like looking into you know that the other side you know that's what it looks like to me and since I asked the evil question I should also ask the afterlife question belief um I again um you know the only thing that that I you know that I end up with you know and I might struggle with thoughts the the one that the final thing that I always come to is that it's it's not important yeah because you're going to know you know when it's when it's time everybody does and and nobody knows right now nobody will know you know until they get there and there's time enough you know you got to concentrate on this you know what what it spending years and years on a single yeah yeah that's what's yeah that's what I need to do like all of that other stuff I'll you know I'll find out when I need to yeah so tell me about the subject matter just the the said the the murderers the historical figures the hunter Thompson so the people you you settle on what's the process like just to to decide this is what I'm doing I guess you know that yeah the the process you know is primarily instinctive uh you know some uh sometimes it gets inspired by um by outside sources you know like in my painting of uh Indian Larry who was a dear friend of mine when he died you know I was compelled to uh to do the that painting of him Larry had always wanted to me to do like a painting on it was a chopper build a really famous well known at the time I hope he's still known because he did amazing work immortalize him yeah and I love yeah I loved him and um you know he wanted me to work on a bike with him but I didn't I kept like put you know like I just didn't feel like I wanted to do it and then but then after he's after he died I was like oh shit I got to do this project with Larry and so I made you know this you know this uh you know loving you know uh you know dedication to him and I you know and then I used you know motorcycle parts yeah of bikes that he never got to complete to uh to frame it and then I had um the guys at Larry shop through the welding of it because I want their hands in there too their DNA and everybody's involved and I have friends in his collect Indian head pennies and then and then I used uh this striped bit you know biker shirt that he wore a lot that I mounted it on you only see little bits of that the frame on the outside of it right but if you go to the if you go on the back you can see the shirt stretched out you only see little bits of it peeping out to sides but when you turn it around you see the back and uh yeah so then you know uh you know so that some you know sometimes outside things you know specifically take a hand in it and the choices that I'll make it there are other forms you wanted to work in you don't I mean primarily painting even when it's a three-dimensional um I forget what you call them those triptychs that yeah yeah well yeah I mean some I work three I mean the sorcerers mare is very three-dimensional because that has several you know it's like it's a shadow box with three-dimensional figures in it you know and several different layers and also the glass itself is painted so you have you know you know all these different layers in this minute precious little box so but other forms sculpture other things are there any well those are sculpture yeah you know and um I think that I wasn't sure I had forms that have too much of a learning curve won't compare to I know what I'm doing with with painting but I I mean the only well the one that um I mean I you know my my mother you know aspired to be an actress and she you know had you know she was beautiful she was like you know when I would she would come to pick me up at school and she was you know dressed like a movie star I'm like kids like that's your mom and uh so she you know she always you know she put the bug about performing in me and um so you know I stopped doing performance art but you know for a while I did acting I've acted in just a handful of movies but I do enjoy you know doing that I played Harvey Weinstein you know you know and oh yeah Scarlett Diva which is at least a footnote in film history you know because that was before it was all exposed and she was one of the people that exposed it you know and that was the first time it was ever put you know on film it was courageous of her to do that you have to watch it I read about it in your piece and just had the I should probably give that a viewing and see how directly it was yeah well it's an that whole film is autobiographical Scarlett Diva she's she's tough and I admire her she's pretty great we became good friends now I should ask you mentioned performing uh doing performance art before that and the reason we are sitting together is because you used to be in a band called the steel tips that's right because Patrick Patrick and Karen yeah they took yeah they gave me uh they were mentioned that you wanted to do this in a course anything that and Patrick does ask yeah any memories any any steel tips stories to share with that yeah yeah I mean steel tips was you know pre I kind of called pre professor mamboozoo because I the character that I was in and steel tips I used to call mad home yeah I guess was like that you know when Leo Gorsy was a dead-end kid he was spit but then when he did his own series and the Bowery Boys he slipped my honing yeah right so it's a slightly different character yeah but yeah I mean that they were they were more fun um the steel tips performances when I started doing the Dr. Mamboozoo performances they got a lot darker yeah and um and you know the name Mamboozoo is a you know uh mom and boozos who was my mother father yeah and um but back in the steel tips days yeah I had a lot of fun with um sort of a punk yes sort of yeah yeah yeah I mean certainly it was punk but it was not it wasn't didn't wasn't easy it wasn't an easy fit you know into any real yeah but you know some of my favorite times back then my probably my all-time favorite time and steel tips was uh when we got to uh perform with Edie Massey you know Edie the egg lady from Tank Flamingo's and John Waters and I became friends later but this was before that and I always loved his films and uh so we were doing you know we run a double bill at CBGB's and so Edie and I hit it off and we and so we performed together and I got I got this big coat that both of us could fit in so I put my arm in one side and and he put her arm you know in the other side of the coat and we became this two-headed monster and we were like insulting the audience and it was that that was one of my all-time favorite and time you got to appear on Uncle Floyd yeah yeah Uncle Floyd was another favorite I was on we were in the audience when I was in nursery school like three or four years old they brought us to the the Uncle Floyd show that's like vague memories of this but reading your book and an appearance I'm like well we have something weirdly in common we were both on the Uncle Floyd show except I didn't smash bottles on my head and right yeah and Uncle Floyd was he was like now kids Joe's a professional don't try to sit on but it was yeah it's real I was really bleeding on it do you um near the end of the book in your timeline there's a mention of you appearing on an Anthony Bourdain episode yeah turns out to be the very last one of parts unknown aired after Bourdain suicide about the Lower East Side and throughout oh we watched the episode last night which I'd seen a few years ago but um throughout Bourdain is asking everybody about nostalgia and whether they miss the Lower East Side of the 70s and pretty much to a person they're all like no it was hell to live through we did great stuff but we would not go back for a million dollars that's what do you what do you miss do you miss uh of that era and that New York I don't know did he I don't I don't think he asked I don't remember to be a lunch toward the pieces for for trying to really have nostalgia for that era and a few other people were all no I wouldn't go back it was awful we're getting mugged all the time it was terrible no I actually have a lot of fondness for it and um you know I think you know New York's New York City is you know has suffered a bit from being too cleaned up you know I thought you know especially it was important for any major city of the world to have a red light district you know you know because I thought that kept kept it vibe you know vibrant and what you know even though I wasn't born in uh in New York City I specifically came to New York City because you know of the you know the you know the fact that it would yeah have this steamy side and and I lived in Lower East side when the Lower East side was dangerous and that was the appeal of it you know and also you know we could you know um pay very little money uh and you know like I drove a a taxi cab during the Travis Bickle yeah era and you know I made enough money in two nights that yeah friendly it's the same thing like back in the 70s it was but we got to work was rent for the month yeah yeah and I was and then I could just paint and you know and uh you know do whatever performance if it was Steel Tips or Professor Mamboozoo um but I you know it was such a great time you know for me it's such an exciting time you know and I was inspired to paint the things that I saw on the streets you know and uh you know it must have been like you know what George Gross you know was seen in you know the Waimey Republic and you know in Germany and what inspired him and what inspired Otto Dix you know and I I felt man this is great you know look at all this vibrant you know you know scary you know life but that's what made it exciting as you render them in those those earlier paintings in the 70s and 80s they are that's mutant horrible Boschian scenes yeah but that's what was you know that was what you know got to me and you know and made me excited to get you know home and start painting what I'd seen and uh you know so I actually I do miss those days you know and I don't I kind of you know moved away from New York because it launched its charm that's gonna ask we're in an undisclosed location that is in New York City you know what was that process for you leaving the city it was hard but you know the you know especially getting you know the objects you know here you know because a lot of them are fragile you know but now I'm deal with other fragile things but I I dealt with like floods in the city to you know so it's that's not new uh but yeah getting the stuff here I had to use um a lot of it Whitney and I did you know sort of piecemeal yeah piecemeal but the really important and hard to deal with works you know I used to art handler to bring here and you know and I'm you know it's people that I know because they've dealt with you know they brought the Whitney painting here you know so then they could do other stuff as opposed to the buffalo head over you which is actually the second only the second buffalo head I've had in a guest's uh oh really Jerry Moriarty was the other one okay yeah Jerry's an old friend yeah that's nice yeah we um I drove three hours up to to his place and we went and went and I look on a giant buffalo head sitting there and that was that was yeah um it was an interesting podcast in a lot of ways but yeah he's how's Jerry doing this is all pre-pandemic but he was good he was he's living in his parents he bought his parents home yeah which had been owned by other people in the interim but when he moved back up to his hometown and discovered that his parents home was for sale after about a year he decided to buy that and move in um I live in the house I grew up in I've been there almost my entire life so Jerry and I had a weird oh I I never really left you at least had 45 years or so in New York City but you know did you inherit that not officially it's a complicated story but I I live in the house I grew up in and sort of we'll figure out what happens in a couple of years based on actuarial tables where my old man's going but we'll we'll see okay but yeah no I might want to invite you guys down there someday it's 25 miles from New York but you can see the city from a mile or so away from my house to get the entire New York skyline in the distance yeah we'll have to come visit and you'll see the uh the library and the books that I will grab on the way out of the house when it's either flooding or burning down but which we hope won't happen but you know that's yeah now you need to knock on wood yeah that's that's true I got the little uh you know nothing's gonna go up we had a little flood last week but you know nothing major I was gonna ask that the usual dumb question is asking about an artist's influences but it occurs to me you've been making art for well you've been making paintings since the mid 70s as you show in here your influence on other people do you see artists who not a Joe Coleman rip-off but do you do you see your your yeah I mean yeah I do I in a way that's not insulting or copyright infringement well I mean sometimes they border now but yeah I do but you know I don't I mean I don't think about it yeah that much I mean I got my own yeah I wonder whether there's a we don't have kids either of us and whether you see that sense of lineage in any way or legacy or is it contained in the art itself I think the kids are the the paintings you know and the works or the or the kids actually um because the kids are the ones doing influence you know I influenced the kids then the kids you send them out into the world yeah yeah where do you see the work going I mean you're going to show me what you're working on but we talked about change in retrospection do you see a direction things are going you mentioned they're the Hubble influence but yeah I try not to think yeah you know so I don't want to think ahead because you know thinking gets in the way you know I'm trying I try to keep you know keep an open mind you know to to whatever my influences are you know of the moment or of the week or of the year whatever they are I want to just allow them to happen so I try not to to over you know did you read the essays in the book or not yeah I I wonder if you if you do that it was yeah I mean it's hard to do yeah that's because they say something very insightful thoughtful and you know laudatory things about you but I wasn't sure if there's a degree of I don't need someone else's analysis of my stuff in my head well yeah I mean I guess because I can you know I cared so much about producing the book I you know I did and I tried to you know select things you know in pages that related to the you know to you know the particular author whatever piece it was so yeah I tried to to do that you know I mean I'm honored by the you know the amount of talent you know of writers you know that that are you know contributing to this book you know the real honor the vibe I had was just that sense of it would be wonderful if somebody was saying these things about me but I wouldn't want it getting in my head so yeah yeah I'm right he kind of either in terms of you know going to your head or just making you I mean I I had to because I'm putting the book together so there's a certain amount of that that has to but you try not to get to involved I guess I could ask the influence question you know where did the yeah I mean I don't mind certainly you know I have influence you know I have influences from you know from from comics from movies you know from writers you know and a lot of them I honor you know and you know I guess that there's some that that I you know haven't gotten to you that I also feel strongly about you know you know music you know does you know influence me well you know while I'm painting you know like right now the current painting that I'm working on has very little text you know like so many of my paintings are dense with text but I find myself listening to you know music with you know no lyrics which I thought was interesting because I just found myself doing that I didn't intentionally do that you know not so you know I was listening to guess Waldo and Edgar Verres and Penderecki uh so I found myself listening to these things that you know don't don't have words you know entering my my head so and I just found it you know I just found it interesting because like sometimes in the past like when I played you know Hank Williams music and I started painting and I didn't even know I was going to paint him and then all of a sudden I found myself painting him because maybe you know because I started you know playing his music and he just got in me and where did the text begin in the paintings well you know I guess uh there's a couple of you know you know certainly it connects to you know the comics and and it you know it also connects you know in the way that I like literature but it also connects to illuminated manuscripts and and it maybe specifically has an element of what I'm perceiving as reality because like right now you know I see you but I'm also seeing you know the room that we're in you know I might be thinking about something you know related or unrelated to what we're talking about and we're talking so what we're saying you know is like text and and some of the things that come to my mind are are words you know and so the experience of of reality involves text you know as well as images as a perception that's happening all at once it's a challenge it's you know trying to explain your work to my wife was one of those let me just show you the book it's dead and and you'll get an idea and she just had first thing I did was fold out the end with the two yeah adore way to Joe and a door way to Whitney that we get but you know the the idea of creating a form of art that is not explicable there's not an easy you know oh well what he's doing is this in the tradition of that you know this what I find I guess it's one of those classification things like oh where does Joe fit in you know the kind of art and it's easy yeah and and I don't know how much of that matters to you whether it's ever outside of you know the commercial aspect of of you know selling art whether it matters to really say it doesn't really yeah I mean I I mean I always admired works you know that we're not that easily explainable either and and artists that you know chose a difficult path so you know you know what's important in the work is what's important to me you know it's great you know to um to you know be able to survive you know these many years you know by the sale of my work but I'm really doing it for me you know and I'm the only I'm the only one I had to please but I am also the hardest please yeah I'm harder on myself than then you know any anyone else could be longest you've worked on something that didn't work or does everything didn't work eventually work or become repurposed into something else I guess um almost yeah almost never do I give up you mentioned like in the book that the Hank Williams one you knocked off the wall yeah but I kept adding that you sort of seemed to realize that my smirk on the face yeah yeah he just wanted to for me to haul off and punch him in the face but yeah I might I might have broken it but it stayed together and he was happier and I was happy and happy with the book yeah yeah yeah I'm real happy with the book I mean I'm always never you know there's always a part of me that's never satisfied you know I don't think I've ever made the you know quite the painting that I wanted to make but I think that's what keeps you going you know like the endless search you know if I if I suddenly made the painting you know exactly the way that I I put all my efforts towards and it worked maybe I would stop and never do another painting I think that's part of what keeps you going that's you know the the the energy you know and that's the the life force you know pushing and pushing and never being satisfied like once you start slowing down and you start you know resting on your laurels as the saying goes then you're doomed are you able to work with the same intensity I mean age age is a number in all of us you know but of course you know I'm older you know but I'm still pushing myself yeah really hard I mean the one that I the last painting in the book is the last painting that I'd finished The Sorcerer's Mirror and that's really small and compact and and unique I mean it looks like a joke home but it's also unique yeah you know and if you so I'm pushing myself again you surprise yourself yeah yeah because that's from the beginning you were describing that sense of oh you know that something has occurred to you in the moment yeah and that surprised me and the the one I'm working on now yeah is surprising me we're gonna go check it out in a minute but the question I always ask people which I should have warned you was coming what are you reading uh what am I reading right now but you're doing research for a painting you shouldn't tell me what it is no I thought it's okay um I mean the the last thing I was I was reading in bathtub um I was Chester Gould's story on the brow yeah that's exactly what I was just a big Tracy on that's a big Tracy I'll say I never appreciated Gould until about a year ago I was at a festival and I was shit talking Chester Gould to a cartoonist because you know we all have our Mount Rushmore's and pantheons and this guy sent me a power point afterwards to explain exactly why Chester Gould should be regarded among the the top of the 20th century and I was beautiful I'm looking I'm like yeah no I was full of shit completely I get it you know I should have been a little more open about this stuff that's okay but yeah I was just answering your question yeah no I'm with you you know I always have to be a digression of my own yeah to go in but but yeah that's um you know as far as the the work you do and and you know all the reading and everything else it sinks into you and then comes out on the page or on the I don't even want to say canvas I don't know what your canvases would yeah yeah does a canvas uh would you know uh prevent the kind of detail that I'm after it's I want the the surface as smooth as glass because any texture would prevent you know the information that I could uncover yeah with a single yeah yeah yeah you really get in there and you bugle my mind anyway Joe I want to thank you for coming on the show I want I really want to thank you for a doorway to Joe oh thank you well I'd say it's a bible of sorts it's uh it's an amazing work well thank you gill it's a real pleasure to do this interview with you and that was Joe Coleman go get a doorway to Joe the art of Joe Coleman uh out now from Fantagraphics it's an amazing book about a great American artist and I know I prattled on insanely in the introduction I did not do justice to Joe's work this book does it's it's truly a marvel you should also check out Joe's site Joe Coleman dot com to learn more about his his work and his life and upcoming exhibitions and appearances and performances and and other stuff and there's videos of past events that he's done and there's a whole section of photo gallery on some of the contents of the the auditorium and he's doing some appearances for the the new book so try to go see him if you find out that there's an exhibition of his work like I said go and take in a dark cosmic exploration of of America and and the human soul that's what I was trying to get at now you can support the virtual memories show by telling other people about it just let them know there's this podcast this guy's put out 600 episodes of comes out every week and he's got these great conversations with really fascinating artists and writers and and cartoonists and musicians and and all sorts of creative cultural people you can also help out the show by telling me what you like and don't like about it besides the interminable introductions and letting me know who you want to hear me record with or what movie or tv show or book or comic or piece of music or theater or art exhibition or whatever you think I should turn listeners on to you can do that by sending me email by dm if we're connected on blue sky or instagram postcards letters I love getting postcards I put my mailing address at the bottom of the newsletter I send out twice a week so you can get it from there or by leaving me a message of my google voice number that's nine seven three eight six nine nine 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find people through go fund me a patreon kick starter crowd funder indigo go all those those crowdfunding platforms you'll find people who need help make in rent or medical bills or car payments or veterinary bills or getting an artistic project going and a few dollars from you might make a real difference in their lives now when it comes to institutions I give to my local food bank and world central kitchen every month I make targeted election contributions but that day job is it involves lobbying so that's part of my gig but I give to Planned Parenthood women's choice freedom funds and and the poor people's campaign there are all sorts of things that if you got a little money to spare you might be able to help us build a better world so uh and I hope you will our music for this episode is fella by hell mayforth used with permission from the artist should visit my archives to check out my episode with howl from the summer of 2018 and learn more about his art and painting and you can listen to his music at soundcloud.com/mayforth and that's m-a-y the number four th and that's it for this week's episode of the virtual memories show thanks so much for listening we'll be back next week with another great conversation you can subscribe to the virtual memories show and download past episodes at the iTunes store you can also find all our episodes and get on our email list at either of our websites vmspod.com or chimeraupscura.com/vm it can also follow the virtual memories show on twitter and instagram at vmspod at virtualmemoriespodcast.tumbler.com and on youtube spotify and tune in.com by searching for virtual memories show and if you like this podcast please tell your pals talk it up on social media and go to iTunes look up the virtual memories show and leave a rating and maybe a review for us it all goes to helping us build a bigger audience you've been listening to the virtual memories show i'm your host Gil Roth keep reading keep making art and keep the conversation 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