her from floor level and slightly off to one side, looking up at this looming presence. “This one’s called ‘Victim of Love.’ This is my idea for a Hallmark card. This is what a woman sends the guy that knocked her up, who’s 6,000 miles away and doesn’t give a fuck about her. And then I’d write underneath, ‘Just thinking of you, babe.’ “Do you wanna go upstairs and see some more stuff?” I ask him about some of his titles—‘Mary Evans Obtaining Virtue’; ‘Dance In Reverse’; ‘Sometimes It’s Hard To Be AWoman’; ‘The Vulgar Man’; ‘The Art Critic With His Mask Off’; ‘You Cheat And You Lie’; ‘Put It In My Mouth.’ “And this one’s called, ‘Fuck You, I’m Dead.’ There’s this guy I knew in New York from Buffalo, and he’s very Catholic. He’s wild, you know, but he still fears God. He got drunk one night and he says, ‘Shit man, what the fuck do I got to worry about? When I go to Hell, I’ll just say to the Devil, Fuck you, I ’m dead. What are “These are girls that you meet at a party or out at a bar or something and you want to dance with them but you're just not cool enough for them. Till they find out who you are they don't want to have anything to do with you. That's been the story of my life." ' you going to do about it?’” We return back down to the studio and talk about some of the stories behind some of the newer stuff. Sometimes the idea is accessible from the start. But other times, in the heat of hard and fast painting, he won’t yet know the source of the inspiration. “If I put this painting out here and studied it tonight, I could figure out why I “ I don't desire to compete with that crowd. Igot nothing to prove. It's a head-fuck, you know?" . painted it. It’s just that I’ve been doing so much [painting] lately that I have to blank them ou t.I can’t even look at these. Sometimes 1 hate these pictures for weeks ’cause I do so many of them. This is my power trip right now, this month before my show. This is when I’m doing my best paintings. These are my babies. Nobody’s ever seen these paintings yet, except you.” In 1980, Greg decided to quit his job and just try to make it on the sale of his work. Since then he has had numerous shows in Portland, Seattle, New York, and elsewhere in the country. He’s one of a handful of artists in Portland who is making it solely on the sale of his work. “I’d go back to working in an all-night diner, washing dishes, if I couldn’t sell my art work. I feel like I got everything I want in this world. I just want the time to do what I’m doing. I want to wake up and have nothin’ to do all day except what I want to do. And that could be nothing or everything.” You’re on a roll, Greg. I love the heat of your passion. And I love you, babe. Burn baby, burn. Writer-Artist Keith Jellum lives in Sherwood, Oregon. His initial story in Clinton St., “Fluid Metal” (Winter, 1986), explores his medium of choice, metal sculpture. PINE STREET CHIROPRACTIC 205 S.W. PINE r i ’ DOWNTOWN S I 274-0144 ____________________________ Where the healing arts m a t the fine arts___________________________ A One-Person Show of John Callahan’s work is up through May at Pine Street Chiropractic. Co-sponsored by C linton St. 31 NORTHWEST FIRST AVENUE • 223-9919 24 Clinton St.—Spring 1990
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