John Storrow

    Once there were four large mountains peeking out from the sea. They were playing a game of marbles using four very large soup ladles, balanced on each mountain top. Inside each marble, on each soup ladle, there was a steel ball bearing. Suddenly, a very long fifth arm, which was balanced at its distant end by a tiny ball, and four magnets at the front end, swung into place, and was about to grab all four red marbles at the same time, when the picture was taken. 

 This painting depicts a miraculous almost union between the bottom half of a sculpture, which rides on three red wheels, and the upper half of the sculpture which is suspended from a drone with four propellers. At any moment, one half might zing away and there goes the almost Union. I’m interested in the idea of suggested or implied potential for movement. It’s way more interesting than something that just sits there, which I guess is ironic because that’s what paintings do, they are inanimate, literally motionless. 

 They needed some clouds. The houses on the wind swept hill by the sea were tired of looking up at a blank blue sky, so they erected a two hundred foot tall trellis to hold up some wooden clouds that they cut out of whatever wood they could find. At the moment this painting was “Taken like a photo” there was a lull in the wind which was long enough to allow the wooden clouds to stop swinging. It must have been a pretty long lull. As you can see, some actual clouds (depicted) are beginning to appear on the horizon. I guess one could imagine the houses represent people, because people can live in houses. Houses are way easier to draw and paint than people. They’re just boxes with pointy tops and windows.

  I tried to express the idea of gravity with the weight of this great bulbous hanging water tank which is connected to the sea. The water comes gushing in from all over the word and collects in the tank before it slowly drips down through a tiny hole, causing the water wheel to spin, which causes an electric motor to generate electricity, which powers the lightbulb that lights up the under ground room with a single chair. I don’t know why there’s only one chair, or why it’s so far under the weight of the sea. Perhaps I just needed a convenient purpose for the power that could come from the motor. It’s incredibly interesting that you can either power a motor to make it spin, or spin a motor to make it give power. I remember vividly, in my youth, I once had a plastic kit for an electric motor, that you could put together. Miraculous machines they are indeed.

  At the exact moment this picture supposedly “was taken like a photo” the flying machine was precisely above the building, with its wheels almost touching the corners of the building. The wind was blowing it back at the same speed that it was flying forward. It was a colossal flying machine with a four hundred foot wide wingspan. Its wings were made of green cotton cloth and it had very long wooden spars that had to be spliced together in sections because you can’t get single pieces of wood that long. I don’t know where the flying machine will go next, when the wind shifts or it runs out of gas, but at least we know where it is at the moment, it’s in the painting. 

  Let it go. Turn it loose. Whatever that thing was you wanted. Let go of the need to be perfect, forget about salesmanship, don’t worry about pleasing your audience. Just drop all that exhausting s**T. Do it now! 

  The other day I decided to take my SK to my new sailing spot on the Emerald Necklace muddy river here in Boston. I got there shortly before 8:00 in the morning because the forecast said pounding heat later in the day, but a cool breeze in the morning. I decided to bring my folding chair and sit comfortably while guiding my SK (Stuart Knockabout model sailboat) through the mirror smooth water, under some shade trees, using my radio for rudder and sail control, like always. There were lots of different birds up and about doing their morning thing in the trees, large fish jumping near the banks, and even a turtle peeked its head about a half inch above the surface to see what was going on. Meanwhile, as still as a statue, on the other side of the river, a heron stalked its prey. Drinking in all this nature was great nourishment to my soul. I think my SK liked my new sailing spot too. She glided fast in a surprisingly steady wind. She did her gorgeous dance on the water. I took some ...