KAMMY ROULNER
The Birdman of Alcatraz was more than some simple character played by the competent and agile actor Burt Lancaster.
One of the first steps to recovery is admitting you have a problem. I am an agoraphobic. Perhaps not to the level of an outsider's expectations, but nonetheless I am still an agoraphobic. Like the Birdman, I have designed my environment to function as a beautiful prison. The main difference is that he never had the option of leaving, whereas I can walk out my front door anytime I like. I realize this fact and only hate myself more - as if being raised Catholic wasn't enough.
I make art to re-affirm the fact that I am alive. It sounds like a tired old cliché, and I thought that I should edit it out, but the truth is important and one of the steps to overcoming your problems. Various things come through my door: boxes, catalogs, phone books, and all the other stuff associated with bulk mail. I have a few options when they arrive. I can either take them to the trash out back, which would involve leaving my house, or look at them as raw material for art. Perhaps that is why I once developed a complex and delicate relationship with the handsome and rugged Brawny man - a man so confident in his abilities that he could handle both my overwhelming emotional problems and various household accidents involving grape juice. It was not my decision to have my groceries delivered in a leftover box of paper towels, but I had to deal with that object somehow. Making an art object out of it might not have been the healthiest route, but it provided my group therapy peers with a bit of comic relief after Roland told us a humiliating story of how he nearly died from dehydration because he was afraid to turn on his faucets 'cause he didn’t know where the water was coming from.
One of the first steps to recovery is admitting you have a problem. I am an agoraphobic. Perhaps not to the level of an outsider's expectations, but nonetheless I am still an agoraphobic. Like the Birdman, I have designed my environment to function as a beautiful prison. The main difference is that he never had the option of leaving, whereas I can walk out my front door anytime I like. I realize this fact and only hate myself more - as if being raised Catholic wasn't enough.
I make art to re-affirm the fact that I am alive. It sounds like a tired old cliché, and I thought that I should edit it out, but the truth is important and one of the steps to overcoming your problems. Various things come through my door: boxes, catalogs, phone books, and all the other stuff associated with bulk mail. I have a few options when they arrive. I can either take them to the trash out back, which would involve leaving my house, or look at them as raw material for art. Perhaps that is why I once developed a complex and delicate relationship with the handsome and rugged Brawny man - a man so confident in his abilities that he could handle both my overwhelming emotional problems and various household accidents involving grape juice. It was not my decision to have my groceries delivered in a leftover box of paper towels, but I had to deal with that object somehow. Making an art object out of it might not have been the healthiest route, but it provided my group therapy peers with a bit of comic relief after Roland told us a humiliating story of how he nearly died from dehydration because he was afraid to turn on his faucets 'cause he didn’t know where the water was coming from.
