Where’s my shitty art, Charles?

"If You Take Me Down, Take Me With You." G.A. Johnson

Maybe this will count as an artist statement.

The last minutes of Friday night ticked by as I decided to take Sante Fe Drive and say hello to my wall of abandoned children. When I drove past the orphanage I’d created, I snapped my head back in disbelief. WHAT. WAS. THAT???? I only had a glimpse, but it was as though the burning bush I’d waited for had finally spontaneously combusted at the Northwest Corner of the decaying Aztlan theater. I called my wife, Becky, first, and left a voicemail. I called my oldest son next and ranted at him like a street corner Jesus freak. Then I drove home and picked up Becky and headed back to see if it were true. Maybe I was hallucinating.

“Stickey McGhee hit my spot! Sonofabitch!” 

Becky knew why I was so excited. She knew about Stickey McGhee since the whole thing started. I hoped I wasn’t taking her back downtown for nothing. Maybe I was wrong. We drove through a few scenes of summer chaos at one in the morning. High anxiety on 6th avenue. A truck squealing donuts across the intersection of 1st Ave and Lowell. Drunks scrambling across South Broadway as the Underground Music Showcase pounded its swan song. Some of the “Blessed Poor” were bedding down for the night while others still shuffled the urban concrete within view of the triangle of lamp light that shines on my abandoned art street gallery on Tenth and Sante Fe. 

Me posing in front of CLS's sculpture around 1 in the morning, Saturday July 26

We rounded the corner from the parking spot and beheld the miracle. It was beautiful. This was a movie scene in my mind. A “triumphant epiphany” moment. My little abandoned art project had been incorporated into the larger sculpture of a much better known and much more respected artist than I.

CLS

I was familiar with his art all over Denver and was even inspired by his work. He had art in Chicago and New York. CLS is international, too. Greece…France…Thailand…Egypt..and all the other places Indiana Jones had raided. Except South America, maybe.   

I didn’t know all that yet. Becky was the one who looked up his website as I stood before his sculptor like an ape before Kubrick’s black monolith. I called him “Stickey McGhee” prior to these revelations because when I first contemplated his art on West Colfax (my home turf) I said, 

“Shit. That stick guy’s way cooler than me.” 

I had already begun my little abandoned art project a few weeks prior and knew it wasn’t in the same weight class of cool as a Graffiti Writer. I didn’t take nearly as much risk physically or legally, and yes I still measure cool by the Hemingway & Tupac standards. I tip my cap to anyone willing to face extreme personal risk with a stylish romantic disposition.

The bravest people I know walk through life with their pure humanity on display like huge black silhouette paper targets on a rifle range. Some of them sleep under the fragile art I hang up on Broadway. Some of them leave empty beer bottles next to my gallery in the Art Museum Parking Lot. 

Our beloved Aztlan Theater on Sante Fe Dr needs help.

I have a romance with the street, but I recognize I have the luxury of romanticizing someone else's living hell.

I put my fragile framed art out to die in the elements or get destroyed by another human being just as our society discards millions of souls like trash every year. And I do it to my art for the same reason society does it to the unhoused–to make an example. We allow them to suffer out in the open so that we can point to them and say to our children, “If you don’t follow the rules that’s how you may end up. Don’t do drugs. Go to church. Stay in school. Don’t miss your AA meeting.” 

Maybe if my Art got a better degree it wouldn’t lay shattered on the concrete. Maybe if my Art suited corporate America it could live inside a Chic-Fil-A instead of outside the defunct Mimi’s Cafe. But my art has grown wise on these streets. 

THERE IS ENOUGH VACANT COMMERCIAL PROPERTY IN DENVER TO SHELTER EVERY UNHOUSED PERSON IN COLORADO.

CLS knows that, too. His work is set on the same types of wasted structures that I’m drawn to.  

So he showed up at my f—in’ spot. HUZZAH! My work had engaged someone and generated another piece of art. I absolutely love that feeling. A few months earlier I inspired someone to screw up a landscape painting next to my art on the old key shack at the Westland Shopping center. That was neat. 

But then this CLS comes in, taking down two of my pieces, and then sculpting around the remaining three. That is incredible. There’s a conversation taking place here. I’ve been hanging on this spot for months, and as I reviewed over 22 photos of that time span, I understood that the corner was not mine. It was alive and calling artists to it.  

I hope that enough precious art will be put on the Aztlan that somehow it will be saved. Today the marquis says “Save Aztlan” in cracked plastic lettering. Back in April 1987, it said, The Red Hot Chili Peppers. They have a bronze star in front of the theater commemorating the event. They could save the Aztlan if they wanted. Maybe I can help save the Aztlan. 

I post up art and leave it to suffer. If it surives 13 weeks on the street, I bring it home.

But, doing good for the old movie theater was not the first thing that came to my mind either, Flea. My first thought, upon my wife investigating the artist in question, was “FINALLY!” Now I finally have something I can show all my social media stalkers that says, in a mocking Eric Cartman taunt, “ha hah hah hah ha my art gets noticed ha hah hah hah ha people think I’m good and stuff ha hah hah hah ha a way cool artist is posting up next to me.” 

I felt anointed. Vindicated. Discovered! Oh Lord, to be discovered. I wanted to brag brag brag! 

But my second, third, and current thoughts on this event have dimmed that vainglory a bit. CLS may think I’m just a punk ass who tapes his doodles up, takes next to no real risk, and thinks he was about to build himself a gallery on the corner of the Aztlan Theater. Perhaps the conversation is more like I am the kicker getting dressed down by the starting quarterback. Like yeah, you’re kind of playing football, but you’re not a football player, pal. 

“Hey little bro,” CLS says, putting me in a playful headlock, “You’re an artist, sure. But you’re not one of us.” He lets me lose after tousling my hair. “You’re not a cool kid, yet.” 

And it’s true. I’m not a Graffiti Writer. I’m not a rogue sculptor who’s been in galleries and art journals on the international scene. I’m an obscure novelist. I’m telling stories and asking questions. Printer paper is my medium. I stick it on walls one page at a time now and I have the greatest readership in the world. They are engaging with me. So far I have documented the disappearance and destruction of more than fifty pieces of art. This is the first time I have a clue as to where my art went. Or who it went with, anyway. 

So the next chapter in this mystery is titled “What did you do with my shitty art, Charles L. Schriver?” 

www.IknowCLS.com