I'm a mile and a half above sea-level in Snow Mass, Colorado -- about five miles from Aspen -- home of much Botox, Spray-on Tans and cut-rate tit-jobs.
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I'm a visiting artist at Anderson Ranch, a wonderful place full of talented people and committed artists. Despite my trepidation about going to an Art Camp, I'm enjoying it immensely and making a lot of work -- you get a beautiful studio here and the people are marvelous.
I've moseyed into Aspen a couple of times and am not much of a fan. It is a culture of rich types and designer labels, and some of the art-world types are walking regurgitants.
I know this appraisal reeks of unfair class bigotry, but there it is. Around the zip codes of affluence I always wonder how much misery was ladled out onto those not at the top of the Scrotum Pole.
Anderson Ranch was built in the late 1960s on land donated by Atlantic Richfield, the oil company.
It was somewhat heartening to hear that an oil company did something for a community. Especially since oil companies have rat-fucked the American people since their inception. Nothing has degraded the American landscape like the oil business. No one industry has more consistently held an economic gun to the heads of working people like it has.
The BP and Exxon Valdez disasters come to mind when you examine the atrocity ethic of the fossil fuel business. My friends in south Louisiana quietly tell me that the Gulf is destined to be a dead sea -- that aquatic life will no longer be sustainable in those waters. No more Tarpon, or Sailfish, or Flying Fish. It is an act of corporate cruelty unrivaled in the history of American business. There is no shortage of oil business executives in Aspen -- they love the clean air and unspoiled natural beauty that they so ravenously despoil in other communities, where the rest of us live.
This piece is called The Star Fish -- it is a portrait of what the trophy fish of the future will look like.
TONY FITZPATRICK is an artist from Chicago. For his blog, click here.
