Works based upon the prophetic misadventures of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick
Exhibit RECEPTION & READINGS: Saturday, June 13, 2015, 5 pm- 9 pm Gallery 3624
Readings (the juicier bits) from Moby-Dick, Reception, Saturday June 13 2015,
5pm- 9pm (readings from 7pm) Bring your own favored passage, if any, listen to others’.
3624 West Washington Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90018
Exhibition May 16 – June 14, 2015 Viewings by appointment
Contact Joe Phelan at: 213 276 6226 or joephelandesign@gmail.com
Below: Photomontages “Ahab’s True Hat” and “Constitution Rorschach,” signed, limited edition, numbered ink jet prints, on 24″ x 30″ archival stock are from two of the artist’s projects, Pequod Mutiny (2014-15), Exceptionalism (2011); Pequot’s Mast with Doubloon; opening scene; mixed media and video Installation (with Tim Kitz).
Artist Statement
One might have expected that the photograph of our
little blue earth taken from the moon, combined with
the media nerve net connecting us like schools of
simultaneously darting electric fish, would have
sufficed to create an expanded sense of kinship.
It has not. Or that the Hubble’s revolutionary
expansion of our perception of time and space would
inspire more tender regards for our fellow sentient
beings in the awesome face of the “vasty deep.”
There is little evidence.
Instead, too many in the current generations default
to cocoons of self-regard, isolation, non-stop
entertainment, and aggrievement. It’s an ironic
adaptation. Looking outward, one sees our beautiful
world literally on fire. Culturally and politically, too
many maintain shrunken worlds of otherphobia.
Something genuinely new is called for. A kinship that
transcends territory, tribe, culture, class, religion
or race. We constructed all that in more primitive
times. We’re not carrion birds -we can re-imagine and
reconstruct a better world. An esprit de corps
animated by Lincoln’s better angels. We have the
tools for implementing such a view, with
consciousness and technology, but as yet few
working models.
The Ahabs of our present world; the Cheneys, the
Putins, the war drum beaters, the would-be califs,
the self-interested corporate hegemons with their
paid governmental operatives -they are willful. And
if they are not thwarted, Melville’s quintessential
American cautionary tale has shown us where it
could lead.
Joe Phelan May 2015
Joe Phelan Projects 
A whale of good time here!
May the reception be playful, intriguing and not too dangerous. – CC
Great exposition in “Pequod Mutiny,” Joe, on ‘Moby-Dick’ as a parable for America’s voracious stupid ecocidal aggression against everything that we ultimately need to sustain us (and the rest of Reality)! I’ve written this while wishing I was at Gallery 3624 for the reception (just too hard to get that far by bus and foot from here — and wasn’t sure of the cross-street: essential info for [low-carbon] bus riders!).
“The young wife turns sleepily in a dream, synchronized with the distant whale, her sex briny, deep, wetter than estuaries, slicker than the fine spermaceti that lubricates even today the delicate focusing mechanisms of the Hubble. She is aligned with her husband and his onrushing fate on precisely the opposite coordinates of the globe.
Waking, Ahab’s young wife quietly ascends to the moonraked widows’ watch, embedding herself in the cycling firmament and a freshening wind.
And does not grieve.”
My wetware and mine mind’s eye, this evening stoked, me mateys!
Have to agree with your assessment Joe. maybe if someone from “out there” attacked – we’d come together as a planet with a shared enemy – but short of that (and it wouldn’t be pretty), we may go the way of the other species who are no longer here. It’s very sad – there is so much potential promise that is being wasted.