Paripatetic Relics

I found these unusual black and white photographic reproductions that reminded me of prehistoric fish carvings, ritual flints and other fetish or ceremonial objects.  They were in fact images of skateboard decks from a skateboarding manual, and on my own I would never have thought to select them as a subject, nor to photograph them on a cinder block wall in this tightly cropped manner.  The images were so strange that I was compelled to re-photograph them and add yet another layer of coarsely sprayed watercolor and dyes to the already grainy texture of the cinder blocks and the rough halftone dot pattern of the crude offset reproductions.  Against this noisy background, I painted the amusingly phallic shapes in a decorative manner, in some cases, with thick impasto paint.  From the unlikely source of a skateboarding manual, I created new fetish objects that I could use for my own flights of fantasy and philosophizing as I traveled about on these self-propelled vehicles of the imagination.