(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Multidisciplinary artist Jack Walls will deliver a multimedia spoken word performance at the Second Ward Foundation on Friday, September 30, and Saturday, October 1, at 7pm both nights. The writer’s internal dialogue concerning his past, the now, and the future, will be laid bare in surreal flights of poetic thought through questions presented to Walls in audio by Lizzi Bougatsos during an evening of experimental theater, with excerpted reading from “The Ebony Prick of the White Rose’s Thorn.”
The free program is directed by James Rasin.
A longtime veteran of the downtown art scene, Jack Walls’ vision and scope has influenced a vast array of some of the younger artists that habitate the edges of the art world, a position from which a few have managed to successfully launch their careers. His iconic status and relevance continues to grow with the times. Working on the fringes of the scene, Walls lives mostly in upstate New York.
Walls retains lessons learned from his influences. “I studied the way Robert (Mapplethorpe) drew. A lot of people don’t know that Robert drew and sketched a lot, a whole lot. I use to watch him draw, my style was different back then, I was in my early twenties, I was still learning.”
“Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Sam Wagstaff continue to be strong spiritual sources of inspiration to me. Because of the lack of a proper studio space I work small,” says Walls. “I won’t let that stop me from doing what needs to be done, that won’t stop me from making art.”
“My relationship to the art world? It’s peculiar, truthfully, I don’t believe in the art world, it’s an antiquated system, anyone can open an art gallery, look around. The Internet blew the whole thing wide open, now what it all boils down to is just how talented and clever you are online, that’s all. That’s not to say you won’t need the physical gallery space to showcase your product, it’ll just be done Pop-Up style. It’s Pop Art all over again.”
Paintings and other artworks by Jack Walls were on exhibit at the Back Gallery at Basilica Hudson last summer.