Before, We Were Desperados

July 8 - 27, 2009
Opening Reception Wednesday July 8th from 6-8 pm

Possible Projects is pleased to announce Mike Calway-Fagen’s solo exhibition of sculptures and photographs. Mike also includes a photograph by Jon Taylor.

“I spent the better part of my adolescence and even my early adult years desperately trying to find a different way to navigate. I was never really quite sure where or what I was headed towards. Then one day I earned my Eagle Scout and I grew up a little. I’d spent years without shoes chasing snakes and feeding turtles in various tanks that sat about my turquoise and purple painted room. I’d fallen in love at the age of 14 and then went on to propose ten years later to the French woman of my dreams. She had stolen my heart underneath a waterfall in the rain some years earlier. It was between my professional bicycle racing career and the somewhat stumbling fall into art. We had shared our own fascination with fireflies and intercourse. One time I even got a tattoo while she watched.

After high school, Eileigh dropped Will and I off on the interstate and we left to test our friendship. The police picked us up and dragged us, after looking at our boot-knives, to the next county. I threw up off a porch and Will slept in a gazebo. In South Carolina we walked down the interstate and were met with the most kind man who showed us cigars and hospitality.

The irony of my parents’ disparate backgrounds, Jewish kid in Brooklyn in a project high rise and my Mom and her catholic family trailing my Granddad from place to place as an army brat, has had a lot of impact on me. I’ll always look for diversity and quirkiness.
  
I would hangout, arms draped over glass cases, staring at bicycle parts. Later I was told that I had been suspected of stealing and even later I raced my bicycle for money. I rode until my legs hurt and stairs were nearly impossible to climb. I went to school as an athlete and painted because I remembered it being easy in high school. Within two months I had dropped out and sunk into depression. I was in transition and my bike looked neither appealing or a feasible means to eek out a living. I got in to school again and this time was determined. I made a considerable amount of money each week as a fly fishing guide in the Smoky Mountains. Sometimes sneaking a flask of vodka into the woods and offering my better customers a chance to really enjoy themselves. I almost stepped on a rattlesnake a number of times; one of which was while hanging out with my best friend who would later commit suicide.”

  “let’s open up and clear up the line – be able to hang out a clothesline, a simple line, and be able to hang emotion on it” - Bukowski

Possible Projects is open on Mondays from 11-6 pm or by appointment.