Ken Little is from the High Plains. Amarillo to be exact. Don’t know how much this means. It’s an unusual place. Mostly made up of sky. The light is bright and intense. Pale yellow if you try and pin down the color. Things are usually seen tho, in black and white. Contradictions carry the day. In the vastness and flatness it’s all cast in the context of the cosmos. One is never unaware of being there. You can go indoors, pull the blinds, turn on the air-conditioning, stare at the inevitable seascape painting on the wall. You might as well be fluffing a pillow going down Niagara Falls in a barrel.
Ken is a Plains boy. You can tell it by his smile. Also something other. Opaque, austere. Coming from over there somewhere. Don’t bother trying to fathom. Lately the animal pieces are very simple. Multifaceted. Sometimes smooth as river rocks. The kind David picked up. The ones turned over and over. The object speaks. Not the replica. Don’t know how sculptors leam it. They probably don’t. It’s outside the stonn of knowledge.
They find out what they knew. Make it available. Title it. Panhandle time. The world floating free in thin air. A Plains boy.
Who was it said that manifesto – the visual is an exact explanation of itself? Walter Lantz? Right as a rabbit whoever. What we’re looking for, what we should go a long ways for these days, is something with a real shape. Something you can find when you get up in the middle of the night. When you’re wandering around a living room through various ideas galore and residues stacked up like teeming molecules without even the red, blue and yellow balls and the connecting rods. It’s true Drew. There’s too much down the avenue. Too much categorized, downloaded stock of pure sifted info. It’s over the top.
I know it’s true one’s not always prepared for other colors in an everyday box. For rambling symmetry. Angels from the bank. But stepping through this installation, you can get your footing. There’s more than enough light. Instructive, mysterious, innocent. You have to love the bear. Take him to heart. He’s just in from the Yucatan. From Love Field Dallas. From virtual reality. He has the Great Sphinx headache. Recouping, dreaming, beaming. He needs a lot of room. He gets it too, to bounce around through. Everything is turned upside down. Like it really is according to the science boys over in optics. The handwriting is on the wall. Through house, home, holding co., as gray and matter-of-fact as throwaway rock on 287, the cosmic family is sailing down. They have their brand new suits of bills on. Nothing up their sleeves. It can cut you loose pal. And hold you on its wings like a mother eagle. Soaring – Rules of Engagement is a good kind of piece. It’s what we need. It has a big door prize with two big keys. You don’t see what you know. You do know what you see.
This stuff doesn’t come by everyday. I wish it did. It’s Scarce as hen’s teeth really. As fine as frogs hair. High as a cat’s back. It’s a great show bro. I wish there was a little high tone discourse tagging along.
Ed Blackburn 1996