Nancy Lupo at VEDA, Milan

Paraselene is a phenomenon in the halo family. It’s the illusion of a quadruple moon that’s produced in rare atmospheric situations.

In Magic, the game, when Parasclene is cast you must let go of all enchantments. Every persistent illusion, every ongoing magical effect.

To stop believing that the light will always turn green. That the house is for sale. That there is a house. That there is Rome.

In 2022 or so Alan Longino sent me a press release that he wrote for The Square at Noon bis in 2019. It was scrapped before I ever read it. Gently, in a way I find compelling even if personally deflating, he says that he can’t find meaning in my work.

In 2002 or so I remember having a conversation with Jim Brittingham, in front of the fireplace at my parent’s house in Flagstaff. We were trying to warm up his feet because maybe he had hypothermia. I was saying that I didn’t really care if my work meant anything and that I didn’t believe anything really, actually meant anything. I said that I was interested in what the work could be doing.

In 2009 or so, in a group critique about my work, Kate Levant said that she didn’t think my work meant anything but wondered what then happens in a vacuum of meaning.

In 2024 Kazuna Taguchi invited me to participate in A Reflection on the Sublime at The Museum of Modern Art in Hiroshima, Japan. Alan Logino also participated in the exhibition with three texts reflecting on his cancer, its treatment and the nature of the sublime. He wrote, “And so I must write, reflect, and love an idea that may not be constructed so beautifully as the history of a name—a field of passions in that name—that has created in me a landscape that does impress upon me that celestial awe.”

In Hiroshima, I exhibited, Closer to Faces, which included steel “pig tail” posts I found in an empty lot not far from the museum. I was planning a mission to find more but was advised that stealing was taken seriously and punished severely. Naoko Sumi knew someone who worked in construction and they let us borrow the additional stakes I needed.

On the last day of the exhibition, she wrote to me with strange news about my work.

A man in his 30’s liłed one of the orange stakes. Our security staff asked him not to touch and hold

the stake. The man objected, asking why he should not be allowed to touch it. Our security staff explained but the man further objected, asking why he was not allowed to touch the stake while he was allowed to step on the flower petals. In a state of rage, he stomped on the orange stake once from above and then kicked it further. The wax holder of the candelabra is broken by his action. Our security staff asked the man to wait, but he said “Why should I wait?” and quickly leł the museum.

Serendipity tracked with the relentlessness of a bounty hunter. Artemis II.