Tag Archives: tracts

kick in the brain

1988 salamandir tract
1988 salamandir tract
1988 salamandir tract
1988 salamandir tract
1988 salamandir tract
1988 salamandir tract

from before the wayback machine… these tracts that i just found, were prototypes for smaller versions, which were originally designed to counter the “occult” graffiti i found in an abandoned house in the woods near bellingham… the same house i found the tail coat, which i still have (although it’s been substantially modified, at this point)… the house was obviously a place where teenage doodlehums gathered to do illegal and/or immoral things, and i wanted to “enlighten” them by leaving bizarre literature in their abandoned hideaway. it was in a section of fairly dense, second growth forest, on the outskirts to the northeast of bellingham… there were some neighbourhoods east of there, along alabama street, but the place where the railroad had been was, basically, second growth forest. not even a driveway to the house. the house was two stories, but when i was there, the second story was not safe (although i did go up there, a couple of times), and there was a well-house with a working well… and about 50 feet beyond that were what used to be a railway. it was a perfect place for teenage doodlehums to gather, mark up the walls with “satanic” graffiti, smoke pot, write graffiti about smoking pot, and dream about having illicit sex with their imaginary girlfriends.

i figured they had probably heard all the standard propaganda from the “christians” (the “satanic” graffiti was all the evidence i needed), and this was back when i was full of fire to enlighten the masses, so i came up with a number of tracts which were left in the abandoned house, in phone booths (remember them?), and traded for chick tracts at the local storefront ministries that bellingham had at the time. the first version of these tracts was originally published in 1987. one of the later versions was published in 1992.

now, the place where the abandoned house was, is a neighbourhood of slightly-more-upper-class tract houses with a trail that, 75 years ago, was a railroad that served the logging community in that area.

sneak preview

i’m slowly making progress scanning my sketchbooks, although i’ve slowed down considerably and still only have 16 of the 24 sketchbooks scanned, but i figured i’d offer a little sneak preview of some of the reasons why i wanted to have this stuff available on the web, rather than secreted away in a sketchbook that even i can’t access immediately. this is a tract from 1988, and contrary to what moe suggested, this was several years after i took more acid than everybody else that i know, combined… although it does seem to have had a certain effect on the outcome of my artwork.
tractfrom this point i’m a little bit less sure of the dates and the numbering of the books falls apart. i’m pretty sure that the last date in book 16 is 880601, but the next date i can find is 890512, which is almost a year later… which means one of a number of options, including that there are at least two sketchbooks that are “unaccounted for”. i recall photocopying a whole ream of stuff several years ago (before scanners became commercially available) and being frustrated because i couldn’t photocopy the coloured drawings in colour (i did actually photocopy some of the coloured drawings in greyscale, which was the exact opposite of what i wanted and only made me more frustrated), and the missing books could have been lost during that time, but i can’t be entirely sure.

of course, another possibility is that i simply couldn’t afford a new sketchbook for that year. i was astonishingly poor during that period, and it’s a distinct possibility, but again, i can’t be entirely sure.