"Masters of the Flock" is an expression of alarm against the aggressive domestic policies of the second Trump administration. It is an interactive wall relief installation, created as my contribution to the themed exhibit “American Grotesque” at Zero Station Gallery in Portland, Maine. This show was programmed as two parts running from the fall of 2025 through the spring of 2026. Part one was subtitled “American Grotesque: Kassandra”, part two “American Grotesque: Katharsis”. Gallery owners Keith Fitzgerald and J. E. Paterak conceived of this presentation as an interpretation of our current times as a Greek Tragedy and in turn as their swan song after 20 years exhibiting art in this location.
I created the painting “Vein Men” in March of 2025 as a continuation of a painting series in which each painting depicts a congested grouping of figures on a large format canvas. Prior to painting this painting in my series, I generally treated each canvas as depicting a unified grouping of “types” i.e.: all polar bears, all preachers, all sea creatures, etc. The canvases would then get hung attached together, as triptychs, diptychs, etc., and the contrasts between the paintings were a dynamic that interested me. Underlying this series was a vague thematic reference to MAGA culture, Americanism and power politics. Conceiving of “Vein Man” in the early months of the second Trump administration and sensing an impending unleashing of aggressive policing I intuitively created two distinct “types” in conflict in a singular canvas, ushering in a compositional and contextual shift to the series, and unknowingly the model and reference for “Masters of the Flock” and fitting the theme for Part One: “Kassandra” who in Greek mythology was gifted with true prophecy by Apollo but cursed so that no one believed her warnings.
In the painting “Vein Men” circulatory system figures aggressively jostle snowmen. Both “types” of figures have been featured often in my work over the years. Often I depict figures that, for utilitarian reasons, reflect a schematic palette in their costume, natural coloring or lore. I’ve always liked circulatory system figures for their patriotic red, white and blue schemata and snowmen as blank, but cheery, non-human figures. Given the 30’ gallery wall at Zero Station to create an onsite work of art, and some time to plan, fabricate and install, in their closed gallery, I decided to recreate “Vein Men” as a dimensional wall relief. The snowmen presented me with a simple shape or form that would be relatively easy to fabricate using papier mâché, my “go to” medium for creating lightweight dimension on some of my two-sided paintings and free standing sculptures.
The dimension and volume of papier mâché has allowed me in the past to create tubes and channels within painting structures and sculptures in which the viewer can drop marbles or spheres that pass through and exit the piece. For “Masters of the Flock” I was able to fabricate a 28’ long marble run inside the nine connected figures. The circulatory system figures, being too complex to render in papier mâchè, became more dynamic as a pictorial, and were better suited as linear, calligraphic paint flat on the wall. Much of the work was low on the wall and in looking for an element to add higher up, I decided to create a thought bubble and turned, as I often do for text, to the bible. In Jeremiah I found the dramatic and ominous declaration of masters suffering the fate of their flocks, where the verse calls on leaders to mourn as their time of judgment arrives:
“Howl, Shepherds, Cry aloud,
Sprinkle yourselves with ashes, You
masters of the flock.
It is your turn to go to the slaughter,
And you shall fall like fine rams.”
Herein I found the title of my work, “Masters of the Flock”.
For me the snowmen and circulatory system figures are ambiguous and almost interchangeable. One is clearly dominant over the other, which speaks with certainty to current policing activities and even universal policing tactics. Yet the icemen or snowmen and circulatory system figures are neither conveniently the perpetrators or victims, interpretations of cold and warm being attached to aggressor and victim incorrectly one might say, suggesting multiple possible explanations or impressions and deeper psychological implications for a society that values force over consensus.
For part two “Katharsis” I decided to remove the snowmen, which were beginning to show wear after months of interaction. This presented an opportunity to develop the narrative and I decided to re-titled my evolving piece to “Masters of the Flock (Deflocked)”, reflecting the administrations deportation program, and I brought out my wooden dummy smartphones, which I had first created in 2016, to revisit this modern technological device which was now a powerful tool within social justice activism circles, documenting the administration's brutal, unrestrained policing activity. In looking for another type of viewer interactivity to replace the marble chase array, I decided to construct jumping jack folk toy figures. This would enable an interaction on the part of the viewer, who could now be the puppet master making each figure dance in endlessly entertaining flailing movements, providing a satisfying catharsis. This enabled me to shift the narrative from the victims and boots on the ground to the orchestrators, lawmakers and policy gurus versus the activists, reporters and investigators in the battle for establishing the conscience of a society. Here the puppets are character motifs from my oeuvre, men in costume, allowing me to insert judges, Santas and saviors into the evolving dialogue.
