Artist’s Statement

“You see him on the sidewalks in his jacket and his jeans
wearing yesterday’s misfortunes like a smile.
Once he had a future full of money, love and dreams,
that he spent like they were going out of style.
But he keeps right on a-looking’
for the better or the worse,
searching for a shrine he’s never found.
Never knowing if believing is a blessing or a curse,
if the going up is worth the coming down.

He’s a poet, he’s a picker,
He’s a prophet, he’s a pusher;
He’s a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he’s stoned.
He’s a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction,
Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home.”

I first heard this, “Hopper,” and more, written and recorded by Kris Kristofferson on a bar room juke box in the 1970’s and felt as though he’d been watching me in that small mid-west town. I knew that what I hadn’t already done, I would soon enough. But, what I didn’t realize was that art would play a major role in my life, and that regardless how unconventional and unstructured I would live, I would preserve and protect that part of myself. I have often been told that I should loosen up my work, but I like it as it is.

I was born in the forties,
Grew up in the fifties and
Lived well in the sixties.
Thought I’d die in the seventies
And in the nineties, wished I had.
I’ve seen the inside of more jails than I have churches,
And can’t say that one did me more good or harm than the other.

I spent the eighties with Jesus Christ in one hand and Jim Beam in the other
And yes, they are inter-changeable.

Glenn F. Miller