Disease and Destiny
Jim Gelfand was educated as a psychotherapist and pursued that career until contracting Parkinson's disease in the late Eighties. Since then, his writing has been a central focus, but he has also turned his small apartment into a wondrous, evolving exhibition of found-object combines and installations. Virginia Bartow of the New York Public Library's rare book division honored his previous work
Where I Live in 90 in the 90's.
His apartment is an astonishing, suirreal place holding surprising vignettes and visual metaphors on every surface and in every corner. Jim's work is in a tradition of obsessive, outsider art but because it's so deeply informed by his compassion and understanding of the unconscious, his environments go beyond interesting - they are arresting.
In
Accidental Roses, Jim has choreographed scores of soulful images with 75 poems to draw us through 4 sections:
Disease and Destiny,
Eight Drummers,
The Ranter and the Chanter, and
Imagination Street. From his synopsis:
What began became after changes upon change, complete -
a room with it's own view and sweep.
Working with the many and the few -
you can call me a collector if you want to.
I only take what I know I can use - sometimes the hardest thing is to choose,
Between objects too much like themselves to be fuse
Can People really change, that remains the question.
Enter magic, in every culture it's been more than a digression.
Images of found-art artifacts in various stages of transformation expand
and amplify the poetry
Accidents are the fuel but only to a degree
I'm walkin' across the world for as long as I can see - I'm walkin' from memory.
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