freak parade (Salem) 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 36x36. Prints available.

The figures in freak parade (Salem) are all faithful renderings of people or decorations I saw on the street on a trip to Salem, Massachusetts, for Halloween 2021.

As I witnessed on this trip, Halloween buffs congregate yearly in Salem to unapologetically leak their gory, kitschy, and occult freakishness into public spaces for the week leading up to Halloween night. Based on Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, freak parade (Salem) explores the imaginative, extreme, funny and appalling forms of public installation, site-specific sculpture, and ad hoc performativities that emerge annually as part of this tradition. 

Most participants would likely not consider themselves to be full-time artists for the rest of the year, but for one week, allow themselves and each other to inhabit their creativity in full force, to dazzling effect: draping the entire facade of their homes in handmade spider sculptures worthy of Louise Bourgeois; putting Abramović to shame as an evil clown who jumps out at you every few minutes for 8 consecutive hours every day, or embodying the subtle and quasi-telepathic group performativities of an 8-person penguin troupe (seen, but not depicted).