"Sketchbook Entropy" date unknown, mixed media on paper

   Sketchbooks define me more than any medium; these amassed visions function as a cathartic diary, a conceptual playground, a media laboratory, and an incognizable soliloquy. I obsess...ruminate over each page...each piece is derived individually, but oftentimes one might discern a coherency of style or at least see a concordant series of cosmetic applications amongst the pages.
   These little experimental clusters began way back in college with an assignment to "fill an entire sketchbook in a semester". My professor was Clarence Morgan, an talented abstract expressionist and brilliant mentor; his extraordinary visionary style and penetrating critiques made an indelible "mark" on me. His classroom challenge entailed putting  together over 100 individual pages in a 9" x 12" hardbound sketchbook (set alongside my normal coursework responsibilities)...any medium was game...all pages needed to be "compositionally" consummate. It became a gauntlet I wholeheartedly took up. Little did I realize then, that I would continue on with this challenge for 20 + years...Clarence became a scintillating Johnny Appleseed to me.
   Here is a random...somewhat more obscure entry. It began with a stochastic rip from a yellow pages heading (a nearly defunct advertising vehicle)...I noticed the weird header and it set my mind to reeling. I grabbed some Elmer's glue and pasted the shredded pieces together. Slowly the oddly serendipitous title  pushed out a visual...the contradictory wording conjured up a vision of microscopic stitching...post-hypnotic promptings...mesmerisms with malicious volition...advertisements injected into our psyche just below the threshold of perception...jaundiced stitching onto our method of thought.
   "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people" ~Karl Marx~