I'm not sure of the exact date of my first exposure to The Wizard of Oz, but I do know that Easter time meant that it was coming on TV, I was probably around four years old. I have vivid memories of the anticipation of seeing it every Spring, and the fact that it was broadcast and unpausable, contributed to its ephemeral appeal. On the rounded glass of my families Zenith television it hovered in the same realm of the unreal as the bizarre stories of a man rising from the dead and giant rabbits sneaking around my house. All of the imagery of the season was seamlessly integrated into a single menacingly sweet fable. In any case, I was deeply affected by it all. It scared the hell out of me....and I loved it. The experience forged a real appetite for the unusual that has remained in me. I began to chase this elusive dragon initially through drawing, attempting to commune with the notion of "the other" I had briefly glimpsed. Novelty and confusion were desirable, representing "reality" was boring. The source of fear became less obvious and therefore more desirable. It was the mysterious dialogue I was giddily peaking over the garden wall at. The resulting limbo ultimately revealed to me the notion that to escape could mean running toward, and not away, from something. To disorient myself through art came to reaffirm an underlying suspicion: we're not as smart as we think we are. By juxtaposing ideas and experimenting I was able to rebel against the inherited sense that we actually know what all "this" was. We don't. That is the potential of art/spirituality/technology . It is a tradition of shedding your skin and walking into the abyss, laughing from the pit of your four year old soul all the way. August 11, 2006 originally printed in RVA magazine September 2006