Jessica Slaven

ER, ER, ER

HELL TOUPÉE

2015, Acrylic on paper, 19 x 24"

WER WEN WEM

Spam Stalkings

Dear!

Having trouble viewing this email? This letter is the first step to get to know you and I need to be very honest.

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2015, 33" x 33", acrylic on paper

Can't Tell

Can it be a memoir if I have poor memory? Or if it’s written entirely too early, and I'm half-dead on the vine? What if I break first person, to write about “The Subject”? Perhaps no one will care about the subject or The Subject. Really, what is there to say?

What if there were no redemptive, affirming, uplifting, or inspiring content? And if any turned up, if I weeded it gone? If The Subject dragged through, fucked up, dicked over, suffered shame, and sunk heavier as the thing rolled along. Is that a memoir?

And if fantastic events occurred for The Subject - if she got a standard poodle and together they opened a pest exterminating business that operated on college campuses and scheduled using Twitter, but pesticide exposure killed the dog and she developed Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), what then? And then if she became a bar back at Tracks Raw Bar and Grill in Penn Station for cash to breed standard poodles as a self-perpetuating monument to the fallen dog, but the cleaning fluids used backing the bar caused her MCS to flare up, which then littered her shifts with seizures, asthma, and dermatitis, naturally alarming staff and customers alike, resulting in her firing from Tracks, that’s probably starting to cast away from memoir, no?

I can’t tell, or remember.

2015, 34" x 26", acrylic on paper

To Be In The Know

As a young couple, a pervasive stink slunk throughout their everyday. Youth squalor so malodorous had no political pretense for them, theirs was simply negligent. They battled desensitization and sloth to identify the sources: flowers in water for days or weeks on end. Clothes worn out dancing repeatedly; aired, sprayed with Chanel Cristalle, and declared fresh. An embarrassment of condoms in a trash can. An Appenzeller rind allowed to slip into the sink drain. Three high fevers suffered under a bare down comforter. Buttes of cigarette butts that rose from tables to encircle dusty computer monitors and empty alcohol bottles. Months of filth and accumulation, baked and frozen in the car. Failure to clean winter coats, ever. Tumbleweed tossed in the rental car, once: that had smelled. She refused deodorant. Their bodies each processed up to/beyond 15 drinks daily, and the cat’s litterbox figured in somehow.

Sleuthing together sharpened their senses and standards, resulting in neater living. It was a slow process. They bought potted orchids, becoming skilled at their care. They stopped dancing in clubs. She was fitted with an IUD. A plain of counter space and a dishwasher emboldened forays into Limburger and Epoisses without worrying about scraps- they’d be quickly discovered. Boom: a duvet cover. Everyone had stopped smoking, except the Greeks, off thousands of kilometers from Germany. The couple’s new S550 had to be cleaned weekly; sitting in a vortex of garbage while driving 240kmph would feel wasted, likely. Winter coats were now dry cleaned upon first notice of substantial dirt. They hadn’t yet re-tested a rental against a tumbleweed, though tumbleweed essence (or clary sage oil?) lead the natural deodorant she had agreed to wear. Forced to stop drinking entirely, they found many hours freed to clean the litterbox.

He was certain of this: their new ways evinced a movement.

2015, 32" x 49", acrylic on paper

A Call in Early May

Pussy willow switches snapping open, sneezing out bloomy yellow pollen. Pollen falling on faded sun-spider blossoms dropped from witch hazel canes, which, with a few bare forsythia branches, were sitting interspersed among the pussy willow in a vase. Cruciform forsythia flowers, now collapsed and mote-light, the witch hazel crab-blossoms, and the pollen dust, radiating a wilted doily of neglect outward across the maple tabletop.

Water was gone from the vase. Moving air threatening to destroy the illusion of order and beauty. Still air is suffocating.

2015, 36 x 26", acrylic on paper