FASHIONISM

The dictionary definition of missionary is "the spreader of good news". Of course dictionarys were written by church friendly scribes. I'm sure a few natives would argue just how good that news was. The metaphor I used in my appropriation of the word was one of institutional representation, informing "the natives" of the word. In this case the word was ART. Like Rev. Dicks preaching to that white artsy crowd, my fervor was directed at that passerby in front of the department store window or the Monroes or even tattooist Lyle Tuttle, who never looked at those bandages as being anything more than a way to stave off infection, tossing them in the garbage. My role was to show the way.
Eventually i realized this pretentious attitude had to be tempered with something akin to an opposite. A year after THE CHURCH I set up a similar one night performance. This time instead of a minister i would hire a prostitute and set up a different kind of institution. Honey and I were still together, but not for much longer. David Ireland had bought another house in the mission, a big old victorian on South Van Ness and 20th St. He offered me the filthy basement apt. and garage for cheap. A month of gutting and painting and I had my pad. I sat down at my IBM and wrote up my perspective of the SF scene under the pen name MO David and sent it off to a NY magazine called COVER. To my surprise they published it under the title SF FASHIONISM.
My time in Berkeley had been productive. Along with the tattoos I also decided to put my mark on a cow. I registered a simple brand design with the state of CA, bought a cow and branded her as part of a spoken word piece at an alternative space. When the cow broke through her fence and got hit by a truck, I salted and preserved the steaks as objects. Typical of any of my breakups I went into a deep funk. This time I went to Europe instead of the shrink. I made a pilgrimage to Duseldorf, Germany to meet Joseph Beuys. He was in NY. I went to Paris and in an Arab hotel, drunk on cognac, came a little too close to cashing in. By the time i got back to my SF basement I knew what I wanted to do. I would open a commercial gallery in the garage. Once again the context would be my content. The gallery would be my art. I called it MO DAVID.